Duvel Moortgat

After more than 36 years of unwavering dedication, Dominique Mathurin, aka "Achouffe's handyman" and the very first employee, is saying goodbye to the Brasserie d'Achouffe. A unique career, peppered with inventiveness, camaraderie and... a hearty dose of Chouffe humor.

Dominique started in March 1989. At the time, he was literally the go-to guy for absolutely everything within the brewery. With his background from the military school of Saffraanberg and an innate feel for technology, he quickly became indispensable in building up the young brewery.

His workshop — more of an improvisation space than a professional setup — housed a crumbling bread oven, an electric drill inherited from the founders' father-in-law, and a box of rusty screws that would fall to the ground at the slightest touch and disappear without a trace. But where resources were lacking, Dominique more than made up for it with resourcefulness and work ethic.

The brewery's first computer was a genuine IBM-PC1 (with dual 5¼ inch floppy disks), assembled by Chris with original parts. He only used a text editor. "Word" was still science fiction back then. That PC-1 sat in the "room" that served as Chris's office. In winter it would freeze inside, and when it rained, the roof leaked directly into the printer. The printer was then dried out in the warm room.

From designing homemade tools to creating the mythical "Kubifust" — the square keg that actually stayed in place — Dominique brought creativity to every corner of the work. His invention for carrying seven bottles simultaneously became legendary. Cleaning those bottles at a rate of 200 per hour, the day before bottling, seemed endless. To break the monotony, they invented the imaginary magazine "The Bottleneck News."

"I'll never forget the first order for Quebec: two containers of 550 cases with 12 bottles each. On every bottle, we had to add an accent mark over the first 'E' in 'QUÉBEC' with a felt-tip pen... Filling those first two containers was always an adventure. Inside the container, we used a brand-new pallet jack. I had to make do with an old worn-out one whose wheels barely turned — one of them even slipped. I struggled for three hours with 20 pallets. When I came back to Chris and Pierre after loading, they burst out laughing. My face was chalk white, I was completely exhausted."

The famous mission to Rochefort to collect a "Titan" centrifuge also provided legendary material. The machine was dismantled into a hundred parts, loaded onto a trailer, and accompanied by nothing but Rochefort 10 beer. Through a miracle — and despite a frantic search by worried wives AND the police — everything arrived, including the technicians and without a single missing part, back in Achouffe.

Dominique worked in all conditions: alone, at -10°C, with tax inspectors at his door or with an ungreased pallet jack acting up in a container bound for Quebec. What he couldn't find, he made himself. What he didn't know, he learned on the spot. And always with improvement in mind — whether it was installing a steam generator on the bottle washer, or counting how many times a keg was handled (25 times!).

Thank you Dominique. For everything. Your legacy will live on not just in the walls or machines, but especially in the stories that will be told here for years to come.

Cheers, Handyman!