New Belgium Brewing - Le Terroir

Today, we are smack in the middle of San Diego Beer Week. I was fully planning on making this post about a sour event I attended on Friday. However, due to the event not being quite what I was hoping it would be (obscene pricing + multiple sketchy tasting pours + limited tap list), I'm going to move onto something else and come back to San Diego Beer Week after the epic-ness that is planned for tomorrow.

Which brings us to a familiar place- New Belgium's Lips of Faith series. I've kind of been to all ends of the spectrum on this series. I started off in love with it, but lately their offerings have fallen off a bit and it's been a while since I was really blown away by one. Luckily, they just brought back an old favorite- Le Terroir. This beer is a dry hopped sour that I haven't tried in quite a while. If my memory serves me correctly, my first meeting with Le Terroir was on the same day that I met both Pliny the Younger and Alpine's Exponential Hoppiness for the first time. (I think I still have yet to top that day, beer-wise.) So let's go back and take a look at a beer that is definitely worth revisiting. At #183, Le Terroir.

Le Terroir pours a raw honey color with a touch of haze to it. A half-finger cream colored head forms immediately and leaves some nice streaks of lace down the glass with each sip. I may knock some of New Belgium's other beers, but you won't find me knocking their sours. Especially the smell. Le Terroir brings a deep and musty smell with bright notes of lychee, mango, pear and some nice lactobacillus. As it warms, some bready malt and light yeast notes begin to creep up as well as a touch of umami.

Le Terroir is a lesson in balance. It doesn't wallop you with sourness, but rather lets it creep over your palate and linger on the sides of your tongue. Underripe white peach, green apple, lacto and some light apricot all make appearances. The finish brings some mango, soft bready malt and a touch of wood. As the beer warms, a hint of brett is evident as well. I hear La Folie talked about way more than this beer, but this is probably the one people should be talking about. It's one of the better sours out there. If you're a sour fan, do not miss out on this one.

Final Grade: A

Top 250 Beers Tasted: 129

New Belgium Brewing - Lips of Faith-Cascara Quad

Remember the infamous San Diego 4th of July firework show last year? In case you somehow didn't hear about San Diego's "Big Bay Boom," here's the video. Basically, instead of a 20 minute firework spectacle, San Diegans got an ear-shattering 15 seconds of thousands of fireworks exploding at the same time. When it was over, everyone looked around dumbfounded and asked: "Is that it?" Yesterday, the exact same thing happened...but in my mouth.

Within the last few weeks, New Belgium has released four Lips of Faith beers. In general, I'm a big fan of this series, so I usually try to give them all a shot. But four? Not to mention that one of those was the annual release of their awesome sour, La Folie. Heaven help me (and my wallet). I decided to kick things off with a new one that sounded interesting: Cascara Quad.

Cascara Quad is a new take on the Belgian Quadrupel style. It uses something I had never heard of before- coffee cherries. In South America (Bolivia in particular), there's a tea made from the dried berries (or cherries) of coffee plants. This tea is called cascara and was New Belgium's inspiration for this beer. In addition to the cascara, dates are added to a Belgian Quad base beer. Sounds pretty good, no? That's what I thought too.

Cascara pours a murky, almost dulled-looking brownish color. A huge and foamy tan-colored head forms immediately and left a ton of lace down the glass. Not only did the head look great, it released some really unique aromas. I got a pretty nice blend of sweet dark cherries and Belgian yeast. Some mild tobacco, clove and dark fruit aromas were present as well.

I really enjoyed the look and smell of this beer, so the taste really caught me off guard. As soon as it passes your lips, there's absolute chaos in your mouth. It's like none of the flavors in this beer could wait to impress your palate, so they all decided to gang tackle it at once. There's a sticky mass of Belgian yeast, tobacco, brown sugar, molasses, date and fig in here, but they all hit your taste buds at once, and then disappear as fast as they showed up. So what you get is a beer that hits you with all the flavor it has in the beginning, but leaves nothing for the middle or finish. After the initial tongue pummeling, all that was left was an unpleasant sourness that reminded me of grain husk and faded earthy hops. What a bummer.

For me, this beer was a miss. It showed a lot of promise, but sometimes crazy ingredients just don't work out. That said, I give major props to New Belgium for finding out about cascara and wanting to give this beer a shot. I may not buy this beer again, but I'm far from being turned off from the Lips of Faith series. Keep it up, New Belgium. But no more "Big Bay Booms" in my mouth, please.


Final Grade: C

Top 250 Beers Tasted: 116

New Belgium Brewing - Lips of Faith-Peach Porch Lounger

New Belgium has been doing the Lips of Faith series for a few years now and some pretty amazing beers have come out of it. La Folie and Le Terroir are two of the best sours I've ever had and a few of the other beers in the series (especially Fresh Hop India Pale Ale) knocked it out of the park. There have, however, also been some misses along the way. Tart Lychee was a bit of a letdown as were Super Cru and Clutch. So it's always hard to tell if the next Lips of Faith is going to be amazing or a bit of a letdown. But the ideas New Belgium comes up with for the Lips of Faith beers are so original that I always have a hard time passing them up. The newest Lips of Faith beer, Peach Porch Lounger, just hit stores recently, so I decided to give it a shot.

Peach Porch Lounger is a collaboration with musician G.Love that features a pretty interesting list of ingredients. Listed as a saison, this beer features peach juice, molasses, hominy grits, lemon peel and Brettanomyces. Not a bad lineup at all. Now let's see how it works.

Peach Porch Lounger pours a glowing orange color with a one-finger foamy white head. The head showed pretty nice retention and left patchy rings of lace down the glass. I'm a pretty big fan of everything peach, so I really dug the smell, which was mostly an intriguing blend of earthy Belgian yeast and peach puree. I also picked up some faint traces of vanilla bean, lemon peel and banana bread. I really couldn't wait to try this beer.

...and then came the letdown. Expecting loads of ripe peach flavor, I was instead met with dense waves of Belgian yeast and an off putting metallic flavor. Clove, lemon seed and peach pit make a bit of an appearance towards the end, but they're held down by a mouthfeel better suited to a barleywine. The truth is, this just seems like too big of a beer for the ingredients. A peach saison sounds delicious, but when the alcohol is bumped up to ungodly heights (9.4% for a saison???) it creates a strange franken-brew that's borderline undrinkable. It's a shame, but I will have to file this one in the "miss" box. I'm still looking forward to the next Lips of Faith beer, though.

Final Grade: C-

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 39

New Belgium Brewing - Lips of Faith-Cocoa Mole

If you know me, you know I love all things chocolate. So when I heard that New Belgium's newest Lips of Faith beer was called Cocoa Mole, I got pretty excited. A beer brewed with chiles AND chocolate? Game over. There was absolutely no way I wasn't trying this one. I found a bottle last week at Texas Liquor and opened it about two minutes later at home.

Cocoa Mole pours a dark brown color with a thin but long-lasting cream colored head. The smell was really incredible. I caught a lot of cinnamon and unsweetened baking chocolate along with some brown sugar and a slight hint of chile.

The taste opens up sweet and smooth with some notes of dark chocolate and a bit of earthiness from the chiles. Right around the middle, I got a good hit of heat from the peppers. The heat lasts through the finish and the chiles leave a bit of dryness on the tongue. My biggest complaint about this one was that the mouthfeel was a bit thin. Other than that, this was a pretty well executed experiment.

Final Grade: B+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34