Delirium Tremens
Matt Phillips
Sep 08
|16:13
Delirium Tremens
Frank Zappa once suggested that “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need to have a beer.” Belgium is well renowned for nothing in particular, it has no airline, it has no nuclear weapons, I’m fairly sure it has a football team, but that of which I am absolutely certain…it has many, many fine beers. Belgium boasts well over 500 different beers, so choosing one to review is something of a dilemma. After much deliberation I plumped for a modern classic, a world champion beer, voted number one in Kallen’s 50 Greatest Beers of the World and banned for several years in the U.S. for it’s promotion of excessive drinking…it can only be Delirium Tremens. The name derives from the Latin “trembling madness” often associated with alcohol withdrawal symptoms, more commonly referred to as the DT’s. This triple fermented 9%(abv) beer is not overly complex in terms of flavour but it skilfully delivers manful helpings of hop and malt flavours. Delirium Tremens has a fruity citrus finish with a satisfying warm alcoholic glow that leaves you clamouring for the next bottle. I don’t like to cast cultural aspersions, but the real wonder of this brew is how a nation so crushingly dull can create a beer of such character and poise. As they say in Belgium…op uw gezondhied.
Available online at www.beersofeurope.co.uk £2.29 for a 330ml bottle.
