Fermenthings

03/06/2026

🌶 MASTER OF PEPPERS GIVEAWAY 🌶

With less than 10 days to go before Master of Peppers, we're giving away a spicy festival package worth €125.

The winner will receive:
• A basket filled with products from Master of Peppers makers
• An official Master of Peppers T-shirt
• 2 tickets for any workshops during the festival

How to participate:

1 chance
→ Like this post

2 chances
→ Share this post

3 chances
→ Share the Master of Peppers poster or event page

+1 extra chance per 100 people invited to the Facebook event
(maximum 5 extra chances)

To validate your extra chances, send us screenshots by private message showing your shares and invitations.

Winner announced a few days before the festival.

Master of Peppers
13 June 2026
Be-Here, Brussels

Good luck, and may the peppers be ever in your favour.

02/06/2026

On June 6th, we're taking part in Les Cycles du Terroir, an initiative by Pro Velo that invites people to discover local producers and artisans by bicycle. A different way of exploring the city, slowing down a little and reconnecting with the people making food around us.

At Fermenthings, we'll be opening the doors of our little fermentation universe: hot sauces, kimchi, kombucha, miso, vinegars, strange experiments and the stories behind them.

It's also a reminder that food doesn't appear on shelves by magic. Behind every jar, loaf of bread, bottle or vegetable is a chain of people, skills, landscapes and decisions worth discovering.

If you like cycling, local food, fermentation or simply spending a day differently, this is a beautiful excuse to explore Brussels at a slower pace.

See you on the route.

Sautez en selle pour une balade d’une journée alliant découvertes culinaires, gastronomie durable et coup de pédales.

01/06/2026

For the late deciders, tonight we are hosting a nice introduction to fermented drinks at CourJette at 19h. The perfect moment to learn how to start your own gingerbug, taste some kombucha, or learn how to use the heat of the moment to make a mexican zero waste drink.

And if you aren't available today, on the 15th we do it all over again at CSA Theo

Tickets and info:

Slow Summer, Slow Fermentation: Roaming Brussels for Sustainable Food Adventures This summer, Fermenthings is hitting the road! With a slower season at our home base, we’re taking the time to conne…

29/05/2026

One thing that slowly happened over the years at Fermenthings is that the space also became a library.

At this point there are probably more than 200 books around fermentation, food culture and ecology sitting on the shelves of the shop. While cleaning and reorganising them this week, I realised how much certain books shaped the way I think about food, flavour and fermentation.

Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner taught me the incredible versatility of fermentation and how living cultures exist everywhere in the world. That somehow, through entirely different traditions, you can even find flavours reminding you of geuze deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Koji Alchemy by Rich Shih ()
and Jeremy Umansky () remains one of the books that expanded my imagination the most. I still remember reading it during a train ride through France, completely impatient to get home and try my first koji charcuterie experiments.

Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint by Douglas McMaster () is honestly a masterclass in storytelling. It’s probably one of the books closest to what I would love to one day write around circular fermentation and food systems.

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz () is simply the OG. The GOAT. The first fermentation book I bought around 10 years ago when all this started. I still tell stories from that book during workshops almost every month.

Cosy Koji by Marika Groen ()might be the most poetic and personal book in the collection. I remember missing the preorder and thinking I’d never get a copy, until Marika handed me one of the last copies herself during Rotfest.

And recently, Sobrelier by Benoit d’Onofrio () instantly joined my personal classics. Not only because of the insane amount of work behind it, but because of how clearly and intelligently it explains incredibly dense topics. Some things took me years and dozens of books to slowly understand, and suddenly he explains them in 3 pages with total clarity.

Books like these are a huge part of why Fermenthings became what it is today. Don’t hesitate to browse the shelves a little.

28/05/2026

Only 5 Urban Fermentory Brunches left before we close for the summer break.

