Region & History

Roeselare is a mid-sized town in West Flanders, and anyone looking for Flanders Red Ale there will find it behind the brick façade of Rodenbach. The Rodenbach family founded the brewery in 1821. To this day, it stands for a beer that sounds more like wine than pilsner: reddish-brown, fruity, with a pronounced tartness.

The style has little to do with Bavaria. In West Flanders, the beer is fermented and aged through mixed fermentation—meaning yeast and lactic acid bacteria—in large oak barrels known as foeders. This takes months to years, which is why the result tastes sour, yet rounded.

What's new is the protected designation. On October 1, 2026, the EU registered 'Vlaams roodbruin bier' and 'Flanders Red Ale' as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) under Regulation (EU) 2026/2168; the application dates back to 2025. The documents name the districts of Roeselare, Tielt, and Kortrijk, along with Kortemark and Ichtegem, as the region of origin.

Rodenbach itself no longer belongs to the founding family. The brewery is part of Palm Belgian Craft Brewers, and Palm in turn joined the Dutch group Bavaria, now known as Swinkels Family Brewers, in 2016. Duvel Moortgat has no connection to any of this.

Bruges is also in West Flanders. The brewery De Halve Maan, known for Brugse Zot and Straffe Hendrik, had a roughly three-kilometer beer pipeline laid beneath the old town in 2016, so that tanker trucks would no longer need to rumble over the cobblestones. Many know Kortrijk, in the south of the province, more for the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302.