New Belgium
Dessert: New Belgium Cherry Almond Ale
New Belgium Cherry Almond Ale is a future bottle potential by the Colorado/North Carolina based brewery.
Quite obviously, cherry and almonds highlight the future beer, with a touch of chocolate for good measure. The base beer is not mentioned.
With a vibrant splash of cherry, and gentle chocolate aromas, our Cherry Almond Ale delicately balances malty sweetness, with a refreshingly bitter finish.
New Belgium Cherry Almond Ale is slated to be a 12 ounce bottle and draft release. The brewery has not yet announced this offering.
Style: (w/ Cherries, Almonds)
Availability: 12oz Bottles, Draft.
Debut: TBA
5.8% ABV
New Belgium Fruit Fly, a new passionfruit sour debuts
New Belgium Fruit Fly, a new interpretation of the berliner weisse style, is hitting taps now.
The base beer gets its tartness from Lactobacillus bacteria, aged in stainless steel. The beer is then dry-hopped with Citra hops. During fermentation, New Belgium Fruit Fly is blended with 800 pounds of tropical passion fruit.
Last year, our Pilot Brewers were challenged with creating a few stainless steel sour recipes featuring our proprietary lacto blending process and beautifully tart house lacto strain. While all recipes were great we felt the Passionfruit Citra Sour just killed it.” – Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Specialty Brand Manager
New Belgium Fruit Fly is a draft only, specialty release across the brewery’s national network.
Style: Berliner Weisse (w/ Passionfruit)
Hops: Citra
Availability: Draft Only
Debut: August, 2016
5.7% ABV
First Look: New Belgium Cider
New Belgium Brewing has almost completed their Asheville, North Carolina brewery build. With that project near completion, the brewery is already looking into a new chapter. Hard cider.
In July, ever-so-quietly, New Belgium released small batches of Side Trip Series cider. Draft appeared in market in Asheville at a special debut event at the well known Thirsty Monk, then cans at local retailers.
Surprised? We were too.
New Belgium has excelled over the years in the ale and wild ale categories. Fat Tire is a beer household name. The wood cellar at the Fort Collins, Colorado brewery is a pilgrimage for many. What does a brewery do when they have done so many outstanding things? They start the groundwork on what looks to be a future cidery.
Right now there are two ciders in the Side Trip Series. Dry, and Semi-Dry. The difference in the two is basically the amount of residual sugar left after fermentation. The “dry” cider has the least amount of sugar. Both styles are clean and refreshing.
New Belgium is canning in Vermont, with the help of renowned cider maker, Woodchuck. The apples, are New York and New England apples. In the future, the brewery would like to use all local North Carolina apples. According to the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the demand is already so high for the state’s apples, a national cider program by New Belgium would require new orchards. That’s around a 5 year grow time.
If New Belgium goes national with this cider program, the brewery mentions they will end up adding a full blown cidery facility. That build is a bit down the road right now.
In our opinion, these ciders are already a home run. A fantastic showing of versatility and quality from New Belgium.
If you are in the Asheville area anytime soon, you’ll find these cans exclusively at select retailers.
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- New Belgium Side Trip Dry Cider
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- New Belgium Side Trip Semi-Dry Cider
It’s Negroni Week. Meet New Belgium Negroni Beer
In case you aren’t hardcore into cocktails, it’s officially Negroni Week. June 6-12 are dedicated to the Negroni cocktail, made of just three ingredients – Campari, Gin, and Vermouth. (Despite celebrating booze, the week has great charitable intentions around the U.S.) New Belgium Negroni Beer, a new beer designed to taste like the cocktail, is making appearances this week as well.
Making a beer taste like a Negroni takes a little finesse. Gin is very herbal, Vermouth is a fortified wine infused with botanicals, campari follows suit. A beer to match that profile took a little more than hops and malts.
The base of New Belgium Negroni Beer starts simple, with pale malt and Nugget hops. From there, it’s gets weird/good. A host of ingredients are added, including Seville orange peel, mandarin orange juice, licorice, Indian coriander. That’s the end of list of things you might have heard of.
Next there’s horehound, an herb used in natural cough drops, Birchwood bark, which gives drinks like Birch Beer it’s herbal flavor, quassia root apparently tastes a bit like licorice and used for bitters, and cochineal. Cochineal is an insect. Yes, a bug. A creepy crawly.
Cochineal has historically been used to dye fabrics. The bug gives this beer a reddish tint. (Also, it’s basically harmless, alive, dead or drunk off it’s legs in your beer. ) All those ingredients help recreate gin and campari flavors.
From there, the beer is blended with New Belgium Blackberry Barleywine, and infused with toasted oak spirals in order to recreate the vermouth flavor.
New Belgium Negroni Beer is a draft only offering this week in select cities. Best best on finding this concoction? Check with your favorite cocktail spot.
Style: Herb/Spice Beer (w/ Orange Peel, Licorice, Coriander, Quassa Root, Cochineal, Birchwood Bark, Oak Aged.)
Hops: Nugget
Malt: Pale
Availability: Draft only. Select cities
Release: Week of June 6th, 2016
6% ABV, 7 IBUs
New Belgium Lips Of Faith Flowering Citrus Ale, with De Konnick
New Belgium Lips Of Faith Flowering Citrus Ale is destined for the brewery’s Lips of Faith Series. This beer is brewed in collaboration with a Belgian brewer De Konnick. Interestingly, this is the second Belgian collaboration this year – hitting shelves now is a Golden Ale brewed with Hof Ten Dormaal.
New Belgium Lips Of Faith Flowering Citrus Ale is designed for summer sipping, brewed with hibiscus and rose petals. The Mistral hops highlighted in this beer are a new variety from France, boasting flavors of passion fruit and kumquat.
No need to jet to Antwerp when you can open up a bouquet of Flowing Citrus Ale. Thanks to our friends at De Konnick Brewery, we brewed up a summery ale bursting with key lime and whole lemons that mingle with the fragrance of hibiscus, rose petals and strawberry-tinged Mistral hops. Open up and let Belgian summer bloom.
New Belgium Lips Of Faith Flowering Citrus Ale will be a 12 ounce bottle offering. The brewery has not yet announced this release.
Style: (w/ Hibiscus, Roses)
Availability: 12oz Bottles, Draft.
Release: TBA
New Belgium Fat Wild Ale
New Belgium Fat Wild Ale
New Belgium Fat Funk Ale
New Belgium Fat Funk Ale
