Glam Dicenn Strong Ale

Origin Story:

I love Delirium Tremens – it is simply a masterpiece of a beer.  Glam Dicenn was my stab at a straight-up Delirium Tremens clone, using a recipe I found on the internet.  Potentially just a little ambitious for my third brew.

Somehow I overshot – I was targeting 8.5% ABV and this came in at 11.2%.  I probably overdid the sugar addition.  In addition, despite bottle-conditioning the final product had hardly any carbonation.  I let this sit for quite a while before bottling; perhaps the yeast that had continued to soldier on in the high-alcohol environment finally waved the white flag once they got into the bottle.  It was drinkable – more of a sipper, really – and you could see what I was going for, but it wasn’t about to supplant Delirium in anyone’s refrigerator.

The Glam Dicenn is the title of a strange, epic song by which Julian Cope welcomed the new millennium.  You have to root around a bit to get a definition for the term:  the Glam Dicenn was a satire delivered by ancient Irish bards that was so potent that it would raise boils on the face of its target.  Such target was often a very bad king – the kind of king who doesn’t pay his bards.  Attaching this theme to a very potent beer seemed a judicious amount of shade to throw as we stumbled through the 2020 election season.  Aidan Yetman-Michaelson once again delivered an on-point label image, gloriously grotesque.

Music Pairing:

While Julian Cope is quite the devotee of mind-altering substances, he tends to favor the psychedelic varieties thereof.  Within a busy schedule of releasing albums about environmental decay, the druidic tradition, stone circles, flying saucers, and armed revolution, he took the time to throw together Drunken Songs, an album entirely about beer.