BBM! Company Timeline

1971 • Stu Stuart starts collecting beer cans at age 8 in Rochester, Michigan.

1972 • Becomes the youngest member of the Beer Can Collectors of America, membership #1425.

1976 • Learns to drink beer at Lost Lake Boy Scout Summer Camp.  Of course they don’t offer that merit badge, anymore.

1979 • Becomes Eagle Scout.

1986 • Moves to Seattle during the rise of the craft beer movement.  Thomas Kemper, Red Hook and Grants breweries are turning heads.

1987 • Gets introduced to his first Belgian beer... Chimay Red Label by girlfriend, is hooked on Belgian beers and continues to seek out and try new ones.

2004 • Goes to Belgium for the first time on a beer tour with Mike Saxton and Marty LaFave (who would later become a guide for BBM!).

2005 • Returns to Belgium to enjoy the beer and beer culture.

2006 • Belgium calls again.

2007 • Belgian Beer Me! Beer Appreciation Class begins at the ASUW Experimental College at the University of Washington in Seattle (The same place Rick Steves started his travel class in the 1970s).  The BBM! class is is a big hit and popular.  Students suggest that since Stu knows so much about Belgian beer and Belgium that he should consider leading beer tours.

2008 • Belgian Beer Me! Beer Tours of Belgium begins specializing in beer tours and website is launched. Three tours are offered, including one called ‘Duvels, Kwaks and Draaks.”

2008 • Stu appears for the first time as a guest on The Brewing Network. Since then has been on several times. 

2008 • The first “Lonely Monks Trappist Tour of Belgium” goes in October.  It consists of Stu and three people driving around Belgium in a Volvo station wagon.  Good times!

2009 • Belgian Beer Me! Beer Tours of Belgium is featured in the Good Beer Guide Belgium, the premier beer guide book for Belgium, by Tim Webb.  

2010 • Stu visits Bamberg, Germany, for the first time and falls in love with the beer city, the beer and the region.  This region has the highest concentration of breweries in the world and an equally amazing beer culture and history to go with it.

2011 • BBM! gains in popularity and more tours are offered.

2011 • BBM! expands to create Bamberg Beer Me! offering two tours each year-- The Spring Beer Garden Tour of Bamberg: Rauchbier and Beyond and the Fall Bock Beer Tour of Bamberg.

2012 • Stu meets Rick Steves at a comedy show in Edmonds, Washington.  He asks Stu, “Why Bamberg?”  Stu says, “Because it’s one of the last bastions of Old World Beer culture.”

2013 • Stu appears as a guest on Travel with Rick Steves radio show and podcast.  Rick interviews Stu about Belgian beer and beer travel in Belgium and Bamberg.  

2013 • BBM! welcomes and educates two new guides, Marty LaFave and Larry Hicks, to assist in leading tours

2014 • Belgian Beer Me! is featured in the Good Beer Guide Belgium, once again, making it the only U.S. based beer tour company to be listed in two editions.  This edition authored by Tim Webb & Joe Stange. 

2014 • The number of tours offered each year continues to increase to take in the many beer opportunities Belgium has to offer, including numerous breweries, beer festivals and rustic beer cafes.

2014 • BBM! and Stu are recognized by and invited by the New York City office of Visit Flanders to participate in a promotional tour of Belgium and travel show for tour producers, where more contacts and relationship with breweries and vendors are made.

2014 • Michigan Beer Guide and Publishers Rex and Mary Halfpenny partner with BBM! on the Lonely Monks Trappist Tour.  Rex shares his passion for and encyclopedia-like knowledge of beer with the group and writes an article for the Michigan Beer Guide chronicling the tour. 

2015 • Celebrator Beer News and Editor & Publisher Tom Dalldorf partner with BBM! for a special edition of the Legendary Zythos Beer Festival Tour.  The tour sells out.  Tom writes a great article about the tour.

2015, 2017, 2019 & 2021 • Beer writer Chuck Cook, “The Belgian Beer Specialist", participates in the Wild and Spontaneous Tour and provides a font of beer information and stories for travelers.  He writes a great article about the tour which appears in Celebrator Beer News and his website Drinkbelgianbeer.com.

2015 • BBM! offers 12 tours to Belgium and three tours to Bamberg, including the new Belgian Family Brewers Tour, Montana Alumni Beer Tour and Oktoberfest & Bamberg: Best of Bavaria Tour.

2015 • BBM! launches a responsive, modern, intuitive, user-friendly website featuring beautiful images of Belgium and Bamberg, beer, food, attractions and beer tours. Travelers can view tours and decide on one by name, theme or calendar dates.  Sign up is made easy, online and paperless.  Travelers may pay online with with a credit card and get air miles. The new website promotes tours of Belgium and Bamberg, Germany, in one convenient place. It’s never been easier to review all the tours offered by BBM!, decide on one or two, then sign up!

2016 • BBM! announces three new tours: Backroads of Belgium Beer Tour, Mini Trappist Tour and the Summer Beer Tour of Belgium. And, an August departure of the popular Lonely Monks Trappist Tour. There are now 18 tour departures from which to choose.

2017 • BBM! announces a partnership with Ale Street News and Editor & Publisher Tony Forder for a Beer Tour of Brazil. BBM! also teams up with Travelex Travel Insurance to better serve the needs of travelers. 

2018 • BBM! features 20 tour departures. 

