Delirium Tremens - Brouwerji Huyghe

I will go ahead and lead off this post that I love love LOVE getting recommendations from people - if you have beer that you enjoy, please give me a heads up by commenting on here, emailing, texting, facebook, etc. However, I am also very wary of things being pumped up too much and not being able to live up to expectations. So, when my best friend Pat F. gave me a heads up to this beer I was very grateful and went out to pick some up. I believe it only comes in this huge liter (I think?) bottle, so be wary. However, when I went to pick some up I asked the guy at the store what he thought of this and he told me that right now (not sure based on what ranking or system) it is considered to be the "Best Beer in the WORLD." Okay, so I am slightly skeptical, but very curious...here goes nothing on seeing if I agree with whomever made that assessment...

Vitals:

Name: Delirium Tremens

Style: Belgian Strong Pale Ale

IBU: ??

ABV: 8.5%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: Trixie's Liquor

Descriptions:

Appearance: So I don't normally comment on the bottles that the beer comes in, but this one is pretty interesting. It has pink elephants and dragons and crap all over it - it looks like whoever designed this was on drugs or something. Anywho...pours a golden yellow with a TON of head on the beer. I had to make 3-4 separate efforts to get the pour because of too much of the bone-white head. The head itself is very light, but had fantastic retention. There are tons of carbonation bubbles rocketing through this brew; the pour had an odd haziness to it, which made me a bit concerned that it might have an infection. Guess we'll find out...

Smell: You get a LOT in the smell of this beer: from fruity to floral, herbal to spiced. You get some cinnamon I think. I think you get some melon and banana, maybe apricot, and some wheat or yeast smell coming through. I suspect the spices to be cinnamon and coriander. I will be perfectly blunt: this smells like a great (and complex) tasting beer, and it was very difficult for me to identify a lot of these smells because there is so much going out. Having said that, all of the smells come together quite nicely.

Taste: You get a little hop bitterness coming through along with banana, coriander, and apricot. It's a pretty spicy beer and you get a quick taste of alcohol on the bite. Yeast and breadiness sort of dominates a little bit too much for me, but it's not a big detractor. You even seem to get a small taste of apple in the beer. I'm not going to lie, this is an extremely great, but complex taste to judge and I'm having a hard time with it. This was definitely my hardest beer I have reviewed to this point in terms of judging what I'm tasting; definitely not 100% confident in my notes on this.

Mouthfeel: Very light (unexpected) and carbonated (expected); great mouthfeel for the most part but leaves you a bit dried out. The best word for this beer is CRISP, and it's quite dangerous because it's so light that it's 8.5% ABV drinks basically like something that's a 5.5% ABV.

Overall Grade: A-

Comments: Great beer despite my judging difficulties...I do hate that you have to commit to a whole liter of the beer instead of individual 12oz bottles...you kinda have to commit to the whole liter in one sitting....wait...that's not a bad thing :-) Definitely try this out if you like a nice strong belgian ale. It's not overwhelmingly hoppy and the taste is just so unique and complex, you really should check it out!

Cheers,

Hurls