Lost in the Woods with New Belgium Brewing
This week we attended New Belgium’s Lost in the Woods event. We knew little about the event. What we knew was New Belgium was hosting it, there would be sour beers, and food provided by one of our favorite Cleveland food purveyors. We were instantly sold and tickets were bought.
Further research showed that this is an annual sour soiree that New Belgium hosts and this year, they decided to host a satellte event in Cleveland. Excellent for us, since we couldn’t make it to Fort Collins, Colorado. Schedules, bank accounts and logic just couldn’t bring us to fly there for a beer tasting. Our drinking buddies Adam & Alex joined us for the event because they could not pass up a night full of sour beers.
Tickets were $35 and included five specialty sour tastings, snacks by Saucisson, live music by David Wong and Mistar Anderson. The ticket proceeds benefited Mind Matters Cleveland.
Event Space: The event took place in Rustbelt Reclaimation. We’ve heard a lot about this place but have never been there. If you’ve never heard of them: “Rustbelt Reclamation designs, crafts, and markets superior quality furniture and accessories utilizing reclaimed wood sourced and upcycled in the USA.” The space is amazing and looks like a modern Mad Men set. The actual office is an open, yet industrial floor plan; but the event also reached back into the warehouse where salvages and wood used for the furniture were organized by size and type. We’ve never been to a beer event in such an interesting space. Were we cool enough to even be there? That’s still up for debate.
The Beers: The event featured the premiere of two sour beer vintages: the 2016 La Folie, the award-winning sour brown ale that launched New Belgium’s wood beer program back in 1997; and the 2016 Transatlantique Kriek, a wood-aged sour cherry ale brewed in collaboration with Belgium’s Oud Beersel. In addtion to La Folie and Kriek, they also produce Le Terroir, a delicious dry-hopped sour ale, that was unfortunately not poured at the event. New Belgium brews excellent beers and they take sours to a whole new level. They’re smooth, delicious, full of flavor and easy to drink. Check out their website for a full history of their sour beers and their process. It’s very interesting and informative.
The Food: Normally we wouldn’t spend too much time talking about event food but Saucisson is one of our favorite food places in Cleveland. We are obsessed with these lady butchers, Melissa Khoury and Penny Barend. A future post will go into much greater detail about them and their amazing business.
Final Thoughts: This is one of the best beer events we’ve been to. The event had a very swanky, hip vibe, probably due to the industrial artistic space. The beers were delicious although almost deadly as they all had a high ABV (thanks morning headache).
Alex’s thoughts: I thought it was a lot of fun and very cool. Different than any other beer event I’ve been to. I loved how they used a cool space and had local food and of course the beers were very delicious.
Adam’s thoughts: I agree with Alex. This was the coolest beer tasting we’ve ever been to. The use of local food was great and the space was awesome. I think we asked each other a few times if we were cool enough to even be there. The sours were awesome and, according to our passing out on the couch and waking up with headaches, very strong as well.
