IT LOOKS like champagne and costs just as much. But the latest vintage bubbly coming to Britain’s restaurant tables is a £32 bottle of beer.

Deus, brewed in the Belgian village of Buggenhout, is matured in the Champagne region of France. Its corked bottle is the same shape used for Dom Perignon champagne.

Restaurateurs are capitalising on its elite image with a mark-up of 100%. They charge £21.33 a pint, eight times the price of a beer pulled in a pub.

Deus is the most expensive of a new generation of brews aiming to win over wine connoisseurs and wean drinkers off industrially produced lager.

There are now at least 20 restaurants across Britain offering full beer lists alongside their wine menus. Typically, a beer sommelier might recommend starting the meal with a relatively tasteless lager to clear the palate before moving on to India pale ale for the main course and a fruitier number for the pudding.

Rupert Ponsonby, a spokesman for the Beer Naturally campaign, set up by brewers to encourage restaurants to widen their beer selection, said: “Drinks like Deus show what’s possible and will help change perceptions of beer. It’s crazy that a restaurant can have 250 wines and just three beers.”

Aubergine, the Michelin-starred restaurant in Chelsea, west London, offers a beer list with about 15 choices. It includes 75cl (1Å pint) bottles of Deus for £32.

Vincenzo Tagliavia, the sommelier of Aubergine, said: “We are offering customers the chance to enjoy an exclusive beer. Deus stands out. Its specialness lies in the balance between the bitterness and creaminess.”

Other expensive beers at Aubergine include Chimay Cinq Cents, a pale ale brewed by Belgian Trappist monks and sold by the restaurant at £15 a bottle. Elsewhere 1980s vintages of Thomas Hardy ale can be picked up for £20 and a bottle of Rochefort, a chocolate-flavoured Trappist beer, £15.

Antoine Bosteels, director of the Bosteels brewer that makes Deus, described it as far removed from mass-produced beer. “We treat it like champagne,” he said. “It’s an exclusive product for people who want to experience a new taste.”

Deus has 11.5% alcohol — more than double usual beer. It is fermented over a month, using two yeasts to give it its high alcohol content. It is then taken by tanker to a cellar near Epernay in Champagne and re-fermented like a sparkling wine to give it its bubbles.

After being bottled, it is left in the cellar at 12C for nine months, then tilted and rotated for a week. Yeast that gathers at the neck of the bottle is frozen and removed before the bottles are corked for sale. Bought from the brewer, Deus costs €10 (£6.78). The main importer in Britain sells it for just under £10, while specialist off-licences charge £14.95 and restaurants between £24.95 and £32. The beer is sold in six restaurants in Leeds, Manchester, Huddersfield and elsewhere. About 1,000 bottles a year are sold in Britain.

Anthony Flinn, owner of Anthony’s at Flannels restaurant in Leeds, offers experimental cuisine and a beer list with 13 drinks including Deus at £24.95 a bottle. “It is drunk by open-minded people of all ages and walks of life, from businessmen to pensioners,” he said.

Joanna Simon, the Sunday Times wine critic, said: “It’s a very good beer. But no matter how it’s dressed up — and, boy, it is dressed up — it’s still only beer.

“The palate is creamy-smooth, fruity and malty-sweet, and the finish is clean with characteristic beer bitterness. But it’s short and that’s the problem. Why pay good money for a taste that disappears in a couple of seconds? I’d rather have half a bottle of good champagne.”

Britain’s taste for beer is becoming more quality-conscious and cosmopolitan. Sales of speciality beers such as Hoegaarden, a Belgian wheat beer, and Leffe, a pale ale, rose 30% last year, according to research.

Many of the growing number of British micro-breweries are producing continental-style beers. The Meantime Brewery in Greenwich, London, was started just five years ago but now sells 150,000 cases of beer a year including Bavarian-style wheat beers and chocolate, coffee and raspberry flavours.

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