It's OK if you see pink elephants

By Bob Townsend
For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/17/08

Call him the spark plug of Belgium's Huyghe Family Brewery.

Alain DeLaet is a very energetic fellow. He speaks with a billowing French accent, in rapid-fire sentences that are punctuated by exaggerated gestures. And he likes to tell long and winding stories about his beer and the business his great-grandfather Leon Huyghe founded in 1906, on the site of a brewery near Ghent that dates to 1654.

DeLaet was in Atlanta last week for a beer dinner at Cakes & Ale Restaurant in Decatur. Wherever he goes, he proudly carries with him a thick photo album filled with images of the brewery and its best-known export, Delirium Tremens.

The Belgian strong golden ale is beloved for its deliciously fruity, bubbly essence, and infamous for its outrageous name and satirical, pink elephant label art.

"Either you like it or you don't like it," DeLaet says. "You have only the extremes. People say, 'You are crazy to use that name —- it's an anti-promotion for beer.' But other people say, 'I love it.' "

Displaying his own sense of the absurd, DeLaet delights in torturing Americans by making them try to say his mother's family name, Huyghe, which is nearly impossible to pronounce, and comes out sounding something like a barking cough.

Zany though he may be, DeLaet, 42, has proved his business smarts. Since the mid-1980s, when the fourth generation of the family began to assume control of the brewery, Huyghe has greatly expanded its product line, producing on average growth of 20 percent to 25 percent a year.

"We've done it with new products and exports," says DeLaet. "Our motto is, 'You ask. We brew.' And now 75 percent of our beers are exported to 45 countries all over the world. That is the way we are successful."

In fact, Delirium Tremens was originally created in 1989 for a now-defunct Italian company. But it soon found a home in Belgium, then claimed devotees in Europe and the United States. In 1992, the brotherhood of the Pink Elephant was founded.

"Its task is to promote Delirium Tremens," DeLaet says, smiling slyly. "And that means swearing to drink at least one Delirium per day."

Among the other Huyghe Family Brewery products DeLaet introduced at the Cakes & Ale dinner: light and refreshing Kira White ale, which chef Billy Allin paired with a summer salad and a peach sorbet; Delirium Nocturnum, a strong dark ale that proved a tasty match for brisket, kraut and baby carrots; and two fruit beers, Floris Apple and Floris Framboise.

Belgian brewers are known for making more than 450 varieties of beer. Many are rooted in centuries-old tradition. But there's always been a strain of the adventurous and the innovative.

"That's because the market is small," DeLaet says. "We have so many breweries, and everybody is looking to each other. If a small brewery doesn't innovate, it will disappear from the market.

"But there is a future for small family breweries. Maybe I was one of the pioneers. I think the market for small Belgian breweries is enormous. I have a 6-year-old son, and I hope he will become a brewer."