In 1996, Dirk Naudts, a highly regarded brewing engineer and professor, with his wife Saskia Waerniers, created De Proef Brouwerij (the Proof Brewery) in the village of Lochristi, Belgium. The brewery blends modern equipment and technologies with traditional brewing methods, operating predominantly as a rental brewery to develop and produce beers for third parties who do not have their own facilities, or who want to produce experimental small batch beers. Their focus lies exclusively on recipe/product development (never copying existing beers) and beer production