New Belgium Folly

Just throwing out that New Belgium’s Folly variety pack is pretty damn great. The 1554, the Ranger, Fat Tire and Shift are all awesome. If I can I’m going to pick up another FOlly or at least some 1554…while I wait on my beers to carb.

The 12 pack I bought had a DIPA instead of the Shift. Can’t remember the name. :oops: There was also a saison.

I may have to try Ranger again. The one time I had it, it tasted thin, very little malt presence and like sucking on pine needles.

Yeah try it again. Ranger is a great beer. I haven’t really found a New Belgium that I didn’t like. Except the Belgian wheat and just do not like that style.

Also to plug an Alabama brewery, Back Forty’s Naked Pig and Freckled Belly are great Pale Ales and IPAs.

I picked up a Folly a couple weeks ago and it had a double IPA and 4 Saisons in it. The 1554, Fat Tire, IPA and IIPA were all good. Saison, Meh… Not a real Saison fan so that’s no fault of New Belgium’s…

I know I know I know, everyone is entitled to their opinion, blah blah blah…

But I just can’t wrap my head around the segment of the population that doesn’t like saison. Have you had Saison Dupont? Admittedly, with the growth of the style’s popularity, there are quite a few sweet, fruity bastardizations out there (including NB’s and Ommegangs) of the original effervescent, complex-yet-subtle, refreshing, bone-dry effing delicious monument of awesomeness that is this beer.

Sorry for the rant…I am a little hair-triggery on this subject at the moment as I was forced to hang out with a real d-bag the other night who insisted he didn’t like saisons because of the banana flavors. I wanted to grab him by the neck and shout that his wannabe beernerdy arse had saison confused with hefe…but my psychiatrist and PO frown on that kind of behavior. What kind of society do we live in. The terrorists have truly won. :mrgreen:

I know I know I know, everyone is entitled to their opinion, blah blah blah…

But I just can’t wrap my head around the segment of the population that doesn’t like saison. Have you had Saison Dupont? Admittedly, with the growth of the style’s popularity, there are quite a few sweet, fruity bastardizations out there (including NB’s and Ommegangs) of the original effervescent, complex-yet-subtle, refreshing, bone-dry effing delicious monument of awesomeness that is this beer.

Sorry for the rant…I am a little hair-triggery on this subject at the moment as I was forced to hang out with a real d-bag the other night who insisted he didn’t like saisons because of the banana flavors. I wanted to grab him by the neck and shout that his wannabe beernerdy arse had saison confused with hefe…but my psychiatrist and PO frown on that kind of behavior. What kind of society do we live in. The terrorists have truly won. :mrgreen: [/quote]

I keep on trying… but a saison is always hit or miss with me. The last I tried was Victory’s Swing Saison… I couldn’t get more than two sips down of it. Made me want to gag. I think it’s put me off of the style… but I should give it another go soon.

I know I know I know, everyone is entitled to their opinion, blah blah blah…

But I just can’t wrap my head around the segment of the population that doesn’t like saison. Have you had Saison Dupont? Admittedly, with the growth of the style’s popularity, there are quite a few sweet, fruity bastardizations out there (including NB’s and Ommegangs) of the original effervescent, complex-yet-subtle, refreshing, bone-dry effing delicious monument of awesomeness that is this beer.

Sorry for the rant…I am a little hair-triggery on this subject at the moment as I was forced to hang out with a real d-bag the other night who insisted he didn’t like saisons because of the banana flavors. I wanted to grab him by the neck and shout that his wannabe beernerdy arse had saison confused with hefe…but my psychiatrist and PO frown on that kind of behavior. What kind of society do we live in. The terrorists have truly won. :mrgreen: [/quote]

I keep on trying… but a saison is always hit or miss with me. The last I tried was Victory’s Swing Saison… I couldn’t get more than two sips down of it. Made me want to gag. I think it’s put me off of the style… but I should give it another go soon.[/quote]

Probably due to the fact that the Saison Style is so wide open to almost anything and everything that you really don’t know what to expect.

