New Belgium Brewing & TRVE Brewing Co. Collaborate on Where I Live Dark Sour Ale

Posted on by mashingin

NBTRVEWhereILive2New Belgium Brewing (Fort Collins, Colorado) has officially announced that Where I Live, a Limited Release Mixed Culture Sour Ale brewed in collaboration with TRVE Brewing Company (Denver, Colorado), is hitting select markets now.

Inspired by the “ancient Belgian tradition” of blending wood-aged Sour Ales, Lauren Limbach, New Belgium Wood Cellar Director and Blender, and Nick Nunns, Founder of TRVE Brewing, have “long dreamt of blending their sour beers” but such a project was not legally possible until December 2017 when the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform “legalized brewery-to-brewery tax-free transfers of beer.”

“When we first started talking about this collaboration at GABF 2016, it wasn’t even legal,” says Limbach. “U.S. brewers couldn’t send beer to each other for this kind of project. That changed in late 2017, paving the way for what we think is the first beer of its kind in the U.S. — legally, at least.”

To bring this “dream collaboration” to life, New Belgium started Where I Live with a base beer brewed with malts from Troubadour Maltings in Fort Collins and fermented with Norwegian Kveik yeast.  That base beer was then “blended with a foeder-aged dark sour, then further matured with TRVE’s mixed-culture in one of New Belgium’s French oak foeders.”  To finish the beer off, the final blend was “circulated over whole-flower lavender grown on the Western Slope of Colorado by Two Bears Farms.”  Clocking in at 6% ABV, Where I Live comes together to be “a floral-infused, malt-driven, crushable sour full of friendship and intent.”

Where I Live officially debuted on Black Friday, November 29 and will be available as long as supplies last.  You can expect to find this Limited Release offering available in 4-packs of 16 oz. cans and on draft at select craft beer-friendly establishments located in Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Virginia, California, Nevada, Missouri, Connecticut, Kentucky and New York.  Prost!

Vital Information for Where I Live from New Belgium Brewing & TRVE Brewing Company

Release – Limited; November 29, 2019
Style – American Sour Ale
ABV – 6%
Malts – Pevec, Ballad & Encore from Troubadour Maltings in Fort Collins, Colorado
Added Ingredients – Whole flower lavender
Yeast – Kveik
Availability – 4-packs of 16 oz. cans & draft
Distribution – Limited; Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Virginia, California, Nevada, Missouri, Connecticut, Kentucky & New York
Beer Finder – https://www.newbelgium.com/beer/finder/

WhereILiveProcess
Lauren Limbach, New Belgium Wood Cellar Director and Blender, illustrates the process for creating Where I Live. Photo Credit: New Belgium Brewing

Founders Brewing Co. Reveals 2020 Availability Calendar

Posted on by mashingin

4_giants_fpo_3-4_mockup-1024x1024Brewery release calendar season is back once again and we are kicking of this year’s round with a look at the 2020 Availability Calendar for Founders Brewing Co. (Grand Rapids, Michigan).

As is the norm around here when it comes to beer calendars, we have published Founders Brewing Co.’s 2020 Availability Calendar in its entirety below so that you can examine it at your own pace.  With that said, here are a few juicy tidbits that we would like to highlight before we turn you over to the calendar:

  • The Barrel-Aged Series kicks off with the 2019/2020 release of KBS Espresso – the first variant of KBS – which will have availability into February 2020.  The original KBS will return in February as a Year-Round release. Más Agave (May – July) and Underground Mountain Brown (September – October) are both scheduled to return in 2020. Founders plans to add two new yet-to-be-named offerings to the series during the year – one of which will be a Más Agave variant.
  • The brewery’s Year-Round lineup will see the addition of Unraveled IPA in February.  Unraveled IPA is an “incredibly flavorful and aromatic” Juicy India Pale Ale “dry hopped with traditional hop pellets along with lupulin powder, an innovative hop product that separates lupulin from the hop flower.”  ABV – 6.6%  IBUS – 50
  • Centennial IPA will get some new packaging options in 2020.  Look for this Year-Round to have availability in 19.2 oz. cans and 6-packs of 12 oz. cans beginning in February 2020.
  • 4 Giants IPA, “a mashup of [the brewery’s] four favorite imperial IPAs,” will be available April through June 2020 as a part of the Limited Series.
  • Speaking of the Limited Series, Frangelic Mountain Brown (January – March), Green Zebra (May – August), and Harvest Ale (October) are all scheduled to return.  Founders plans to also add two yet-to-be-named offerings to the series in 2020.
  • The Mothership Series, the brewery’s “ultra-limited, brew team favorite beers only found at [Founders] taproom locations,” will kick off with the return of Devil Dancer on January 22.  Founders plans to release five more Mothership Series offerings throughout the year.
  • The brewery will launch the MI-Exclusive Series in 2020 with the March release of Red’s Rye IPA in 6-packs of 12 oz. cans. As you may have already guessed, the MI-Exclusive Series will see exclusive distribution in Founders Brewing Co.’s home state of Michigan.

That should just about cover all the points we wanted to go over, but there is still a good amount of info left for you to discover on the calendar below. Give it a good look and start getting excited about all the tasty brews headed your way from Founders Brewing Co in 2020.  Prost!

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