Tag: New Belgium

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Belgian Reserve – Sour Saison


http://www.newbelgium.com/beer/sour-saison
New Belgium has created three over arching categories in which to slot existing and new beers for their Belgian side of beers. The first are the traditional Belgian, then the Wood Reserve where you get the Single Foeder action and they also have the Belgian Reserve Series.

The first entrant to that category is the Sour Saison. Years in the making this is a blend of Sour Golden Ale and a rustic Farmhouse Ale.

According to the brewery, this new sour will be “a pleasant mix of balanced aromas: lemons and cloves, mild white grape, white pepper, and coriander. Light tropical fruit and floral. Bread dough and cake batter with a smidge of barnyard bretta, grassy, and pine.”

They will have to convince me on the cake batter but the rest sounds really good.

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Sean Suggests for May 2017

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This month we focus on sours from established breweries. Sometimes chasing new leads us to forget the classics. Well, and one new beer but from a classic brewery.

~LIGHT
Firestone Walker Barrelworks/ Bretta Rose5.3% ABV
“Thirty miles north of Barrelworks lies the fertile Santa Maria Valley. Its warm days and cool marine layer-fed evenings allow for a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables to be grown in its rich soil. One of Santa Maria’s crown jewels is locally grown raspberries. We jumped at the opportunity to ferment fresh local raspberries with one of our Barrelworks creations. Behold Bretta Rosé! A low-alcohol Berliner Weisse style ale, acidified and matured in French oak puncheons for 6 months, is the foundation for this gem. Add 1000 lbs. of fresh raspberries, allow a secondary wild fermentation for 4 more months and voila (!), we have a crisp effervescent concoction, bursting with raspberry perfume and flavor, a rosé color, bracing acidity, and a clean and refreshing finish.”

~MEDIUM
Ommegang/ Pale Sour6.9% ABV
“Pale Sour is an elegant, drinkable sour beer, unique in that it’s not wood-aged. It has a well-balanced blend of sweet and sour. Liefmans is such a historic, iconic brewery and having the opportunity to work with them has been an honor and very enjoyable. Pale Sour begins with a mixed culture fermentation in open copper vats. Aged over several months in stainless tanks, master blenders blend new batches with older ones until the optimal balance of flavors is reached.”

~DARK
New Belgium/ La Folie7.0% ABV
“La Folie, French for “the folly,” is a beer steeped in New Belgium brewing tradition. This wood-aged, sour brown spends one to three years in big, oak barrels, known as foeders. And when the beer finally hits the glass, La Folie is sharp and sour, full of green apple, cherry, and plum-skin notes. Pouring a deep mahogany, the mouthfeel will get you puckering while the smooth finish will get you smiling. Not a beer for the timid, La Folie is a sour delight that will turn your tongue on its head. Find out why it’s considered one of the best sour beers around. “

All of these beers can be found at Sunset Beer Co. (unless they got bought up real quick)

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Skeletal Ranger is Meandering…

…towards Mandarina hops in the latest VooDoo Release from New Belgium…

Here is the description from the brewery, “Juicy Mandarina IPA, an unfiltered wheat IPA. It bursts with citrus and juicy tropical flavors and features German Mandarina Bavaria and Australian Galaxy hops. Juicy Mandarina IPA pours a hazy orange and comes in at 6.5% ABV.”

The first three beers under this banner were quite nice, with bright notes to them so I will certainly look for this new one.

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Cherries and Almonds

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I am all for cherry beers. When they are hitting on all cylinders you can get a lovely bright cherry pie note and a dose of tart. But what happens when you add darker malt and almonds?

The experimentation at New Belgium continues apace with this fruit & nut beer that will hopefully veer away from the marzipan notes that almonds sometimes bring.

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Featured Review – Fat Tire & Friends – Part 2

At the beginning of the month, I reviewed two of the Fat Tire & Friends riffs. One from Firestone Walker and the other from Rhinegeist Brewing.

