Brussels has beer covered, and chocolate, obviously. Whisky? That page has just been written. Tipsy Tribe Brewery & Distillery, based in the Koekelberg district in the shadow of the giant Art Deco Basilica of the Sacred Heart, has released the first whisky ever made in the Belgian capital.

The launch was deliberately modest: just 64 bottles in the debut batch, all of which sold out in pre-sale within 48 hours. The first barrel was filled on 9 March 2023 and matured for over three years before the official launch on 26 September. A new still installed in 2025 has since upped the distillery's capacity tenfold, and more batches are already resting in various casks, so this is a beginning rather than a one-off.

The debut release is an American-style whisky built on Belgian malts, corn and rye, aged in virgin American oak and bottled at 45% ABV. Tasting notes lean towards smooth and creamy, with oak, char, smoke, vanilla and caramel, plus a grainy finish - closer in spirit to bourbon than to Scotch, which tracks with the founders' backgrounds.

That backstory is part of the charm. Aylin Fastenau is Turkish, her husband Daniel is American, and both walked away from corporate and EU-bubble careers to launch Tipsy Tribe in 2022, a pandemic-fuelled change of direction. The couple see the whisky as a liquid portrait of Brussels itself, where more than three-quarters of residents have foreign roots or a foreign background. The distillery makes everything under one roof - craft beer, gin, vodka, raki and liqueurs - with the whisky ground, distilled and bottled entirely in-house. Production is solar-powered too, and the company holds Brussels' three-star Ecodynamic Enterprise label.

There's a satisfying historical loop here as well. Koekelberg was home to Jean-Baptiste Cellier-Blumenthal, whose 19th-century experiments produced the design behind the modern column still. Belgium's spirits heritage tends to be overshadowed by its beer fame, but the country has a long genever tradition that dedicated bars still celebrate. Koekelberg's mayor, Olivia P'tito, has welcomed the distillery as a natural fit for a district already known for artisanal craftsmanship and chocolate.

The launch had a community angle too: the first bottle was auctioned, raising over €700 for school materials at the local École Armand Swartenbroeks.

For travellers, this is a fresh reason to look beyond the Grand Place and the usual beer crawl. Tipsy Tribe sits in a quiet corner of Brussels that most visitors skip, and a tasting here comes with a story you won't get anywhere else - the city's first homegrown whisky, made by a Turkish-American couple in a district that quietly changed distilling history two centuries ago. Just keep an eye on batch releases, because the first one vanished in two days.

First reported by Travel Tomorrow.