Limited brew for a very special Duvel

November 7, 2007: Duvel has broken the £10 barrier for a bottle of beer by launching a limited offering of 1,500 bottles of Duvel Triple Hop.

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This 9.5% ABV, which is a high-hopped variant of Duvel's iconic 8.5% blond brew, will be available exclusively to Sainsbury from November, and as long as stocks last, at £12.99 per 75cl bottle.

Brewed on the August 1 this year, Duvel Triple Hop has a 'best before' of June 2010. So for those keen to cellar their drinks, this is a beer with flavours that will develop for at least two years or beyond.

This beer uses three different hops, added at different stages of the brew: Czech Saaz (dry spice), Styrian Golding (oily lemon/orange) and American Amarillo (sweet orange and fruit salad).

Duvel UK's Nick Short said: "Duvel Triple Hop will be a real collectors' item and it is packaged in a stunning red and gold pyramid/sarcophagus. It's best-before date is June 2010, but it should remain in great condition as it develops, like a good wine, for 10 or 20 years.

"This is a very special, limited edition beer and its price reflects its complexity of flavour and its rarity. Beer has too often been sold as a poor relation of wine, whereas creating a special beer like this is a real art form."

"The change to the Duvel recipe is a one-off," insists Michel Moortgat, the brewery's chief executive. "Duvel is an icon and a standard that we treat with the greatest respect.

"We were inspired by an old advert for Moortgat Hop Beer, and the latest hop beer from our sister brewery Chouffe, so we experimented with adding more hops to our Duvel beer. We liked the beer so much that we decided to bottle it as a one-off so that we could share that moment of enjoyment with real beer-lovers."

Hedwig Neven, master brewer at Duvel Moortgat, added: "The hops impart their specific aroma and flavours to the beer. For the brewing of Duvel Triple Hop, we selected three prestigious varieties of hops: Saaz, from the Czech Republic, Styrian Golding, from Slovenia, and Amarillo from the United States.

"We also use the 'dry-hopping' technique, which consists, in addition to conventional hopping, of adding additional hop cones at a later stage. That makes the character of the beer very special: a rich range of impressions on the palate, additional hop flavours and — the most perceptible characteristic — a pervasive zesty bitterness."

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