Why does New Belgium Brewing of Colorado and North Carolina get such a bad rap? Hell if I know. Maybe it’s because their flagship beer, Fat Tire Amber, isn’t held in high regard by today’s crop of beer geeks (although to be fair, I don’t think it was held in high regard by the last crop of beer geeks 15 years ago, either). Truth be told, although I’ve raved about a lot of beers from New Belgium, I’ve come across a few frogs from them lately.
Their Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Brownie Ale left me without the impression of the ice cream treat they were trying to emulate, and Heavy Melon Watermelon Lime Ale left me wondering, in a variation on that old Clara Peller line, where’s the watermelon? New Belgium was overdue for a hit, and I found it in the form of New Belgium Oscar Worthy Coffee, a sour coffee ale.
I had never heard of New Belgium Oscar Worthy Coffee before I saw it on the draft menu at the Porter Beer Bar in Little Five Points in Atlanta. The Porter has over 50 draft beers almost all of impeccable quality and many of some degree of scarcity. Oscar Worthy Coffee is not sold in bottles or cans, it is draft only and just the kind of beer I expect from The Porter.
Here’s what New Belgium says about it:
Oscar Worthy Coffee. Three words, that when uttered, cause an almost Pavlovian drool response among New Belgium co-workers….It’s our sour Oscar “dry-beaned” with coffee in collaboration with Fort Collins friends The Bean Cycle. The result is an ultra-smooth sour beer that bursts with sour-and-espresso aromas, and it tastes like magic…
The beer was born a while back when New Belgium planned to enter a coffee firkin festival in Seattle. An idea to add coffee to a sour was suggested by the manager of the fest, and blender Lauren Salazar ran with it. Initially, Oscar Worthy Coffee was a blend of cold-pressed coffee with Oscar from a single foeder (those large oak vessels aging our sour beer). After that batch, Salazar began experimenting with “dry-hopping” or "dry-beaning" Oscar with whole coffee beans. This led to a collaboration between Salazar and The Bean Cycle’s Lesley Brandt in order to pair the right bean with the sour beer. In this case, we use Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.
New Belgium Oscar Worthy Coffee doesn’t have an entry on the New Belgium website, although they do have a blog post about it. The Porter listed it as having an alcohol content of 6% by volume but I’ve seen it listed elsewhere as 6.3%. I paid $5 for an 8-ounce glass; well my son did, it was father’s Day after all.
My glass of New Belgium Oscar Worthy Coffee Ale arrived a dark brownish to light black color with a thick creamy head of foam. A sniff revealed lush coffee grinds in the nose, and when I sipped I got even more in the palate. They were quickly subsumed, though, by a huge sourness in the middle of the palate, but as the beer progresses to the finish it again becomes very roasty, dry roasty with a sour tart finale.
This beer is interesting indeed, in that the sourness and roast work so well together, even though they really compete with each other for dominance more than cooperate. I would buy it again for sure, if I ever see it.
And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box.
*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.
(B)=Bottled
(D)=Draft