Another tasting...Delirium Tremens!

DT is a Belgian Tripel Ale that I have enjoyed for some time, and it's actually the first Tripel that I ever tried. My first time was last summer, when I brought a 750ml bottle home and uncorked it.

I thought that it must have gone bad.

My taste buds, accustomed to English-style ales, porters, and stouts, were not ready for these exotic fruity flavors coming from a beer. And the wild yeast in these old Belgian breweries has a certain...gamy quality to it, such that it seems more hearty than a beer of similar lightness. My wife assured me that nothing was wrong with it, and that it was delicious. Skeptical, I let her finish the bottle, but I gave it another go the next week. Tasting it with more open buds allowed me to appreciate what was there, and it quickly became one of my favorites.

Tripels are bottle fermented with candi sugar, which is crystallized sucrose. This gives a different kind of sweetness than corn sugar or malt extract, especially since all of the sugar is not used up in carbonating the beer. Tripels, as the name suggest, have higher alcohol content than most beers (8-10%), but the only indication that there may be more alcohol in DT is the extra syrupy sweetness. Much like a shooter that's high in sugar, you can drink yourself into a headache with DT.

So the unofficial tasting, interrupted for a few hours by a squalling infant, goes like this:
The pour is very golden, very effervescent. The head is light and fragrant, and doesn't linger long. This beer remains cloudy, because the yeast flocculate, or remain in suspension. Most yeast sediments. The flocculant yeast provide most of the fruity flavors by virtue of the specific sugar breakdown products, or esters, but their presence in the glass contributes to the spiciness of the beer. I smell strawberries, banana, and spice as the bubbles pop, and I taste a wine-like sweetness that is cut by citrus flavor and intense spice. The effect is not unlike a champagne made from Viogner, but much more refreshing! I say champagne because the tiny bubbles that consistently dance with the yeast give DT a mouthfeel similar to a champagne. The high carbonation really softens this in your mouth, as opposed to the larger bubbles in a lager. Fortunately, a healthy proportion of extra light malt sugar keeps DT from being dry like a champagne.

Overall, then, Delirium Tremens is an outstanding specimen of a Tripel, outshined only by La Fin du Monde in flavor and character. And since I'm all about Michigan microbreweries, I'll put in a plug for the best Michigan-based tripels that I've tried, in order of preference:

Bell's Sparkling Ale Kalamazoo
Dragonmead Final Absolution Warren
Dark Horse Sapient Trip Ale Marshall

Honorable Mention -- Really good, but -WHOA! - the hops!
New Holland's Black Tulip Holland