Now, I tackle the remaining three of the collaborations variety box which I have dubbed…
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…the Sour & Wild Trio.

Again, there are twin goals here. Which beer “adds” to the original Fat Tire while retaining its essential amber-ness and simply, which beer is best.

Starting with…
The Fat Sour Apple Ale from Hopworks Urban Brewery
Has a pronounced apple cider aroma but the mouthfeel is practically nitro. Very creamy with a green apple taste that is less sour than it is fresh Granny Smith apple juice. I can taste the Fat Tire underneath almost as if the beer was simply layered. The creaminess really ties this together like an anti-rejection drug.

The Fat Wild Ale from Avery Brewing is the closest collab of the group.
When poured it looks just like the regular Fat Tire but that first aroma heads straight to wild country. It is sort of a plain wild too. It doesn’t quite grab my palate though. There is an underlying spice note and a touch of sweetness with a kind of oaky hit to this one.

The Fat Funk Ale teams New Belgium with stalwart Belgian-style brewer Allagash.
Much like the wild ale, the Fat Funk is a perfectly pleasant beer. Not out of place especially in the Allagash universe but when I think “funk”, I guess I am expecting more much like I expected more from “wild”. Lots of clove here that I enjoy but I would order an Allagash White again before this.

The winner for this round is the HUB apple offering. Overall, I would take the Firestone Walker hopped version. And in the future I will have to keep my expectations in check.

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New (and Old) Belgium in 2016

I recently sipped my way through the very red and very good Transatlantique Kriek from New Belgium. It was the first re-collaboration with original Belgian brewers for the Lips of Faith series. There are three more coming our way in 2016 to look for with the cool twist being that you could pick up 4-packs.
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Hof ten Dormaal Golden Ale
“Hof ten Dormaal debuted this April in 12-oz four-packs, marking a packaging first for Lips of Faith beers, which were formerly found only in bombers and on draft. This beer is a collaboration with the Jannsens family, which runs Hof ten Dormaal in Tildonk, Belgium, pairing Old World ingredients with new world innovation. The Jannsens provided their Belgium yeast strain, giving delicate pear, banana and clove notes to the beer. Spelt, malted sunflower seeds, and wild carrot herbs provide a nutty, bready and grassy wash. Add in Saaz and Mosaic hops and you have spicy, tropical accents and a taste of the Belgian countryside in every sip.”

De Koninck Flowering Citrus Ale
“De Koninck Flowering Citrus Ale, a collaboration with Antwerp, Belgium’s historic De Koninck Brewery, will release this summer. This beer will offer a pop of key lime and lemons. The fragrance of hibiscus, rose petals and strawberry-tinged Mistral hops will make it the ideal beer for soaking in summer days.”

Anne-Françoise Spiced Dark Strong Ale
“The final beer in this Belgian-collaboration series is a spiced dark strong ale. Deep into Belgium’s Forêt d’Orval two brave brewmasters—Orval’s first female brewmaster Anne-Françoise Pypaert and New Belgium’s Peter Bouckaert—crafted Spiced Dark Strong Ale. They brought spruce tips and medium-toasted American oak to this brooding chocolaty beer, and then wove deeply herbal French Sprisselspalt and spicy Liberty and Willamette hops into the mix. A dash of grains of paradise offers a beam of citrusy light.”

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Riff Pack

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It is hard to come up with new ideas. Especially when you have been brewing the same beer for 20+ years but New Belgium Brewing to celebrate that day in 1981 when the Amber Ale came out five collaboration beers will take Fat Tire in different directions by enlisting Allagash Brewing Company, Avery Brewing, Firestone Walker, Hopworks Urban Brewery and Rhinegeist Brewery to riff on the iconic beer.

