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Object #31 - Three Stars Pils Playing Cards

20th century

Brewery Life

Brasserie Vandenheuvel’s Ekla Pils was the belle of the Expo ‘58 ball, but it wasn’t the only star of the show. At the Belgique Joyeuse village drinkers could avail of Ixelberg’s Elberg Pils, Jager-Pils from Schaarbeek’s Brasserie Roelants, and Wiel’s Pils from Wielemans-Ceuppens. At the exposition’s futuristic Heliport - where VIPs were flown in by helicopter - Brasserie Léopold tapped their Three Stars Pils. 

The Expo may have been temporary, but the move by Brussels’ industrial breweries towards Pils in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s was permanent. For Brasserie Léopold, building on their rapid pre-WWII expansion and investment from Heineken, this meant ditching darker, sweeter Bock beers in favour of their lighter cousins - beers with pseudo-nautical names like White Star and Three Stars Pils. 

Brewers were happy to brew these beers at scale, and Belgians were happy to drink them. As breweries expanded and streamlined production, and beer became increasingly commodified, industrial Pils brewing became Brussels’ dominant business model. And, for a while, it was a successful formula. In the ‘60s and ’70s Wielemans was regularly producing 500,000 hectolitres of beer annually. Vandenheuvel could fill 42,000 bottles an hour. And Léopold went on a minor buying spree, hoovering up smaller breweries in Overijse and Bruges. In 1969, at the peak of pils mania, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the central Brussels Danish Tavern - serving Tuborg and Carlsberg - was attended by King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium, and Henrik, Prince Consort of Denmark.

Everything may have appeared placid on the surface, but the city’s breweries were pedalling furiously to remain competitive. In a situation where everyone was brewing variations on the same theme, it often mattered less what was in the glass than it did which brewery could spend more (and better) on marketing and advertising - glassware, enamel bar signs, ashtrays, and decks of cards. Growth came increasingly from takeovers and consolidation, with smaller breweries being picked off by their deeper-pocketed rivals. Grande Brasserie de Koekelberg, which had already merged with the Ixelles brewery in the 1950s to form Ixelberg, bought Roelants in 1962, and were themselves swallowed up by Vandenheuvel in 1969. 

As Léopold, Wielemans, and Vandenheuvel struggled to emerge as Brussels’ dominant Pils-brewing force, outside rivals regarded the city’s market with envious eyes, slowly and surely drawing their plans against it. Vandenheuvel was bought by English brewery Watneys and closed in 1974. Léopold staggered on, until the economic shocks of the early 1970s forced its Dutch investor to sell to Artois of Leuven in 1976. Sales of Three Star Pils in keg remained robust, but Artois’ purchase agreement prevented Léopold from selling bottled beer to the large drinks warehouses that supply Belgium’s cafés.

The brewery staggered on until 1981, when Artois finally pulled the plug. In barely two decades, Pils had come to utterly dominate Brussels brewing, and in doing so proved its downfall. Of the stars of 1958 only Wiel’s Pils of the Wielemans-Ceuppens brewery survived, but by the early ‘80s even its shine had dimmed substantially.