Beer News from New Belgium Brewing
With all the great things New Belgium is doing for their community and the environment, we reached out to New Belgium wondering what was going on the beer front. Here are a few tidbits we received from them on the brew front.
- For the Fall Season – HopTober – A hoppy pale ale with five different hops and four different malts. New Belgium could have easily added a Marzen/Octoberfest Beer to blend in with the 87 other American Marzens to pick from, but they didn’t.
- For the Fall Season – Fall Wild Ale – Described as a spiced Abbey using a wild yeast, a trappist yeast and spiked with Brett. Packaging details aren’t yet available, but this should be a really fun beer to try.
- A To Be Determined Collaboration Ale will be bottled! One of the four beers from the Elysian/New Belgium Trip Series will be voted on to determine which is the Best of the Four. Finally a wider audience will be able to try what the folks in Seattle and Colorado have been drinking. When asked if any new collaborations were in the works with other brewers, we were told not at this time.
- La Folie has in fact been repackaged from 750 ml bottles to 22 oz. bottles and placed in the Lips of Faith series. This has been done to allow for wider distribution. When asked if this beer was once unpasteurized but now pasteurized, I was told that is false, and that each bottle is sprinkled with some live yeast love before being capped
- When asked if any East Coast states will get some New Belgium expansion, we were told not in 2009 and maybe not 2010. In order for NB to keep it’s momentum, they are going to focus on the states they just entered. Their model will be to get deeper, not farther. They have grown 10% even with the recent economic downturn. Glad to see they are using a cautious approach.
