beer review Duvel 666

Tonight I'm having a relatively new beer from the DUvel Moortgat Brewery: Duvel 666.

The iconic Duvel bee has been the main staple of this brewery for generations, and it is a magnificant beer. Whereas this brewery has expanded it's range, and owns many Belgian beer brands, and some international ones, it originally never released other beers under the Duvel name.

In the 2010's, this started to change with the release of Duvel Tripel Hop: Regular Duval, but with an added (usually very aromatic) hop, and 1% stronger than regular Duvel. This proved to be a great idea, and yearly a new Duvel Tripel hop was released, containing a different hop, for a nr of years this continued, untill at a certain time, this had run it's course. Nowadays, the Duvel gamma contains two different tripel hop variants. However, these are still very closely related to the regular duvel.

Besides that, there are also barrel aged variants of regular Duvel.

But than somewhere this year, something different flowed from the brewery: Duvel 666

This is a different animal:

It contains 6 hops, of which 4 are used in the dry hopping process. The beer is not remeniscent of the regular Duvel beer, but fit's well within the wider range of te brewery. The Duvel 666 (conveniently at an alcohol percentage of 6.66%) comes closer to a IPA, although it takes on the more aromatic IPA style of recent years, rather than the extremely bitter IPA style of say a decade ago.

It is a great beer, and a wellcome addition to the Duvel line. Undoubtedly in part motivated by the desire to launch a beer somewhat lower in alcohol, to keep with the times, since consumers are moving away from the heavily alcoholic beers (both over health concerns, and due to increased awareness of the dangers of driving drunk).

I've had it in the regular Duvel glass, I've heard a rumour that there's a specific glass for this beer, but so far I've not yet had it.