And here is what will be happening:

“New Belgium reached out to collaboration partners who were long time friends and innovative brewers. For the mixed 12-pack, Allagash is producing a version of Fat Tire using a Belgian yeast sourced from the Poperinge region and a touch of the Allagash house Brettanomyces – expect notes of stone fruit, sweet tart and peppercorn; Avery will focus on a fruitier hop bill also with a dose of brett evoking notes of apricot and pineapple; Firestone Walker is creating a west coast interpretation of Fat Tire with an assertive hop profile and a light lager yeast; Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) is creating a tart Fat Tire bringing in apple and lactobacillus to help highlight that beautiful green apple snap inherent to the original Fat Tire; and Rhinegeist has transformed Fat Tire into a Belgian XPA, combining a fruity Belgian yeast strain with bready-sweet European and Colorado malts for a beer to please hopheads and wine drinkers alike.”

The Mixed-Twelve packs start rolling out in mid-June.

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Review – Glutiny Pale Ale from New Belgium

Despite recent reports about how affected (or unaffected) people are by gluten, it is always good to have choice for those who truly can’t handle it and a choice that doesn’t taste like a weird science experiment.

Enter New Belgium and their Glutiny line which includes a blonde ale and a pale ale…..
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Glutiny pours a light orange color from the biker labeled bottle. I can’t quite pin the aroma down. Orange flavored gum maybe. Not a bad thing but different. The taste is light touching thin at points but like the Omission beers it doesn’t taste funny like the completely gluten free beers. It has a nice bitterness that could probably be ramped up even more. Final notes are tannic and tea like.

I will have to see how the golden ale stacks up but this is a nice XPA in my mind.

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Sean Suggests for February 2015

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I came so close to an all encompassing theme for this month. Gluten beers and pale lagers are oft ignored in favor of IPAs and barrel-aged beers. So one from each category headlines this month’s shopping list but I also want to appease the other side as well so I will pander with a new series from Saint Archer under the Tusk & Grain nom de plume.

~LIGHT
10 Barrel/ Pub Beer 5.00% ABV
Just recently dropped into the L.A. market. A pale lager emblazoned without a logo and just saying Pub Beer on it. It’s a nod to the old generic beer cans of yore.

~MEDIUM
New Belgium/ Glütiny Pale Ale 6.00% ABV
“Glütiny Pale Ale is brewed using an enzyme to break down the proteins that trigger a reaction from gluten sensitive drinkers. Therefore, these beers are being referred to as “gluten removed” instead of gluten free. The beers fall within the FDA guidelines of less than 20 parts per million.

New Belgium Glütiny Pale Ale features Equinox hops, for flavors of guava and papaya. “

~DARK
Tusk & Grain/ 01 12.50% ABV
“For our inaugural barrel release, we present to you an expressive union between hand crafted beer and American Oak. We carefully designed three beers consisting of a Barley Wine, Imperial Porter, and Imperial Stout, to mature in some of Kentucky’s finest bourbon barrels, and the result is beautiful. Overwhelmingly rich. Staggeringly decadent. This beer challenges complexity by bringing toffee, chocolate, dark fruit, and oak to your palate, all while maintaining the essence of what defines a great barrel aged beer”

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Don’t Get Lost

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If you have ever been to the massive New Belgium complex, you may have seen what they call their “forest”. Made up of foeders filled with the fruits of their sour program labor. And on February 6th, you have two ticketed events to choose from to get a sip of the 2016 goodies from Fort Collins.

Choice # 1 is the Pedalars Fork up in Calabasas where you can be treated to a three-course farm to table dinner with three New Belgium beers such as 2016 La Folie, 2016 Transatlantique Kriek and Blackberry Love Felix. Snapshot Wheat and Citradelic IPA will also be on tap.

If cheese and Long Beach is more your thing then the same night at The Blind Donkey LBC will host and offer up a flight of beers + 1 full pour of your favorite. The added beer on tap will be the Blue Paddle Pilsner and cheese and charcuterie from Cheese Addiction.