New Belgium Winter Beer Tasting

I went to another great beer tasting at my favorite beer joint, the Flying Saucer, a few nights ago. The last time it was for North Coast Brewery and this time around it was for Colorado's New Belgium Brewery, a favorite of mine. I've tried the majority of their brews (plenty of times for most of them) but they make some great stuff and the Saucer folks are pretty good at pairing them up with food so I try not to miss these things. It's always a fun time to meet and visit with other beer lovers as well.

Our local beer rep for New Belgium got us going with a speech about the brewery and it's beers. They started us off with the Abbey Grand Cru, a rich, full-bodied Belgian dubbel style ale that's a little bit fruity. It went well with the salad they served, which had a little jalapeno vinaigrette in it for good measure. This is a great beer and quenched the heat brought on by the salad dressing quite nicely.

Before the trio of soup samplers they brought out some Summership Wit, a zesty white beer that's their first venture into organically-produced beer. I prefer this brew in the Summer, but it's a bit lighter and that was welcome after the 9% abv of the starting beer.

Next came the soup and their La Folie, which is a really sour lambic-like beer. He talked a bit about the oak aging this beer goes through and as this beer sit a little bit and breathed, it got better. Not a beer I'd drink often though.

That got us to the main course, which was some excellent smoked tenderloin, vegetable medley and some baby baked potatoes. Out for this came one of my favorite New Belgium beers, the chocolaty 1554 black ale. I drink this beer pretty regularly as it's got a nice clean finish after a good coffee tone to the flavor.

Once we finished the main course we got served a very special beer, their new dark, double-bock weiss beer called Matty's Dunkel. He hinted as to what was in it but wanted us to figure it our for ourselves. It was spiced with clove and black pepper, but only slighly. The bigger flavor was of banana and it was a pretty sweet beer. This was another 9% Abv as well. They brought out a Belgian waffle that was actually prepared with New Belgium Trippel, dusted with sugar and topped with peaches and cream. Oh baby... delicious! The beer and the waffle both were.

Great night of eating, visiting and sampling for sure and one of my favorite tastings in a while. For good measure before walking across the street and catching some local bands, I topped it off with a New Belgium 2° Below. It's a very drinkable seasonal hoppy Winter brew with some floral hints that I like during the holiday season.