Ingredient Insight: New Belgium brings back sour, spice

New Belgium Brewing is releasing 2015’s La Folie and Transatlantique Kriek while reissuing a new Cocoa Molé, offering an inventive mixture of sour, sweet, heat and tradition. Two of these Lips of Faith additions (Transatlantique Kriek and La Folie) will remain out through the remainder of 2015 and Cocoa Molé will be out through March, or while supplies last.

La Folie, French for “the folly” and New Belgium’s earliest sour beer release dating back to 1997, returns yet again to offer this year’s sour delight. A wood-conditioned brown ale, La Folie ages one to three years in French oak foeders formerly used in wine production. The result? A smooth oaky nose and delightfully tart finish. This one-of-a-kind sour brown ale is sharp like a lambic, sour in the finish, and full of green apple, cherry, and plum-skin notes. It pours a deep mahogany.

Transatlantique Kriek offers another dose of sour that’s crisp and effervescent. The 2015 edition of Transatlantique Kriek began life in the oaken vessels of Gert Christiaens’ Oud Beersel brewery, deep in Belgium’s Senne Valley. After it wood aged, Oud Beersel’s lambic was blended with tart cherries and shipped across the pond to New Belgium Brewmaster, Peter Bouckaert. In concert with Oud Beersel’s cherry lambic ale, Bouckaert created a full golden brew to blend in and round out this kriek. The result is an intense cherry nose leading to a pleasing sweet-tart flash finish across the palate.

The third, Lips of Faith release is Cocoa Molé, a spiced chocolate porter. The beer combines chocolate, cinnamon and chilies for a sweet and spicy burst of fun. Brewed with deep caramel and dark chocolate malts, plus a healthy dash of chocolate rye, it pours midnight dark with a subtle, reddish hue and pillowy, burnished head atop. Starting on the tongue with the sweet chocolate and finishing with a fine-spun heat of peppers, Cocoa Molé is a worldly contrast in a glass – olé.

For more on New Belgium, check out the brewery’s website.