Brouwerij De Ranke Now Available at Jester King

We’re really excited here at Jester King that we can now sell beer from Brouwerij De Ranke at our tasting room! De Ranke, along with breweries like De La Senne, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Brasserie Fantôme, and Brasserie Cantillon, inspired us to make beer in the first place. De Ranke embraces principles of subtlety, balance, restraint, and simplicity. They create interesting and enjoyable aromas and flavors from fermentation and allow their beer to fully attenuate to dryness. Accroding to De Ranke, “…it was concerning us that many formerly good ales had sweetened very much under the pretence that the consumers preferences were sweet tastes and that they had come unfamiliar with bitter ales.” It was lessons like this, coupled with a love for De Ranke’s beer, that greatly shaped our brewing identity. The fact that we can now serve our own beer side by side with De Ranke in our tasting room is a wonderful thrill for us.

It’s exciting for us to see some of the dominoes starting to fall in terms of artisan beer making its way into Texas. Unfortunately, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code makes it very difficult for small breweries outside our state to sell their beer in Texas. We’ve previously written extensively on this topic, which you can read here. The message the TABC sends is that if you’re a small, out of state brewer, you really shouldn’t bother trying to bring your beer into Texas. Fortunately, due to demand from beer drinkers, as well as the hard work from people at Shelton Brothers Importers, Flood Independent Distribution, and (if we may say so ourselves) Jester King Brewery, we’ve been able to see more small, artisan breweries come to Texas. Having De Ranke for sale at Jester King, especially right on the heels of Jolly Pumpkin, is not something we even considered a year or two ago.

We’re hopeful the TABC code will change to make it easier for small, artisan brewiers to continue to make it into our state. We also hope out of state breweries will be allowed into Texas for festivals without having to pay large fees, fill out extensive paperwork, and submit every beer for laboratory testing. We’re routinely saddened by the fact that many exceptional beer festivals, like the upcoming Crooked Stave What the Funk!? in Denver and Shelton Brothers Festival in Los Angeles for instance, could not happen in Texas because of the TABC code. The lost revenue and tax dollars for our local economy because of the TABC code is just silly.

When our tasting room opens on Friday, September 26th at 4pm, we’ll have De Ranke XX Bitter on draught and at our bottles to go station. Kriek De Ranke will be available by the bottle to drink at our brewery or to take home.