Duvel - Belgian bottle beer

Duvel, from Brouwerij Moortgat, Belgium.

Behave yourself you little Devil you...

I had intended to be a good lad. Having spent a small fortune on beer stock for Christmas the week before, I made a decision not to buy any more this weekend.
No harm in looking though eh? Wandering down my favourite Asda aisle, up among the oddball brews, a red and white box was peering down at me from the shelf edge, "Buy me" I heard it say, "Go on you know you want to". Duvel, it may be called but the beer devil in me was still listening as I turned to leave and it leapt into my trolley. Who was I to argue? £5.49 for 4 bottles and the usual clincher, a free glass in the box.... not just any old glass either, a real Duvel tasting glass, huge tulip shaped thing with Duvel in gold on the front. Damn those marketing guys! Back home, everything packed away I read the box. Covered in information and a bright yellow flash proclaiming that Michael Jackson (not the scary one) a well respected beer and whisky expert, had put this brew in his top ten Belgian beers. A winner then!

About the Beer

The beer itself has been called the champagne of beers. Not to be guzzled this stuff, it is still brewed by the family Moortgat at the Duvel Moortgat Brewery in Puurs, Belgium started as a brewery-farm in 1871 by great great grandfather Jan-Leonard Moortgat.

Top Stuff

It's a top fermented ale (the yeast floats on the wort during brewing), conditioned in the bottle, which means there's yeast in there for secondary fermentation. It's not a white beer though, you're ideally supposed to leave around 1cm of beer in the bottle to avoid disturbing the sediment which goes against the grain a little....I prefer not to pour beer down the sink so I tried one with the yeast in the glass and one without, in the interest of research...

It's Definitely Alive!

The huge tulip glass provided will hold a full pint of ale but the squat brown bottle only provides you with 330ml, confused? Well on opening the bottle there is a fair rush of CO2 and you need to get the glass over on its side, otherwise the head won't fit in there! If you ever see a photograph of Duvel, you'll see that the glass is half full of beer and half full of white foam. Not just any old foam though, it's like whipped cream and stays with the drink to the end, fantastic!

Flavours and Alcoholic Poisoning

The flavour is very complex. As I've said before, I'm not good at distinguishing myriad hints of hot plastic and llama dung, ala Jilly Goolden, but the overwhelming scent of spices like nutmeg and cinnamon along with the bitter hops and malt all waft up at you through the neck of that glass. Similar flavours to other Belgian beers such as Hoegaarden but with a hell of a lot more body and class. It's delicious, not too gassy despite the constant bubbling from the bottom of the glass. I left one glassful standing for 45 minutes, the head just sat there like a meringue and the stream of bubbles never stopped. How's that for dedication to the cause of consumer research! Incidentally, the glass I tried without the yeast thrown in lost its head after a while so now I sling the lot in and be dammed!
Also present is the alcohol. At 8.5% ABV I'm sure I could smell it on its own, I could certainly taste it! The golden colour of the beer also has very faint greenish tinge to it, which I always associate with powerfully alcoholic brews. You won't need too many of these before the legs disassociate themselves for the brain and you develop your own greenish tinge around the gills.

Overall

If I were to wander down the beer aisle at Asda again and spot another box I wonder if I'd if would find it's way into my trolley again? I think it might. The name Duvel derives from the Flemish for devil, and if they put it up on that shelf, sitting at shoulder height, the angel on my other shoulder hasn't a snowballs chance in hell. Now where did I put that glass?

Cheers
Chris