Brave New 2008

The critics rave about Deus beer--all notes of this and nuances of that. Deus is the "champagne of beers", as it is fermented in the champagne style. Although it's a Belgian beer, the bottles are taken to France at some point in the process and something mysterious happens to them there.

We bought a bottle of Deus for New Year's eve. We chilled it, cracked it open, and poured it into champagne flutes. I was expecting something light, crisp, and hoppy, essentially a dry champagne character with a little bitterness thrown in, or something. But this "champagne" was fruity. Sweet, almost. I don't object to beers with a little sweetness to them, but somehow it didn't work for me here, probably due to the mismatch between my expectations and reality. Since it seems to be second only to Westvleteren in retail price of non-vintage beer (and Westvleteren is not supposed to be resold--you go to hell if you do), it should save us some cash.

New Year's Eve was a dinner party at Jack's coworker's house, since the fireworks on the Grand Place had been canceled due to the threat of terrorism (which has also caused them to seal off all the trash cans in the Metro stations). This was followed by an American-style brunch at our place on New Year's day. We had homemade English muffins and biscuits and baked eggs and fruit salad and quinoa-tahini salad. No one wanted mimosas so we ended up with a lot of leftover sparkling wine. Some kind of unspoken conspiracy caused everyone to bring dessert so there was Portuguese flan and Polish prunes covered in dark chocolate (surprisingly delicious) and German stollen and Spanish torron that we brought back from our trip. We ate like kings for the next several days.