Frans Filius started his Internet marketing company Crazy Lions about ten years ago through which he began working with Superspace. Now he is mainly, besides his business, in the world of brewing special beer. Five years ago he started Grutte Pier brewery in Leeuwarden.

For love of craft and taste

“I am someone who loves craft, making things myself, good taste and cooking. I discovered special beer and started trying more and more variations. I started combining these things and thus started brewing (special) beer eight years ago. Fortunately, I turned out to be good at it,” Frans laughs. “I went exploring, started discovering more and more and only wanted to get better. I let more and more people taste and experience my creations.

This turned out to be a success. That success was a sign to me that I really wanted to go in a commercial direction with it.” Frans realized fairly quickly that to do so he needed someone to take up sales. His good friend Renze Bil turned out to be the right candidate to take on this project together. “We started with a tour of the city. Within two hours we had sold everything. We had to start brewing more and more and more. Right now we are producing 150,000 a year.”

History comes back to life

The beer Frans brewed eventually had yet to have a name. “It became more and more commercial and with that comes a catchy name. I wanted something typically Frisian, but not something like pompebled or something,” Frans laughs. “It did have to be accessible to the rest of the world. We finally chose Grutte Pier because he was an ordinary farmer's son who took care of his family. Actually, he wanted nothing to do with the battle that was going on in 1517, but out of personal revenge he became a freedom fighter. These stories fit well with our beer.

Thanks to us, this history comes alive again and all flavors can be combined with the stories of this Frisian warlord, freedom fighter, privateer, sea hero and folk hero. We have a mission with Grutte Pier brewery and that is to make everyone as enthusiastic about (special) beer as we are. We really want to convey this, also with the recipes I make for it. Grutte Pier beer is well liked in the Frisian market. Our first beer, the Grutte Pier Tripel, immediately won some great prizes. We have now won the best Tripel in the Netherlands three times in a row in the World Beer Awards (WBA).

Giving a stage

“We want to be part of society. We don't just want to look at how we can sell the beer, but how we can make society better. Right now, we do that by helping festivals, for example. The Night Viewers Film Festival is a festival where you watch movies under the Frisian starry sky, they did not yet have a party for the catering. Now we arrange the beer, but also all other soft drinks. This allows such an event to be organized and we support that wholeheartedly,” Frans says. “In addition, we also set up the Frisian Hero Tour. A kind of pub crawl where you can taste a different beer in each pub. About this tour you can do the whole year, and have you had everything? Then you receive a reward.” In addition to events, Grutte Pier brewery also makes itself available to artists. Every year they come up with an empty label that an artist can indulge in. “In this way we give a stage for which the artist also receives money. In these different ways, we want to do as many things as possible for society, but this is still developing. It would also be nice for others to knock on our door with such initiatives, of course we can't think of everything ourselves!”