Last night, as part of our New Year’s celebration, we got a bottle of Delirium Noel, a beer from Brouwerig Huyghe in Belgium. Both Jill and I love Christmas/Winter beers because they are generally dark and strong … Delirium Noel is one of the best that we have tasted! I just wish that we could have gotten one of the cute little glasses for it … you gotta love pink elephants in a Santa’s hat!

Okay, now to talk about the beer … Jill’s exact quote after tasting it for the first time was “That’s a complex beer!” My opinion was basically the same. It is everything that I really want a winter beer to be. It is strong, dark, and spicy. A beer that is full of flavor but still easy to drink, especially with the slightly random selection of food that we had last night. This is a beer that I had wanted to taste since last Christmas, when we ran into the beer guy from Spitalfields (can’t remember his name or the name of his stall now … have his card in Oxford) at a temporary stand in Covent Garden, but he had run out of it (and all of the trademark glasses). So, I was so happy when I saw it at Whole Foods, here in Richmond.

All of the Delirium beers that I have tasted have been great and so if you see either of the other two beers, I would recommend them. Delirium Tremens is their signature beer and is a lighter brew. My favorite from them (and one of my all-time favorite beers) is Delirium Nocturnum. One note about these beers (esp. Nocturnum) – you have to be careful about them when you find them in bottles in random beer shops. They can be aged for up to three years but only under ideal conditions and I have gotten a couple bottles of them have not been right. To find out what these beers truly taste like, you should visit Belgium and have them on-tap … that is when you can find out how good these beers truly can be!