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I am a big fan of Duvel’s barrel-aged program. And the next one is a very unique choice. Going the historical route with Brazilian cachaça from Brazil. Sorta like a rum relative.
Duvel snagged over 400 oak cachaça barrels for their cellars and after 8 months of aging achieved what they say is Duvel but with a “lively fruit punch, which then expands festively with notes of oak, dried nuts and vanilla.”
If I do see the Duvel Barrel Aged, The Brasil Rum Edition. You know I will pick it up.
I don’t usually buy variety packs unless I am really jonesing for a specific beer that I cannot get anywhere else. But this…
…pack from Duvel, is all bangers. Old and new.
I hope to encounter the Duvel Barrel-Aged Irish Whiskey Barrel Edition in a fine beer shoppe, and I hope you do too, because it sounds excellent.
“This Duvel Barrel-Aged has matured intensively in the very best whiskey barrels of the Irish distillery Teeling. These barrels enrich the exclusive beer with notes of vanilla and oak, but also with a smoky hint of peat fire.”
I posted earlier this year about Delirium Belgian beer aged in barrels. Now it’s Duvel’s turn with…
I was just talking about my relative lack of a good rum experience so this could be a nice start to re-think rum.
I just saw a photo of the bottle for the fifth batch of the Duvel Barrel Aged series. It has all sorts of fun design touches from the box, to the etching in the glass, the little sticker over the cap. Not to mention the beer inside. Here are those details: “ Duvel master brewer Hedwig Neven wanted to reinvent the ‘barrel aged’ concept and went looking for a rum distillery instead of bourbon barrels. He found it on the other side of the ocean, in Barbados, a world away from the brewery in Puurs: The West Indies Rum Distillery.”
If only it would come stateside.
This month I have a second cool label, this one from Green Cheek in Anaheim.
Such a cool name and the color scheme works really well and knowing brewer Evan, this will be a heck of a beer.
Yes, I know the bottle says hazy and the glass holds a crystal clear beer but I am intrigued that Duvel has put their stamp on a hazy. Maybe it is their exposure to their trio of American breweries. Here is the summary of the beer, “‘t IJ van de Duvel is a Hazy IPA, a soft IPA, very fruity in flavor because of the use of Azacca, Mosaic and Citra hops.” Some may decry this as a nod to trends and not traditional need to remember that breweries can make more than one beer.
Do I need another piece of glassware? My wife and Goodwill would probably say no. But the artist Gabriel Pulpo has a new one that looks pretty cool. He “describes his Duvel Glass design as an abstraction of wings inspired by the name Los Angeles: the city of angels. As an artist who specializes in artworks using geometry and lines, his design takes the form of an abstract optical effect that depicts L.A.’s dynamic energy and constantly evolving creative landscape – a city in constant movement.”
The glass drops next year.
Now I do not need a fancy gift box to want to taste the Duvel Bourbon Barrel Aged version. In fact, extra glassware is more an impediment since their is a glass embargo at BSP HQ. I may have to buy and re-gift the glass.
It is strange to go back in time and behind the scenes of the musicians that created part of the soundtrack of your teenage years. You sometimes lose the luster of the music to details of private lives. I was a big New Order fan, still am of a range of their music but I did not know how they came to be, their origin story as it were. I got into a slice of Joy Division music and now after the movie Control and the book above, I know more about the people who created the music.
This is not a regular historical account of the Ian Curtis years. It is an oral history arranged in chronological order. All the people involved in the story have their say and you bounce from Bernard (Barney), Peter (Hooky) and Stephen (just Stephen) as the main protagonists as well as the roadies, the manager, the wives and girlfriends and music reviews.
This oral history style is popular on websites talking about films and TV and works to an extent here but I do wish there was more historical data in-between to add some context to the matter. But as a piece of the record (pun intended), it does add to the knowledge base of the band.
I have three ideas as to what to drink with this book. First, find some British cask ale and immerse yourself in Manchester of the late 1970’s. Yorkshire Square and MacLeod’s would be the L.A. options.
Second there is an anecdote in the book about drinking Duvel so that would work and probably get you in the mindset of the devil. And lastly, the new Leaves of Grass series from Bell’s would provide the needed poetry that great music has when it is really working.
Looks like we will be able to cart cans of the justly lauded Duvel Belgian Golden in cans!
Just look for the black can with the big red D on it.