Delirium Noël

Brewed by Brouwerij Huyghe
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
Melle, Belgium

Bottle(2005) from Whole Foods. Medium/dark amber pour. Strong slightly sweet, slightly tart vinous aroma. Some fig notes as well. Strong woody chocolate malty flavors right up front. Then goes into this sour quality almost like a flemish. Start and finish on this are like two different beers. Finish also show a bit of spice and some alcohol. Good stuff.

Light brown and dandy...like malty brown candy...with thin head and a malty, yeasty, bready, aroma..Flavors of overripe plums, maltiness & pretty damn tasty...fruity..although over-ripe..at least its fruity..plums i tell you..plums..squishy plum fruits...

Nice red/brownish color,Big white head that lasted for a nice long time and in fact seemed to take forever to disappear,leaving a nice lace behind.Fruity,yeasty aroma with an almost juicy fruit gum like smell,also it seemed to be very sweet smelling.The taste was quite nice,spicy and fruity with a mild hop presence but mostly spice is prevelant in this brew with a few fleeting hints of other flavors like fruit and malt.It also manages to come off as quite sweet IMO.Not a bad brew at all,in fact usually belgium brews scare me,they seem unpredictable and usually make me wince when i drink them but this one doesn't do that.Very much worth trying.

To tell you the truth.....a little disappointed. Has a little too much of a lambic taste for me. Not what I was expecting.

Keith-Typical Delirium taste for the most part. Stong aroma, but nothing special. Typical christmas additives like fig, nutmeg, and spice. Tasty and worth a try. Eric-Man, i had a friend bring a bottle from 2001 over the other night-what a treat! pours deep mahogony amber with a very light sudsy white head. much less carbonation than i was expecting. aroma of vineous cherries, light dusty esters, light funk, candy sugar, dark belgian malts0lots of dark fruit here! Wow! flavors of sugar coated cherries, big belgian malts and some nice brown spices. This aged so nicely. not any oxidized flavors, just a more round feel to it all. Alcohol is much lighter than when fresh. Man, this is a treat!

Draft at San Diego Brewing Co. Amber in color with a medium head. Fruity aroma and a sweet/bitter flavor. Slightly alcohol aftertaste, but the 10% was just what I needed.

750 ml bottle which was a Christmas gift from my friend Russell. Pours a slightly hazed reddish amber with a moderate off-white head that lasted through the first half of the glass and left partial lace. Pleasant aroma of malt, yeast, candi sugar, and dates. The flavor is again malt, yeast, candi sugar, and dates, but it is sweeter than the aroma and not as yeasty. Warming alcohol burn at the finish. There is a bit of fresh bread in the aftertaste several seconds after the swallow. Enjoyable.

Alcohol is far too strong on this one. While it’s 10% abv, it’s not masked at all, and the prevailing alcohol really masks the upfront malt. It improves in the aftertaste, where the malts come more forward. Oddly enough, found that it dried my palate after swallowing similar to an American hopmonster APA, though it doesn’t taste like one.