Dr. Gab's
09/2026: For 25 years, three friends have been brewing top-quality beer in a unique and sustainable way – with crisp lagers, roasty stouts and various pale ales, all the way to seasonal beers and limited editions (“One Shots”). The Dr. Gab’s brand is known not only for colourful labels and creative marketing, but also for sustainable glass packaging by Vetropack.
Gabriel Hasler was given a craft beer set in 2000, when he was just 16. Back then, he had no idea it would be the start of an amazing journey. He soon got the beer bug, and when his friends, Reto and David, came on board it was clear that this could become something big. From the early days in their parents’ kitchens and basements, it soon grew into a real company. Today, Dr. Gab’s – the name playfully suggests ‘creative beer brewer as mad scientist’ – is a medium-sized business with 35 employees, brewing 2 to 2.5 million litres of beer per year. In 2026 the brewery – now firmly established in the retail and catering sectors in French-speaking Switzerland – celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The brewery has maintained close links to the region from the beginning. Starting out in Epalinges, a suburb of Lausanne on the north bank of Lake Geneva, it moved to Savigny in 2012 and Puidoux in 2018. Dr. Gab’s not only runs a modern, sustainable production facility – including its own CO2 recovery system – but also offers tastings and a boutique for direct sales. Variety and creativity when brewing were important to Dr. Gab’s from the start. Initially, the trio mainly produced Belgian-style beers, but their range has since expanded to include British-American styles, such as pale ale and stout. Dr. Gab’s summer beer for 2026, ‘Peach Sour’, combines a slightly sour (not bitter) note with a fruity peach aroma. ‘A beer that’s practically peach perfect’ – humour and a light-hearted tone are simply part of the brand.
Sustainable packaging with its own returnable system
Dr. Gab’s beer is filled and packaged in part in various glass containers supplied by Vetropack. In 2017, Dr. Gab’s worked with Vetropack to develop its own reusable bottle with striking embossing. The design and development process unfolded in close dialogue between the teams from both companies. Today, the bottle developed with Vetropack is much more than just packaging. Its distinctive shape makes Dr. Gab’s recognisable at first glance and has become a permanent element of the brand identity.
«We appreciate Vetropack as a reliable partner with whom we have a good working relationship, and who also provides advice and flexibility – for example when changes to our logo had to be accommodated as part of the rebranding.»
To underline its commitment to more sustainability, Dr. Gab’s co-founded the ‘Swiss REuse’ association, which is dedicated to creating more reusable solutions in Switzerland, and of which Vetropack is also a founding member. As Switzerland does not have an organised returnable system at national level, Dr. Gab’s created around 40 collection points in its home canton of Vaud. Bottles used in catering, too, are collected from customer sites, then washed and refilled – this has been the case since the early days in the parental basement!
A photovoltaic system also helps protect resources, as do electric vehicles for field service and the reuse of brewer’s spent grain, which is converted to biogas or used as animal fodder by a local farmer. Not to mention their own CO2 recovery system. Because beer-brewing not only produces carbon dioxide, like every production process – it also requires some. ‘Although we’re no longer a really small brewery, our capacity of 25,000 hectolitres means we’re still about four times too small for standard systems. But then we found WasteOlas in Geneva, who helped us make our system, which we’re continuing to develop, a reality,’ reports Reto Engler. So we can capture the CO2 that is released by the yeast during fermentation and reuse it in the production process.
A quarter of a century of creative, sustainable brewing
In 2026, ‘Brasserie Dr. Gab’s’ celebrates its 25th anniversary. Its ongoing success is also evident in the fact that, halfway through the year, the Western Swiss brewery became the majority shareholder in Turbinenbräu. The craft beer pioneer from Zurich, which is several years older and, like Dr. Gab’s, deeply rooted in the local hospitality scene, will continue as a standalone brand and give Dr. Gab’s a stronger foothold in the German-Swiss market, where it has also been active for the past ten years.
Of course, if you’re celebrating 25 years you have to have a special beer. It’s stored in the whisky barrels that held the ‘Spirit of Gab’s’ whisky for the 20th anniversary.
This special treatment not only gives Tempête (‘storm’), a strong beer from the regular line-up, a distinctive character, but also increases its alcohol content to a respectable 8.5 percent.
But trends are going in a completely different direction. ‘Of the last four beers that we’ve added to our regular product range, three are non-alcoholic and one has reduced alcohol – we call this product line “Placebo”,’ says Reto Engler with a smile. ‘This shows where there’s still potential in a beer market that’s stagnating overall. Apart from that, it’s very important to us – also thanks to the partnership with Vetropack – to continue improving sustainability in all areas and to expand our plants in a way that facilitates that.’