2018 • Stu Stuart becomes an Honorary Knight of the Knighthood of the Brewers Mash Staff in an enthronement ceremony that took place Sept. 8, in the Brewers Guild House on the Grand Place of Brussels. This exceedingly rare honor was bestowed upon him for rendering loyal service to the brewers of Belgium. It is reserved for those who make an important contribution to the Belgian beer industry, either commercially, politically or socially, and who can therefore present themselves as an ambassador for Belgian beer. Typically Honorary Knights are importers, grocery store chain owners, politicians and an occasional beer writer. This is the first time a member of the beer tourism community has been recognized with an invitation to become an Honorary Knight. Stu is the third person from Michigan to receive this honor. For more images of the ceremony visit this link. Also, visit Belgian Beer Weekend Beer Festival for images of this annual festival which surrounds the knighting ceremony. It’s quite festive and colorful. We visit this festival on the Belgian Family Brewers Tour.

2021 Mother Nature had another plan and came up with a pandemic known as COVID-19. The Bruges Beer Festival Tour of Belgium was held in February. It was a great time. It would prove to be the only tour this year as the other tours fell like dominoes and were cancelled or postponed as we were not allowed to travel to Europe.

2021 • With most of the European Union (EU) closed to travel until June, BBM! pivots and creates four new tours we’re calling our Signature Series Tours: Southern Arizona Beer Tour; Northern Arizona Beer Tour; True North Beer Tour of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Northern Wisconsin and Duluth; and a Beer Tour of Croatia…Yes, Croatia!

2021 • In September, BBM! Tours resumed tours to Belgium and Germany, after an 18-month absence during the pandemic.

2021 • BBM! partners with Bruz Beers brewery in Denver to create a special Bruz Beers Trappist Tour for its loyal customers and others. BBM! stands ready to create a special tour for your brewery, too.

2022 • BBM! partners with Bruz Beers brewery in Denver to create a special Bruz Beers Belgian Family Brewers Tour.

2022 • BBM! Founder Stu Stuart is invited to join the distinguished panel for the Lambic Round Table held April 29, 2022, at Brewery Boon as a lead up to the Toer de Geuze.

The Toer de Geuze began in 1997 as a cultural celebration of the centuries old tradition of spontaneously fermented Lambic beers. 

As part of the Toer de Geuze’s rich and diverse program of events in 2022, HORAL created a new livestream event called The Lambic Round Table. Lambic personalities sat down to discuss key issues relating to Lambic’s history, culture, and production. On the Lambic Round Table: 

• Gert Christiaens, President of HORAL

• Frank Boon, Founder of Boon, Brewer and co-founder of HORAL

• Kloris Devillé, Brewer at Den Herberg, HORAL’s newest member

• Stu Stuart, Founder of Belgian Beer Me! Tours

• Breandán Kearney, Writer, Editor and Podcaster at Belgian Smaak. Moderator of this event

2022 • Stu Stuart becomes an Honorary Knight in the Brotherhood of the Pink Elephants of Melle, Belgium, aka, the Confrerie De Roze Olifant. The Brotherhood is a circle of friends who discover, enjoy and promote gastronomic and folkloric heritage of Belgium and neighboring countries. It is also a philanthropic organization contributing a portion of its proceed to help the community such as the child psychiatry department of the “Caritas” clinic in Melle.

2023 • The Beers of Destiny Tour of Belgium & Netherland is created. A one-off special edition tour which covers the four corners of Belgium and Amsterdam was Sept. 4-12, 2023. It gave the traveler a diverse range of beers ranging from Golden Ales, to Flemish Brown Ales, to Special Belge, to Abbey Beers, to innovative Dutch Craft Beer. The tour is based on a one originally created in 2018 called the Duvel Inspiring Moments Tour to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Duvel Moortgat.

2023 • Stu Stuart becomes an Honorary Knight in the Brotherhood of Double Enghien, aka, the Confrerie de la Double Enghien, in a ceremony on Oct. 14, 2023, at the Château d’Enghien, located in the city of Enghien in the province of Wallonia in French-speaking Belgium. The motto of the Confrerie, established in 1984 by Didier Van Der Haegen, is “In Bono Promptus” (do what is good and enjoy what is good). Its purpose is to promote the beautiful, historical city of Enghien, its rich culture and especially the Enghien Blonde Ale, once brewed here by Brasserie Tennstedt-Decroes and now proudly brewed since 1975 by Brasserie Silly in the nearby village of Silly, Belgium. The BBM! Best Damn Farmhouse Ale Tour of Belgium has been visiting Brasserie for more than 10 years. It is run by cousins, Lionel and Betrand Van Der Haegen, sixth generation Belgian Family Brewers.

2023 • Stu Stuart is featured in the Belgian Smaak series The Humans of Belgian Beer by photojournalist Ashley Joanna. The interview took place at Trappist Orval in September of 2023. It’s a three minute read. Here’s an excerpt, “I wanted to see it all for myself, just once. I thought that would be it. But I fell in love with not only the country, but also the people and culture. I kept coming back.”—Stu Stuart.

2023 • Jeff Bradford from Drink Destinations was our special guest on the Christmas Beer Festival & Markets Tour. The video above was shot and co-produced with Jeff by London-based videographer Yoel Kamara. They did a nice job of capturing the essence and spirit of me while I led the tour. We had a lot of fun on this tour and we appreciated Jeff sharing his knowledge, passion and esprit de corps. The camera doesn’t miss anything!

2024 • BBM! Tours LLC becomes an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau by demonstrating: Trust, honesty, truth, transparency, honoring promises, being responsive and embodying integrity.