New Belgium Cascara Quad

New Belgium seems to put out a lot of beers in their Lips of Faith series. We don't get them here in Philly but they are distributed close by so I'll see them sometimes during travels or just see people picking them up when they hit some stores. I'm not quite sure why they brew so many since a ton are absolutely mediocre but maybe it's fun? This bottle was sent to me by my buddy in San Diego. Cascara Quad is a quad, obviously, brewed with dates and aged on coffee cherries (which are not cherries but the, like, coating around a coffee bean).

Okay, yeah, the description didn't fill me with confidence that this is more than a weird mix of odd ingredients, but I like quads so I thought it would at be least okay. Silly me, I guess, as this beer was thoroughly mediocre. Nose was light, mostly chocolate and a bit of booze with maybe a little bit of date. Medium bodied. An odd flavor started things off, sort of like a mediocre quad awash in alcohol. Didn't get any coffee, but I don't know if coffee cherries actually have any flavor so maybe I should have expected that. As I drank more, the alcohol became more and more prevalent with the beer portion just being mediocre and getting overwhelmed. It's a shame as a good quad is awesome, this just isn't one of those. Regardless, it's still fun to try new beers, even if sometimes they are terrible. Still, you shouldn't waste even a few dollars on this, take my word for it.

New Belgium Tart Lychee

This was sent to me by my buddy from San Diego. I'd heard that it was pretty good and was real happy to see it in the box when I opened it. Totally why I like not knowing everything before it arrives since surprises make receiving beer even more fun. Tart Lychee is an American Wild Ale.

Smelled quite tropical with a little sourness. Inviting. (I say this a lot don't I? Oh well.) First sip was a nice mix of sweet and sour balanced with some tropical fruit. Continued that way throughout the whole bottle, never becoming too sour or too sweet. Nothing mind blowing, but considering it was relatively cheap, it's totally solid. Probably a great way to slowly introduce people to a sour beer, too. My wife enjoyed this which is always a plus as well. This is basically what I expect from a New Belgium sour, well balanced and not overwhelming. I'm not sure if that sounds sarcastic, but I mean it as a positive since it means you know what you'll get. Always a good thing when buying new beers.

New Belgium Frambozen

So I was right and I was lazy today. Beer it is! One of the places we had dinner in Asheville was Barley's Taproom, a quite large and pretty nice pizza place. There was a decent number of drafts with quite a few local ones, but I started with one from New Belgium and then moved to local. Frambozen is a raspberry brown ale which I didn't know at the time but does make sense considering the flavors.

Basically smelled like raspberry iced tea with the raspberry overwhelming everything. Since I didn't know the style at the time other than it had raspberry in it, my notes say, "big raspberry flavor on top of a lager like flavor, a nuttiness if you will. Slightly odd finish too." Knowing it's a brown ale as a base makes some of those flavors make sense, but I still wasn't a big fan of this. The raspberry was nice but otherwise it was just eh and I didn't really like the base beer flavors. Win some, you lose some. Sorry New Belgium!

Lost Abbey & New Belgium Brett Beer

We opened this the same night as the Lime-A-Rita so at least we knew it would be better than it's competition even before opening the bottle. This was a collaboration between Lost Abbey and New Belgium and given the bottle design, came out of New Belgium specifically. Brett Beer seems to be a pale ale base that was fully fermented with brettanomyces yeast in order to best showcase how that yeast strain affects a beer.

Dry earthy nose with some pineapple fruitiness in it. Following was a fruity body with pineapple and some bread notes along with faint spiciness. A little bitterness and a little earthiness finished things up. This was quite decent and the pineapple was real nice and clear. It was a great example of the kind of  flavors brett can impart. Usually those flavors are overpowered by lactic or acetic acid especially in American Wild Ales so it's nice to get a clean version of them.

Regional Food & Drink in DC

We were in DC for a wedding and the rehearsal dinner was held at a place called Regional Food & Drink. Since we were in a side room for the event, I didn't see much of the place but it seemed nice enough. During the rehearsal part of it I mostly drank Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald, a porter, which is great so that was cool. After the dinner a bunch of us switched to the main part of the restaurant and got a table in the back. I didn't know what to expect as far as the draft list but it was actually quite god with lots of variety and decent enough prices. I decided to start with the Dogfish Head 120 Minute, an 18% monster IPA, since I wasn't sure if I'd find it on draft anywhere else.