Rose & Crown English Pub in Palo Alto held a brewery night last Wednesday featuring the beers from New Belgium Brewing Company. New Belgium is one of those breweries that I have a soft spot for. For a brewery of their size, they allow their brewers a certain amount of freedom to experiment and come up with new beers. Some work, some don’t but the fact the get to play at all is a good thing. I also appreciate how the owner’s core beliefs are translated all the way through the company. This goes from environmental stewardship, social and cultural change and just plain having fun. If you ever have a chance to visit the brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, I encourage you to take a tour.
Rose & Crown had a wide variety of beers available to try from New Belgium that evening. It seemed that many of the available beers were seasonal, small batch stuff, or part of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series; not a lot you’d be able to find on the shelves of your local bottle shop. At least not the ones I go to. Here are the beers we tried:
Imperial berliner-weiss, 7.0% ABV
Lactic tart aroma, light sweetness. Flavor is not as tart as it smells, lemony-green apple tartness with slight sweetness in the finish. Almost no hop bitterness. Medium body, high carbonation, crisp finish. Leaves my teeth squeaky clean.
Belgium is the country most associated with sour ales but they’re not the only country to do so. Germany has brewed a traditionally sour ale style known as Berliner-weisse. This is a style of beer that is traditionally low in alcohol, 2.8% - 3.8%, brewed with about 50% of the grist being wheat malt and soured through the use of Lactobacillus delbruckii. In Germany, this beer is often blended with syrups (raspberry or woodruff) or even blended with a traditional pilsner to cut down on the sourness. Most Germans would look at you funny if you ordered this beer straight up without a syrup, actually.
The Imperial Berliner-Weisse from New Belgium is a lot heavier than your traditional Berliner-Weisse. As a result, it looses a lot of it’s more refreshing characteristics because it’s so heavy-handed. What this beer hasn’t lost though, is it’s acidic tartness. It’s a decent beer and an interesting take on the style but I think I prefer a traditional.
Banana-ish, yeasty aroma, low peppery notes and slight wheat malt sweetness. Flavor is similar to aroma, banana, stone fruit character, medium-low spice and alcohol character. High carbonation, medium-full body, slightly dry finish. Caramel? Munich malt character? Dunkleweiss?
Saisons are typically warmer weather beers that have a moderate spice character and robust hop bitterness as well. I know that heather has been used as a brewing spice before the discovery of hops and has acted as a bittering agent of sorts to balance out the malt character of a beer. I have no idea what heather tastes like. Further confusing me is that there are a wide variety of plants that fall within the heather family, like blueberries and cranberries, but I’m not sure if brewers used the flowers or the leaves. In any case, this beer tasted more like a dunkleweiss than a saison; which is too bad considering how good this beer sounded on paper.
Decidedly sour aroma, vomit-ish, stone fruit character. Flavor is very tart and slightly fruity. Low hop flavor and bitterness. Low/medium-low body with high carbonation and a champagne-like dryness. Much more lactic sour than the berliner weiss. Teeth are squeaky clean.
Probably my favorite beer of the evening; Eric’s Ale is a decidedly tart beer. Named after New Belgium brewer Eric Salazar, this beer is blend of wood aged sour beer with a semi-sweet, higher alcohol beer and re-fermented with peach juice. The beer is very tart, which I think obscures the peach and wood character of the beer but I liked it nonetheless.
Slight funky Belgian yeasty aroma, slight peppery spiciness and dark fruit sweetness. Flavor is balanced: sweet, caramelized, dark fruit malt sweetness with a peppery spice charcter and moderate hop bitterness. Fruity, nectarine like a belgian dubbel. Nectarine. Body is medium-low/medium, medium high carbonation, slightly dry finish. Brett character as it warms. Chocolatey.
Kasim, owner of the Rose & Crown, intentionally left out that this beer was brewed with schisandra mainly because he doesn’t know what it is and wouldn’t be able to answer any questions about the berry. That being said, it’s difficult for me to taste this beer and say, “oh, that’s definitely schisandra, unmistakable, I’d pick it out of anywhere”. Apparently the berries of the schisandra plant have been used medicinally by the Chinese. I’m beginning to think these New Belgium guys hang out at the Chinese herbal/medicinal shops because their Mothership Wit is also brewed with Asian spices.
While I admittedly don’t make it to Rose & Crown as often as I probably should, I do appreciate all the hard work and effort that goes into putting together Brewery Nights. Brewery Nights are an excellent way for breweries to share some of their more special beers and rare beers on a keg-by-keg basis as opposed to having to do a huge bottling run. Also, it’s a great way to discovery a brewery outside of their flagship beers.
