Lauren Salazar of New Belgium Brewing is the high priestess of sour beer. (Courtesy of New Belgium Brewing).
New Belgium Brewing Company’s high priestess of sour beer Lauren Salazar often says she has a dream that one day the brewery’s delicious La Folie would become the nation’s go-to sour in the same way Fat Tire is to amber ale.
It is a wish that could some day come true.
As more breweries produce sour beers, the American palette is growing more sophisticated and sours are becoming more accepted. In due time people surely will begin to expect to see more sour beer tap handles, and La Folie from the nation’s third-largest craft brewer would be a good choice.
“I am still hopeful that we can produce enough that people say, ‘This is the sour that I can actually get,'” she said. “It will become their Friday five o’clock beer of choice. Before that beer was probably an IPA or an amber, but maybe now it will be a sour.”
On Saturday, New Belgium Brewing will introduce its 2016 batch of sour beauts — La Folie and Transatlantic Kriek — at 35 Lost in the Woods events throughout the country, including in Denver and at the flagship brewery in Fort Collins.
The event in Fort Collins sold out in 39 minutes and has a wait list of 300 people. Denver’s event will be from 6-11 p.m. at Battery 621 at 621 Kalamath St.
New Belgium Brewing has indeed planted a flag for sours in the nation’s beer scene.
The brewery has one of the largest sour programs in the country. And La Folie, which was introduced in 1997, is indeed one of the best, winning a gold medal in the first year of its existence at the Great American Beer Festival.
is a sour brown ale aged for three years in giant oak foeders shipped from across the globe. It is the beer I choose when I try to introduce sour beer novices to the style. It is a sharp, sour beer with notes of green apple and cherry. Salazar said this year’s batch has a more woody taste bringing out a sweet, almost creme brulee-flavor above the sourness.
Transatlantique Kriek is an annual collaborative beer with Gert Christiaens of Oud Beersel, an award-winning Belgian lambic producer. The Belgian brewery usually produces the kriek and New Belgium typically adds half golden strong lager to the mix. But this year’s batch is different with New Belgium adding its base sour beer, producing an more fruit-forward sour with citrus notes and a little funky bite of brettanomyces.
Every year Salazar, the brewery’s sour beer blender, and her husband, Eric Salazar, the brewery’s wood cellar manager, coordinate a blend of various foeders to create La Folie and Transatltique Kriek. Each year the concoction is different.
New Belgium will continue to mass produce La Folie, which has given some beer geeks some pause because the beer is flash pasteurized. Salazar says that process freezes the taste of the blend in place and is the responsible thing to do for a brewery that makes so much of the temperamental beer.
“The flash pasteurizer is a very specific tool that is used at a very specific time and temperature focused on a very specific organism that will damage your flavor profile,” she said. “It does not impact the overall flavor profile.”
And what a flavor it is. Salazar could be right. I keep expecting to see La Folie taps becoming more and more common in bars as sour beers become more accepted. New Belgium’s program and the Salazars would deserve all the credit.
