When Johannes Swinkels changed the name of his family-run brewery to Bavaria in 1928 he could have had little inkling of the legal battles he was bequeathing his 21st century successors.
Since then the beer that shares a name with the region of southern Germany has been produced at the same site outside the village of Lieshout in the flat farmlands of the southern Netherlands. The brewery has prospered, but for the past decade the regular arrival of couriers delivering legal documents has punctured the rustic calm.
