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New Belgium is taking their sour program into cocktail territory with their new Dominga Mimosa Sour.
Here is the brewery description, “Inspired by bottomless sips in the sun, Dominga features tart and citrusy calamansi fruit (a hybrid of kumquat and mandarin orange), Mexican orange, and clementine in a light wheat beer blended with our wood-aged golden sour. Its sparkling citrus aroma is followed by a flash of refreshing acidity and a dry, semi-sweet finish.”
More VooDoo I saw on the way. New Belgium is rolling out a new Ranger. A fall / autumnal Imperial IPA with the glowing hops. I can tell quite tell if they are glowing hazily or not though.
I cover quite a few milestones on this blog. Most are under 10 years but today, I want to bring your attention to New Belgium who is at a much bigger number, 30. They are honoring their flagship Amber as well as modern trends with an Amber IPA.
Count me as a fan of the OG New Belgium Oakspire and now I can compare that one with the brand extension Old Fashioned version that is coming to finer beer shoppes. Maybe also compare it to an actual Old Fashioned while I am at it.
Another salvo from the health conscious beer camp comes in the form of The Purist from New Belgium. Basically they are verifying the sources of their ingredients starting with Poudre River water down to the farms where they get the hops and barley. Considering how many really good lagers there are out there currently, this seems pegged to those who see the calorie number alone.
If you think that alcohol laws could use nationwide reform, well the above beer collaboration gives a good example of what can happen when breweries are given just a little extra legal help.
TRVE and New Belgium have collaborated on Where I Live which “uses malts from Troubadour Maltings in Fort Collins to create the base beer, which was fermented on Norwegian Kveik yeast. The beer was blended with a foeder-aged dark sour, then further matured with TRVE’s mixed-culture in one of New Belgium’s French oak foeders.”
The hurdle was you could not transfer beer from one brewery to another without incurring a tax charge. The 2017 Brewery Act (which I remind you, needs renewal) removed that hurdle. Funnily enough for me, what struck me about this beer more than the law was this, ” Just before packaging, the beer is circulated over whole-flower lavender grown on the Western Slope of Colorado by Two Bears Farms.” Sounds like a fun beer.
Well this was some news to find in the local paper. I was in a Wi-Fi “un”-enabled spot and did not see this come across the ticker. The employee owners of New Belgium followed a path that Full Sail broke ground on in selling to Kirin – Lion – Little World. I have the feeling that more of this will happen in the future as older and bigger and not hip breweries look for a parachute out. Whether this works will be seen. Full Sail has not regained momentum but Anchor sold not once but twice and seems to be stable but then on the third hand, Lagunitas has been slimming down even with Heineken behind them. Or maybe this will mean a foedre sake blend in the future.
Barrel-Aging isn’t just for beverages. It can also be for your breakfast, Burton’s sells some pricey maple syrup aged in a variety of spirit barrels and according to this post on The Takeout (visit that site, it is super cool), they even have collaborated with “distilleries and using different kinds of spirits, even beer (New Belgium Brewery’s La Folie Sour Brown Ale).”
I didn’t see that syrup on their webstore but they had a bacon and bourbon version that sounds great and makes me crave waffles for sure.
Now, I have seen craft beers used in various meats. Usually a collaboration between a meat producer using a beer for one item. But Niman Ranch seems to have gone full on with Fat Tire with not one but five items from brats to ribs to pulled pork and shredded beef.
New (but with an old styled label is the intriguing combo of coffee and lemon. I have had coffee versions of the famed Arnold Palmer tea/lemonade so this isn’t and out of leftfield idea and New Belgium does have history of coffee in beers working well so this will be one to look for.