De Ranke Saison de Dottignies....$12.99 / 750ml
Cannot find anything on their site about this beer yet.So far...
95 Percentile on RateBeer
Here is some philosophy from their site:
The use of hop flowers
In the past, only hop flowers where used to give taste to beer. In the same manner as wine get’s its taste from the kind op grapes that are used to make it, beer get’s its taste from the kind of hops that are used to make it. But there are some disadvantages to the use of hop flowers:
1. A bad quality of this expensive ingredient quickly leads to bad tastes in the beer. You always have to make sure you are using the best quality.
2. The prices can swing up and down every year.
3. The hops have to be cooled to keep them good for the whole year, which makes it even more expensive.
4. As it is as seasonal product, one can only buy once a year, so you always buy short or too much. If you haven’t got enough, you can’t keep brewing, if you’ve got too much, you’ll have to destroy what’s left.
5. Working with hop flowers takes a lot of cleaning as the hop flowers stick to everything they can after the cooking. Because of this fully automatic production is impossible.
In the past, only hop flowers where used to give taste to beer. In the same manner as wine get’s its taste from the kind op grapes that are used to make it, beer get’s its taste from the kind of hops that are used to make it. But there are some disadvantages to the use of hop flowers:
1. A bad quality of this expensive ingredient quickly leads to bad tastes in the beer. You always have to make sure you are using the best quality.
2. The prices can swing up and down every year.
3. The hops have to be cooled to keep them good for the whole year, which makes it even more expensive.
4. As it is as seasonal product, one can only buy once a year, so you always buy short or too much. If you haven’t got enough, you can’t keep brewing, if you’ve got too much, you’ll have to destroy what’s left.
5. Working with hop flowers takes a lot of cleaning as the hop flowers stick to everything they can after the cooking. Because of this fully automatic production is impossible.
For all these reasons, only very few breweries still use hop flowers in the production of their beers. Hop extracts are easier, cheaper, can be kept longer and don’t bring as much as cleaning with them as hop flowers. But as we aim for the highest quality possible, we use high quality hop flowers from the Poperinge-region for all of our beers. An extra is that hop flowers give a texture and complexity to the beer, that can’t be matched by beers made with extracts. The two hop varieties we use most are Hallertau Mittelfruh and Brewers Gold although Challenger and Saaz are used as well.
