Alarmed by a trend of making formerly bitter beers sweeter to please a bigger audience, Guido Devos and Nino Bacelle decided to start their own brewery. Brewery De Ranke was born and immediately took its own course, without compromise. Following their own taste, they start producing bitter and well-balanced beers. De Ranke makes the conscious choice of using only whole hops in the brewing process, so no hop extracts or pellets. These whole hops are the reason behind the distinctive hoppy, often bitter and well-balanced flavours of the De Ranke-beers.“Because we use whole hops brewing is more labor-intensive and it takes longer”, the brewers explain. “But when you take taste, quality and brewing tradition into account, using whole hops is the only logical choice we can make.” The De Ranke-team gets international praise for re-introducing hop flowers to Belgian brewing and we are known for our authentic beers with pronounced flavours. The brewery is still viewed by many in the international brewing world as one of the pioneers for hoppy, bitter beers. But the brewery has a strong reputation for making sour beers as well. We use our own beer and let it age in wood barrels, later we make a blend with Lambic.