New Belgium Love

Brewed by New Belgium Brewing Company
Style: Sour Ale
Fort Collins, Colorado USA

Draft at Falling Rock: Hazy orange. Creamy but broken head forms a creamy collar as it disperses. Cheesy aromas merge with hints of sherry, apricot cobbler, and cantaloupe. Intensely acetic, and to a detriment. Gentle carbonation. Soft in body. Bracingly acetic and tacky upfront, with a supple and meaty honey-drizzled apricot core. Straw-tinged malt evokes thoughts of piecrust before giving way to an intense estery fruitiness and assorted notes of melon. Structure suffers due to dull oak and flabby fruitiness which soon fatigues the palate and becomes the dominant character. Finishes off-dry with a coarse brush of poorly defined oak which struggles to fend off the stewed apricot sweetness and acetic acid. Certainly enjoyable to a degree but, overall, the fruitiness, which is both rampant and clingy, destroys the structure of the beer, and the throat-burning acetic character is reminiscent of uric acid.

Tap @ falling rock’s love fest. Damn. The nose is amazing. The distillation of all that is great in rodenbach and la folie! I’ve been here 20 minutes and have yet to do more than sniff. A clear lightly carbonated gold. Incredibly sour body. Slighly sweet with hints of brown sugar but with a biting sourness that dominates the tongue. A smooth finish that lingers.

Draft at Brouwers Cafe Sourfest. Pours a very cloudy bright orange that clarifies to a ruddier amber as it warms. Nice thick creamy head. Lemony nose that just rips your head clean off--this is like standing at takeoff behind a jet plane that runs on lemons. Rich, creamy body that as Theisti noted is "simultaneously both mouth-coating and drying." Sharply tingling carb as well. Lemony, lactic, acetic kick just thrashing you every inch of the way across your tongue. Perhaps not the most unrelenting sour beer made; I’m sure you can find others that thrash harder. But it’s close enough that it’ll do until those beers get here. This is good stuff, bracing and refreshing, but it’s really a lot to deal with and just a now-and-then thing.
Earlier Rating: 5/13/2008 Total Score: 4
Draft at Brouwers Cafe Sourfest. Pours deeply cloudy bright orange with a thick, creamy white head. Huge lemony nose with some malt sweetness cutting through--this one definitely shows more breadth and polish and finish than its base beer. Rich, creamy medium body with tingling, zapping carb and a monstrous lemony kick right off the bat. Some brett and earth kick in (you can feel them slightly on the nose as well), but then there’s that big lactic/acetic blast at the end. Has several interesting components very harmoniously blended. Not something to drink all the time, or very far from private indoor plumbing if you have a sensitive stomach. But beautifully done and very drinkable.

draft @ brouwer’s sour fest - had this side by side with the Le Terroir; bright orange with slight haze and plenty of carbonation; thin head quickly fades; aromas of peaches and apples are tart; lots of sourness and a dry finish; medium body and slightly creamy texture; enjoyable, but i couldn’t quite finish, especially as i was blown away by le terroir but probably more due the fact that i was all sour-ed out by this point

(Draught) Pours a lightly hazy golden body with small off-white head. Aroma of mold, mustiness, old books, and light sourness. Flavor of sour fruit upfront and then dries out quickly with the oak.

Tap at Night of the Funk. Apparently I’m the only guy that doesn’t love this beer. Cloudy gold pour with a decent head. Some acid in the aroma, but a lot of garbage smells. Flavor has a good sour up front but fades into more trash. Maybe there’s just something wrong with me. This is incredibly different than La Folie and every other sour beer I’ve had from NB. Ah well.

Tap from 08 Night of the Funk. Aroma of funky tobacco, mildew, compost, feces. But of course all of this in a good way. Flavor tart and acidic, very funky with that mildew presence. Very interesting arrangement of pure funk.

Tap sampled on 09/26/08 at Night of the Funk. Pours a light orange with a small white head. Aroma of slight tartness with lots of citrus, orange zest, and a ton of funk. This is a very light tasting beer, almost Berliner Weisse-lke with the slight tartness to it. Pretty good but of course La Folie is better!