I have earlier posts on The Lost Abbey and New Belgium beers that contain a full discussion of their brewers and breweries so I will refrain from jumping into that again here. Brett Beer, one of the newest in New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series, is a collaborative beer with The Lost Abbey. Collaborative brews are pretty commonplace in the craft beer industry now, as well known breweries get together to brew what can be an exquisite beer that neither brewery involved would ever have brewed on their own. Many are successful and delicious, quite a few are not; but the only way to find out for sure what one will taste like is to actually pick up a bottle and try it. So on with the review and a nifty video that The Lost Abbey posted to YouTube showing portions of the brewing process.
On Beeradvocate, Brett Beer has a BA Score of 76 with a 73 from the Bros. At ratebeer it has a 66 overall and an 18 for style. Those are some pretty low ratings from both sites with ratebeer being noticeably lower as usual.
They say:
New Belgium Brewing and The Lost
Abbey brewery from San Marcos, California have a shared passion for a variety
of things, not the least of which is the wild Belgian yeast brettanomyces. So they decided to join
forces and collaborate. Lost Abbey Collaboration is brewed simply with pale
malts accompanied by Target, Centennial and Sorachi hops for a hint of citrus.
Focusing on their mutual respect for the ingredient, the spotlight shines on
the brettanomyces, where a full brett
fermentation offers bold pineapple overtones and funky, sour edge. The beer is
a shining, golden shade and is warming and dry.
The Lost Abbey Collaboration is full of wild wonder and will leave you
wanting more.
Just the facts Ma'am...
Birthdate – July, 20212
ABV – 7.5%
Hops – Target, Centennial, Sorachi Ace
Malts – Pale
OG – 21
Body – Medium
Aroma – Tropical overripe pineapple/lemon and tropical fruits, nice
pleasant malt and some spicy clove phenols.
Mouthfeel – Starts out luscious fruity and then ends like a
Flintstone’s vitamin (fruity and drier)
Flavor – Soft tart/citric character from both the hop and the wild
yeast. Some sweet bready and honey notes.
Visual – Hazy pale golden straw with pillowy foam.
I say:
Brett
Beer poured an impressive light gold / straw with a nice foamy head that held
good retention and provided decent lacing in the glass. I poured a particularly vigorous pour so I
was expecting a larger head than I got.
The aroma had the characteristic barnyard funk from the brettanomyces, with a very slight amount
of pineapple and malty sweetness in the background with just the slightest
hints of phenolics. It was a somewhat
pleasant smell, but when I passed the glass over to my wife, she hated it. So, if you like the aroma of Brett it smells
great, if not your results may be mixed.
The
flavor was slightly sweet up front with mango and banana coming to the
forefront. There were bready and earthy
notes from the yeast in the background.
Some of the brett funk was apparent in the flavor but it was much more
subdued than in the aroma. I thought it
was a very enjoyable beer so I passed the glass over to my wife to get her
thoughts. She begrudgingly took a sip
and proclaimed it better than it smelled and almost drinkable. So there you have it, a beer geek thinks it’s
a very good beer; a non-beer geek, not so much.
It
was moderately carbonated and medium bodied.
Brett
Beer from New Belgium and The Lost Abbey was a very good beer. Both breweries produce excellently brewed
beers individually and their combined efforts produced another excellent
product. Hopefully the trend towards
large scale collaborative beers continues, I know that I am greatly looking
forward to the bottle of Brux, the Russian River and Sierra Nevada
collaboration that I have waiting for me in the cellar.
I
am getting ahead of myself though. Check
back later this week for the first in a series of posts on the craft breweries
that I visited when I was in Albuquerque for a couple days on vacation. I wish I would have had time to visit all of
them because the beer that I had down there was very
good.
Happy Drinking!!