Belgian Ale - Duvel clone

The first recipe I tried from Clone Brews was an ambitious Belgian Ale. I managed to knock up a mini mash tun from a 10 litre esky and some steel braid and then set off to buy the specialty grains. For a first attempt I think it went smashingly well.
As with all recipes that I take from this book. I shall only be listing what ingredients I used. It is up to you to hunt down the original recipe (let no one accuse me of not respecting another man's copyright!)

Method: Extract 

Specialty grains: Belgian aromatic malt, German light crystal malt.

Hops: Styrian Goldings (bittering), Czech Saaz.

Additional: Belgian clear candi sugar.

Yeast: Belgian Ale yeast (liquid)

Comments: I added finings to clear the beer in the primary fermenter and bottled with carbonation drops after a week and a half.

ABV: 7.8% (compared to 8.5% from the recipe).

Yield: 19 litres

Tasting notes: This hits you like a velvet glove filled with a brick. Strong and fruity. The alcohol sits there behind the flavours ready to give you a black eye as soon as you drop your guard (which is after 2 pints). As you can see from the picture, it developed a great white frothy head made up of fine bubbles and the beer was clear with an excellent colour and has a short finish (which I learnt  is a characteristic of malty or sweeter beers (low hops) ). Compared to a commercial bottle of Duvel, this recipe is very close. 

What I learnt:

I ended up putting a little to much liquid into the wort when trying to cool the liquid enough to pitch my yeast. and I think this affected the final ABV however; I'm not too fussed as this tastes fantastic.