What a tea beverage consultant does

Interview with Loick Bekaert on Tea, Fermentation and the Future of NOLO Beverages

Loïck Bekaert’s journey started in the world of Belgian craft beer, barrel ageing, fruit macerations and fermentation. After founding Lovulum, a project built around experimental alcoholic and non-alcoholic blends, fruit wines and food-pairing drinks, he slowly shifted toward a more conscious approach to drinking.

Today, after deep research into tea, kombucha, botanicals and time spent learning in Asia, Loick is developing a new chapter: helping hospitality professionals create meaningful non-alcoholic experiences through tea and plants.

Loick, founder of Lovulum

1. How did your journey into fermentation and drink creation begin?

My first real introduction came through craft beer. I worked at a Belgian craft brewery that was doing barrel ageing, fruit maceration, herb maceration and mixed fermentation. It was a very small team, so I had to do a bit of everything: sales, marketing, production, events.

The more I worked there, the more interested I became in flavour. I travelled to bars and festivals across Europe, met brewers from everywhere, and in about two years, I probably tasted 2,000 different beers. That trained my palate: sweet, bitter, sour, barrel notes, fruits, herbs, oxidation, fermentation.

At some point, I started blending small amounts from different barrels at the brewery.

My first experiment was a blend of three lambics with Schaarbeekse Kriek and honey. That was really the beginning.

2. How did Lovulum come out of those experiments?

Lovulum grew naturally from experimenting. The name comes from the idea of a growing seed.

Everything we use from nature starts from that seed: hops, barley, fruits, berries, and now tea and plants.

At first, Lovulum was focused on alcoholic creations: fruit wines, beer blends, cider blends, barrel-aged drinks. We sold mostly to high-end restaurants for food pairings & natural wine bars. The drinks were very niche — for example, a rhubarb wine aged in whisky barrels and macerated with local plums. That kind of drink makes sense next to a dish in a tasting menu.

But over time, my relationship with alcohol changed. After working in that industry for years, I became more conscious of how alcohol was present around me. I gradually started drinking less, and I noticed how much better I felt physically and mentally.

Now the new Lovulum is about non-alcoholic experiences, with the slogan: celebrating life consciously.

3. How did tea enter the picture?

It happened step by step. From beer, I went into natural wine, then kombucha. With kombucha, I became interested in the base: tea.

A big inspiration was Yassine from Figa, Kombucha. His kombuchas are based on the tea itself — hojicha, sencha, lapsang souchong, jasmine — without too many extra infusions. When I tasted them, I thought: this jasmine kombucha is really good, this lapsang kombucha is really good. So I started buying those teas and tasting them on their own.

My aunt also lives in Hong Kong and brought me teas from China — lapsang souchong, jasmine and others. Then I travelled to China and Hong Kong and visited as many tea houses as I could. Later, I did an internship at Chàshi Tea House in Brussels, where I learned a lot, especially about Chinese teas.

Kombucha Workshop done by Loick at Chàshi on 29 May 2025

4. What did your travels in Asia bring to your understanding of tea?

They made everything more real. I travelled to Indonesia and Japan, and Japan really opened a new door for me. I had already started discovering Japanese tea in Brussels, especially through the tea & coffee shop Eden, where I first bought hojicha. Hojicha is probably still my everyday tea.

In Japan, I walked the Nakasendo Trail for one month with a friend — about 300 kilometres with our backpacks. We also visited Uji, Obubu Tea Farms, and as many tea houses as possible in Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo and Kobe.

What I find interesting is the difference between Chinese and Japanese tea. Japanese tea often has a clearer frame: sencha, gyokuro, hojicha — you kind of know the direction. Chinese tea feels wider in terms of experimentation. You can really lose yourself in it.

5. What is your new project about today?

It has three pillars: catering, consulting and workshops.

With catering, I create non-alcoholic drink experiences for events. I don’t want to replace the whole drinks offer of an event; I see myself more as an added experience — something extra and meaningful.

With consulting, I help companies or hospitality professionals develop new flavours using tea, kombucha, botanicals or cold drinks.

And with workshops, I share knowledge around kombucha, fermentation, infusions and tea. I’ve already given workshops at Chàshi and in other spaces. This year is really the first year where I am presenting this new direction to the market.

Loick is also organizing the Booch Fest, the first kombucha festival in Belgium

6. What production methods do you enjoy working with most?

On a small scale, I like to keep things as pure as possible. Cold brew is one of my favourite ways to extract tea. For example, putting gyokuro in the fridge overnight gives one of the cleanest tastes I have found in tea.

But for kombucha, cold brew is less ideal because you don’t extract everything the SCOBY needs. For kombucha, I prefer a proper hot extraction adapted to the tea.

When I prepare tea for drinking, I try to follow the producer’s advice: the right temperature, ratio, steeping time, and vessel. For Japanese and Chinese teas, I often use more leaves and shorter infusions. I also use different pots depending on the tea.

7. What do you think tea can bring to the NOLO beverage sector?

Tea has huge potential because it offers so many flavour directions. You can create something very light and refreshing with sencha, yuzu or elderflower. But you can also go bold and smoky with lapsang souchong, which works really well in food pairing.

Tea can be simple, refreshing and low in sugar, but it can also be complex and gastronomic. With one tea, depending on whether you cold brew it, hot brew it, serve it cold, ferment it or blend it with botanicals, you can create many different drinks. I even think you could create a whole food pairing using only one tea.

8. How do you see the relationship between Camellia sinensis and botanicals?

For me, tea and botanicals work very well together, but they are different worlds. Tea from Camellia sinensis has its own depth, structure and complexity. Botanicals and local plants bring another layer.

I’ve worked a lot with ingredients from all over the world — yuzu, vanilla, things I brought back from travels. But now I’m learning more about local herbs through my work at (on)kruid, where they grow herbs in Belgium with farmers to help restore nature.

I want to localise more: use local plants, herbs and ingredients, especially in mocktails, cold brews and infusions. For kombucha, I’ll probably always keep using real tea as the base because it works best with the SCOBY. But for other drinks, local botanicals are very exciting.

9. What is your view on sparkling tea as a category?

I like the idea. At (on)kruid, I’ve introduced the idea of sparkling botanical tea as part of product development. It sounds good, and it helps people understand the drink.

Whether sparkling tea needs its own category, I’m not sure. It could be useful, especially in the NOLO sector. You can have sparkling tea, still tea, fermented tea, kombucha, tea-based beverages, macerations — there are many possibilities.

Personally, I’ve always been a hybrid guy. In the past, I blended beer with cider, wine with beer, fruit with barrels. I tend to move across categories rather than stay inside them. But I do think that giving tea-based NOLO drinks more visibility as a category could help the sector grow.

10. What is your favourite tea?

It depends on the moment, the season and the time of day. My everyday tea is probably hojicha. I can drink it almost every day.

But if I had to choose an overall favourite, I would say Wuyi rock oolongs. You can give me one anytime, and I’ll be happy. I love that they are all different, but still clearly connected to that rock oolong family. They have depth, minerality and complexity.

The only thing is that I need time for them. With gyokuro, I can drink two or three small cups in 15 minutes and move on. But with Wuyi rock tea, I want to sit down, take my time and do seven or eight infusions. That’s part of the beauty.

www.lovulum.be