These brunches slowly became one of my favourite moments at Fermenthings, because they really show what the space is about without needing too much explanation. A table full of things fermenting, pickling, smoking, baking or aging in different corners of the building, brought together every Sunday.

One week there’s miso-glazed vegetables, fermented fries and hot sauces, another week soups, fresh sourdough, weird vinegars, nut cheeses, kombucha or small experiments that somehow turned into full dishes.

A lot of what ends up on the table also comes from the different people around the Urban Fermentory ecosystem: Coopains, NuuFood Shadow Reaper, Atelier KuuKuu, and others passing through the space.

No fixed menu, no copy-paste brunch formula, just whatever feels right that week.

So if you’ve been curious about what we actually do at Fermenthings, these last brunches before summer are probably the best way to discover it.

Reservations here:

What started as a monthly Exploration Brunch has grown into something more stable, more collective, and more rooted in everyday practice. From now on, brunch becomes a weekly Urban Fermentory table…

27/05/2026

What used to be a small corner of non-alcoholic drinks on our shelves is slowly becoming one of the most exciting parts of the selection. Projects like SKBI Brewery, SCHWUNG, FERAL, UMA and others are proving that alcohol-free no longer means compromise. These are complex, layered drinks built with the same care, fermentation knowledge and attention usually reserved for wine, beer or cocktails.

At the same time, our relationship with alcohol has an incredibly long and deeply cultural history. Fermentation shaped civilisation, rituals, agriculture and social life long before modern industries existed.

This article captures that tension and evolution remarkably well, and is definitely worth the read:

https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2025/12/18/how-humankinds-10m-year-love-affair-with-booze-might-end?utm_campaign=a.io-btl_fy2526_all_conversion-TESTINGasc-sub_prospecting_global-global_auction_facebook-instagram&utm_medium=paid&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=discovery.content.non-subscriber.content_animatedlinkad_np-automatedHowhumankind’s10m-yearloveaffairwithboozemightend-n-nov_na-na_article_na_na_na_na&utm_term=sa.all-animated&utm_id=120241217181030437&fbclid=IwY2xjawPVlTRleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqy8MU4ThFWJyaWQRMUZMUlBweWd2bVY2UVI1NFVzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeuG7d7gSQWQyLgfENyLI-BcJTeZ8WdDGUvUhyMmIm8eQDz45GWd9WraERb34_aem_XNZNt0iLeTmbI9_es_1WdA&campaign_id=120231487462020437&ad_id=120241217181030437

https://archive.ph/itmY3

Civilisation was built on alcohol. Technology may sober us up

20/05/2026

Even if summer hasn’t started yet, we’ve already put all our workshops and events from August onwards online.

After a season filled with hot sauces, geuze pairings, brunches, spontaneous ferments and too many jars to count, we’ll take our yearly summer break to rethink, rebuild and slowly prepare the next chapter of Fermenthings.

But for those who like planning ahead: the new season is already taking shape.

Kimchi, kombucha, vinegar making, koji, hot sauce workshops, tastings and new one-shot events are now available on the website, with a few new directions slowly appearing as well.

As always, some dates tend to disappear quite fast once summer ends.

Everything can be found here:

Unveiling the Fiery World of Fermented Hot Sauces! Indulge in an extraordinary evening dedicated to the fiery delights of fermented products from North American culture, rarely explored in Belgium:…

19/05/2026

At Fermenthings, we’ve always tried to speak about food as something larger than consumption alone.

Food as ecology.
Food as culture.
Food as memory, agriculture, fermentation, migration and transmission.

That is also why we’re very happy to be part of the conversations surrounding Terra Madre Europe 2026, a project that continues to defend a vision of food rooted in biodiversity, local knowledge, craftsmanship and the people behind it.

In a time where food is increasingly standardised and disconnected from landscapes and communities, gatherings like this feel more important than ever.

Check Impacte - Slow Food community Belgium for all the info!

And get your tickets:
https://www.slowfood.com/fr/events/terra-madre-europe-2026/