I love IPA’s & IIPA’s but they’re not everyone’s cup of tea either… To each their own I guess… :wink:

[quote=“uberculture”]

I keep on trying… but a saison is always hit or miss with me. The last I tried was Victory’s Swing Saison… I couldn’t get more than two sips down of it. Made me want to gag. I think it’s put me off of the style… but I should give it another go soon.[/quote]

Agreed, they are also hit or miss with me as there are so many out there and also agreed on the point of the style itself varying so widely (or at least, being subject to a wide variety of interpretations…many of which suck IMO). Had an ‘autumn’ saison this weekend at a new brewery, which was well-made, but the nicely limited caramel malts still got in the way of what I want to taste in the style.

Dupont, Stillwater, Bruery, [some] Jolly Pumpkin, Hill Farmstead, and mine. :mrgreen:

I never appreciated saisons until I started home brewing, now I love them. Of course not all of them but whenever a seasonal is offered I grab one to try. I feel drinking saisons is more like drinking wine, it’s a developed taste. New Belgium makes some good beer but when I’m in CO I’ll grab a Dales before I grab a Ranger if I’m looking for an single IPA . Hey Pietro you have an empty primary? Unacceptable

hoping to remedy that this weekend. Empty primary, full heart from my 12-week old :mrgreen:

Awesome :smiley:

Funny, I was just thinking I need to check out the local liquor store to see if the winter Folly packs were in yet. 2 Below is good, Rampant is good, Abbey is good, and Ranger is decent. The Fat Tires might sit unnoticed for awhile, but they’ll get drank eventually (nothing against Fat Tire, but there are better options).

An even better variety pack, in my opinion, is Odell’s Fall/Winter Montage. It includes 5 Barrel, IPA, Gramp’s Oatmeal Stout and Isolation Ale. All of those are good brews and their IPA is one of the best around. I might buy one of the Folly packs and be satisfied, but I’ll be buying a few of the Montage packs before they’re gone.

I’d buy them much more often if they didn’t contain so much Fat Tire. I drank way too much of that back in the day and am tired of it.

I personally like their IPA, but that’s the exact type of IPA that I favor. 1554 is an entirely different beer on tap, at least at my local pubs. Something about it seems lost in the bottled variant. I think most of them tend to be drinkable. I thought their tripel wasn’t very good.

If you guys like variety packs from CO breweries, grab a Great Divide Big Show if you see one. A mix of all of their bigger beers (Hades, Hercules, Yeti, Hibernation). I tend to like Great Divide a little more than NB when it comes to the year round offerings. And Yeti is amazing. NB makes some world class stuff in their Lips of Faith series, though. La Folie and Le Terroir, to name a couple.

I agree. Great divide never disappoints.

I hate to rain on the love fest, but when I was brewing phenolic flavors meant I made a mistake, usually getting cheap with yeast. I am well aware that phenolic flavor is typical of many Belgian beer styles, but certainly not all. The Abbey ales are generally not phenolic. I’ve never tasted clove flavor in Chimay or Corsendonk. Similarly, trippels are generally not phenolic nor spiced.

With that in mind I thought I’d give New Belgium’s Abbey and Trippel a try. In the past I have not enjoyed their other styles because I don’t enjoy phenolic flavor. Indeed both had some phenolic flavor, the Trippel also had coriander (something I didn’t notice when I bought it). For those who enjoy clove in their beer by all means enjoy it, just be aware that in these cases it’s not typical of the style. I would be really pleased to find an American brewer that made Abbey ales and Trippels a little closer to style. New Belgian’s Abbey and Trippel are not it.

I enjoy a little (very little) clove in my saisons. I include a ferulic acid rest in my mash schedule and ferment in the low 60s for a couple of weeks before warming to finish to encourage it. I’ve found few commercial saisons with a clove note. That’s one of the reasons I drink the same saisons as Pietro - mine.