Bottle, 7.5%. Hazy golden with tiny off-white head. Aroma is malt, tart, lemon, barnyard and grapefruit. Flavour is mart, tart, lemon, barnyard, medium sweet, little caramel, little sour, grapefruit, grapes, hop, little leather, little wood and medium bitter. Lambic?

Bottle shared at home, thanks Maakun! Clear deep golden with white head. Tastes like lambic. Dry hay, fruity grapeskins, red cherries, apricot, almonds, horseblanket. Light sweet, light bitter, faint sour. Medium body, soft carbonation. Minerallike texture. Great stuff.

Bottle shared. Slight hazy darker golden with bubbly off white head. Apricot, funk, hay, light red berries, gooseberries, green leaves, soft apple, bitter grass, peach. Quite fruity and funky! Just medium sour and bitter with under medium sweetness. Medium bodied with low carbonation. Like a slightly more bitter lambic. Very good.

Flaska från Etre Gourmete. Massor av funk, syrlighet och fat som är väldigt likt en geuze. Lite snällare syra och större sötma vilket ökar drickbarheten. Citrus, syrliga gröna druvor, torrt syrligt vitt vin, funk och fat. Massor av karaktär och riktigt gott.

Bottle 750, shared with Travlr and others after ACBF2017. Pours dark golden to orange with white head. Fruity, citrus, berries, funk, acidic. Wood. Vinous. Soft carbonation. Light bodied.

Small just off-white head over low-carbonated, veiled orange-ochre beer. Horseblanket, very lambic-like, chestnut husks, wood, lactic acid, old (white) wine barrels, sherryvinegar. Old wood, old wine barrels, more barnyard/horseblanket flavours, tad of brown candi sugar without the sweetness; leaves again as of chestnut trees a.o. Warming up, sourness becomes more pronounced, making me think of sour, unripe grapes. Tart, low carbonation, light body, but all the same quite slick. Outstanding. Is there really no lambic blended in?

Cuvée De Ranke, a brilliantly crafted sour ale - or rather, to put it in old fashioned Dutch terminology, ’versnijbier’ - launched before ’international’ sour ale trends began to spread, has been around since the beginning of this century and I’ve always wondered which beer De Ranke uses to blend with lambic. Now we know: this is it, the ’bare’ basic beer that transforms into that wonderful Cuvée after the lambic has been added. One may wonder why this was never commercialized before, but I guess they considered it to be something ’unfinished’ and only now, when international craft beer tendencies are blooming in Belgium as well, deemed the time is right for it to lead its own life. Needless to say, this attracts quite a lot of attention from beer geeks, coming from an institute like De Ranke, a brewery I regard as a direct and highly influential forerunner of the present-day craft beer culture in Belgium. Comes from a 75 cl bottle with crown cap, bottled in June last year so about nine months old. Loosely structured, almost ’old beer’-like, irregular, lightly lacing but quickly breaking, pale greyish white head consisting of an array of both microscopically small and overly large bubbles, eventually settling as a dense moussy rim around the edge; initially lightly misty, beautifully warm peach blonde colour with deep orange hue, some very limited fizz here and there; completely hazy and even deeper orange, almost amberish, with sediment. The aroma is strong enough to reach my nostrils from half a yard distance and literally makes my mouth water in instants: very estery and musty, highly expressive and strangely not unlike straight lambic, with impressions of sour apricots, unripe green plum, medium dry sherry, grape peel, gooseberry juice, old wrinkled apples, moldy lemons, soaking wet furniture wood, dusty cellar, dry Chardonnay, redcurrant straight from the bush, more subtle hints of sour yoghurt and buttermilk, old paper, raspberries, sherry vinegar, orange zest. Expectedly very estery onset, a core of peachy sweetishness surrounded by much more expressive, even mildly acidic and lemony sourness yet remaining fairly mellow, lots of grape peel and unripe stonefruit wryness blending perfectly with the tartness and the restrained sweetness; smooth and very slightly vinous mouthfeel, undercarbonated as expected (and intended) but still with a mild tingle. Lactic tartness spreads over the mouth cavity with a drying effect, a dryness even reinforced by the wood tannins in the end, which are very pronounced here, adding sensations of old wooden barrels, cherry stones and grape pits to the mash; all the while, the playful fruit esters continue along over a soft, bready and very lightly caramelly malt sweetish backbone. Dryness is key here, with the tannins going down the throat alongside the grape tartness and unripe plum wryness, leaving behind an utterly appetizing effect; hops fulfil a mere structural function, in a late, earthy, ’deeply buried’ but very noticeable bitterness matching well with the tartness and the wood. The perfect apéritif beer I’d argue, too bad it is a one-off, as this certainly deserves its place in De Ranke’s gallery of beauties. Very ’woody’ and tart, very stonefruit stone-like if you get my drift, but at the same time beautifully ’moelleux’ and soft as well, this is a combination every beer afficionado with a weakness for sour ales will thoroughly enjoy. Reminiscent of the lambic family, too, and much more so than I usually encounter among modern sour ales - in fact, if tasted blind, I’d swear this would involve some form of spontaneous fermentation. I am wondering how many amateur brewers bought bottles to blend with lambic, thus making their own attempt at imitating Cuvée De Ranke...

750 ml. green bottle. BBF 08/06/2021. Appears to have been bottled during JUN16. Dark hazy amber orange, looks a bit like lambiek, head briefly fizzes away, basically no head, fizzes away very quickly. Nose is orange peel funk, positive band aid / lambiek funk, sourish barrel, old moldy wine & almost sherry-like notes. Taste is crazily lambiek-like, sherry-like oxidation, lambiek orange peel & band aid funk, rotting citrus fruit peel, very old wine,... Lambiek / wine hybrid with a dash of sherry would make Jean Van Roy jealous. Only downside is that it is flat which makes it nearly watery, I presume one of the reasons for blending it? Flatness increases the unblended lambiek, overall a pretty genius beer. Cuvée De Ranke is an astonishing beer, this one might not be as conventionally good but as far as sour beer, beer approaching lambiek is pretty brilliant in my opinion. Approached as an unblended lambiek this is more spectacular. They should just blend & re-ferment several vintages of this beer, should blow people’s mind. This is stupidly good, the unblended lambiek funk, ancient cellar wine, dash of sherry, oh yeah,....