Before American sour beer had taproom fan clubs, bottle shares, wild ale festivals, and entire Instagram accounts devoted to the sacred pucker, New Belgium Brewing was quietly building one of the most important wood-aged sour programs in the country. The Fort Collins brewery’s Belgian-born brewmaster Peter Bouckaert, formerly of Rodenbach, helped bring Old World foeder culture to Colorado in the 1990s, while Lauren Salazar became one of American sour beer’s great blending minds. Together, they turned patience, microbes, French oak, and deliciously unreasonable curiosity into something that changed U.S. craft beer forever.
At the center of it all stands New Belgium’s legendary Foeder Forest, a cathedral of towering oak vessels where beer rests for years, acidifies slowly, gathers funk, sheds certainty, and becomes something no stainless-steel tank could ever dream of becoming. If you’ve seen it, you know: it’s less a cellar than a living grove, a wooden parliament of sour possibility, humming with invisible culture and time’s weird little opinions. From that forest came three defining New Belgium sour stalwarts: Le Terroir, the golden dry-hopped sour that lets fragrant hops flirt with barrel-aged acidity; Transatlantique Kriek, the Belgian-American cherry collaboration that quite literally crossed an ocean; and La Folie, the mahogany-hued original folly, sharp with green apple, cherry, plum skin, oak, and the sort of puckering grace that helped teach America how beautiful sour beer could be.
Today’s Peaks & Pints New Belgium Foeder Flight pours those three beers as a compact history lesson in wild ambition: golden and aromatic, cherry-red and transcontinental, dark and vinous. It’s a walk through the Foeder Forest without the plane ticket, safety goggles, or overwhelming urge to hug a giant oak barrel.
Peaks & Pints New Belgium Foeder Flight
New Belgium Brewing Le Terroir
6.5% ABV | Dry-Hopped Sour Ale | Fort Collins, Colorado
Sunlight seems to have found its way into the foeder, where wild fermentation collides with fragrant hops in a delightfully improbable truce. Luminous waves of peach, mango, lemon zest, and juicy citrus rise first, only to be gently reeled back by weathered French oak, white wine minerality, and the graceful tang of patient barrel aging. The acidity sparkles rather than shouts, carrying a crisp dryness that leaves the palate refreshed instead of exhausted.
New Belgium Transatlantique Kriek
5.2% ABV | Belgian-Style Kriek Sour Ale
Not every journey across the Atlantic requires a passport; some begin in Belgium with Oud Beersel lambic, cherries, oak barrels, wild yeast, and an unreasonable affection for beautifully puckering trouble. That cherry lambic crosses the ocean to Fort Collins, where it meets New Belgium’s foeder-aged golden sour ale, releasing vivid layers of tart cherry, cranberry, raspberry, red currant, and citrus before gentle barrel spice and earthy funk quietly settle into the conversation. Crisp acidity keeps everything buoyant, while lively carbonation and a bone-dry finish leave the palate refreshed rather than overwhelmed.
New Belgium La Folie
6.5% ABV | Flanders Oud Bruin
Some beers politely introduce themselves. This one swings open the foeder door, scatters tart cherries across the floor, and invites your palate into wonderfully civilized chaos. After one to three years resting inside towering French oak vessels, layers of green apple, plum skin, red wine vinegar, dark cherry, toasted wood, and supple tannins unfold with startling grace, the vibrant acidity gliding across the tongue before settling into a remarkably smooth finish. It is equal parts pucker and poetry, a mahogany-hued reminder that the finest follies are often the ones worth repeating.
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