How did you start your brewery? Hildegard: I was working for the technical University in Ghent as an industrial engineer. I also did projects for breweries, and one of those was Konigshoven, the only Trappist brewery in Holland. I went to Konigshoven for half a year to work, and Bas was doing some marketing there. I was raised by my grandmother, and I came home and said, “Oh, grandmother, I have met such a wonderful man!” and she said, “Oh, my God, you seduced a monk.” Bas: I was not a monk! H: We decided to live in Belgium. Bas has always been an entrepreneur, and he said maybe we should make a beer of our own. B: We thought about several ridiculous names for that beer. Five years before, I made this story about little guys living in the forest and they were called Erthels— with an ‘e.’ All day, they drank Urthel, a mixture of herbs that they thought would make their hair grow back. So, I said to Hildegard, why don’t we put those two together? You make the beer, I’ll make the story and it’s called “Urthel.” In the beginning it was just our joke. H: The Erthels had always been the basics of our beer. They have the word “paché,” which means: I wish you all the luck in the world, all the love in the world, everything you desire. Hop-It is an unusual Belgian beer—it has hops! H: Our importer really encouraged us to come to the U.S. They said, you should try the American beers. I said, well I really want a hoppy beer, and they gave me an IPA. I said “Oh, my God, what is this? It’s too much of everything!” And then they gave me another one and I started to get used to the taste, and by the third I was completely in love. It’s really opened my vision. So I love IPAs and I love double IPAs. With Hop-It, I didn’t want to create an American IPA. I wanted to make a Belgian tripel with three times as much hops as I usually do: no American hops because Americans are very good at doing that. I didn’t want to copy, but work with European hops. Now people are talking about Belgian IPA. B: People ask “What can I compare it to, which style is it?” And we say “Nothing!” Belgians aren’t really so used to beer styles. H: Our last beer is Samaranth: less hopped and 12% ABV. It’s not really a barleywine and not really a quadruppel—closer to a quadruppel, but not as sweet. It’s a very special beer to us, because six years ago when we got married, we didn’t have a wedding cake: we poured Urthel Samaranth in very small glasses. B: It was meant for one batch only, we thought it would be too heavy. Now our most important products are Hop-It and Samaranth. H: In Belgium, you have the problem that brewers want to get women to drink beer. And then they do the most wrong thing they can ever do: they bring out rosé beers, especially for women. Women feel they are some silly group being talked down to. That will never bring women to specialty beers. I always say, the most beautiful women on earth are women with a good glass of beer in their hands—it is the most sexy thing you can ever see, because that woman, she has character. She is planning for herself.