Stadsbrouwerij Gruut

In the heart of Ghent, Stadsbrouwerij Gruut revives an older Belgian brewing idea without turning it into museum-piece nostalgia. Its beers are brewed without hops, using proprietary blends of medieval herbs instead. The result is a modern Ghent brewery with a distinctive identity: part family brewing legacy, part deliberate return to gruit-style herbal brewing. A Ghent brewery with an old vocabulary Gruut is based on Rembert Dodoensdreef in Ghent and presents itself as a city brewery rooted in local beer culture. Its name evokes gruit, the historical herbal mixture once used to flavour and bitter beer before hops became dominant. The brewery’s approach is not a reconstruction of one fixed medieval recipe: gruit varied by place and period, while Gruut uses its own herb mixtures in contemporary brewing. Hop-free by design The brewery’s defining method is straightforward and unusual: hops are left out and replaced by a blend of herbs described by the brewery as medieval. Its range includes Gentse Gruut Blond, Wit, Dark Amber, Inferno, 00 and Stout 00. The official beer catalogue describes different modern expressions, from Blond’s herbal bitterness to Wit’s fruit-and-herb character and the alcohol-free 00 variants. A family brewing continuation Gruut’s own brewery brochure places its foundation in 2009 and connects founder Annick De Splenter with earlier brewing families, including De Splenter and Van Hencxthoven. That lineage helps explain the brewery’s confidence in experimentation, but the clearest signature remains the beer itself: a contemporary Ghent range built around herbs where most modern beers would rely on hops. A modern Ghent brewery making hop-free Belgian beer through its own herbal interpretation of gruit. Ghent, East Flanders, Belgium 2009 2009: Annick De Splenter founded Stadsbrouwerij Gruut in Ghent.