New Belgium Lips of Faith (Erics Sour Peach Ale)

Brewed by New Belgium Brewing Company
Style: Sour Ale
Fort Collins, Colorado USA

1 oz sample GABF ’07-A golden body with an aroma of peaches. Taste is faint with peaches and a real sourness. It comes across clean and light bodied. Sour just not my style but a decent brew.

I’m still in love with festina peche. And I think I took my love for that beer into my expectations for this one. Peach, sour, beer, etc..... Probably a mistake. This one was all of that but nothing goes extemely well together. Maybe the wood did it. It wasnt bad, just not as good as I went in hoping it would be.

Draft @ Bailey’s Chocolate bar. Light gold in color, pours with a scant head and an aroma of sour fruits and a touch of malt. Taste is very citric followed by a little bit of sharp malt. I also get a little bit of brett funk. Eric said he brews this by mixing this with a golden and fermenting out all of the sugars from the added peach extract, which turns out spectacularly well, but I would think that if they bottle this (and his wife said that it should be bottled by next year) that the flavors would meld together much better than they do. As it is, I think it is slightly disjointed, but it is not overly noticeable, nor does it greatly take away from my enjoyment of the beer. Solid beer.

Tasted 11/12/07. Draft at the 7th annual Duff’s New Belgium Autumn beer dinner. Filtered with a golden amber hue. Minimal head. Sour tart fruity vinegar aromas. Medium bodied and zesty. Full blown sour palate. Tart and citrus vinegar flavors. Slight woody vanilla flavor. Good peach note. Lively effervescence. Nice sour note. Good drinkability. Tingling note. Well done!

On tap at FoBAB ’07. Clear yellow/amber. Sour fruity aroma with the funk. Sour funk flavor, lemon, blanket, sour, slight peach, oaky. Medium body and sour. Awesome like the other NB sours.

FOBAB ’07....appearance: crisp and clear golden brown....aroma: white wine, grapes, sour apple, with little to no peach.....taste: white grapes, wine, some apple, and again very little to no peach.....on an ordinary day this would be nice but this was my least favorite offering of the bunch i tried that day.

tap at the maproom on 8/24/08. transparent medium orange brown pour with a thin fading frothy white head...aroma was a combination of peached and tart white grapes.... flavors were tart, crisp and refreshing peaches and lemons. lively mouthfeel with a bitter dry finish that lingers on the palate. earthy spicy bitterness in the finish. very good 8/4/8/4/15

FoBAB 2007. What a grand finale for me. I was done rating at this point, but this beer so enlivened my palate that I buckled down and pulled out the old note pad. I needed to samples to do this justice and I had the most impeccable handwriting of the day for this beer! Anyway... Oh, and I usually loath fruit beers. But this is not just any fruit beer! A rich macro yellow with a thin white head. Clear. La Folie/Terrior nose, but lighter this Terroir stylie and a little bit peachy. Very light malt character. A little lactobacillis saltiness. Light body, but not watery. Low carbonation but not flat. Big tat beer!! Light clean malt, but La Folie kind of tart!! Maybe there’s small oak, but the critters own this here beer. Tart finish. Oddly the peaches come out in the aftertaste. This is so biting, that it refreshes. This is the lemonade of the gods! Tart, yet juicy. This ain’t your mammy’s peach beer!

BBF 07. Tap. Pours a surprisingly clear, mod carbonation, nice thick white head over a peachy orange body. Wierd funk, cat piss, peach, brett, and sour tartness- a bit of cobwebbiness as well. Good sour peach flavor, but not intense or sharp like the festina lents, and no where close to a fou foune sourness. Light sweet peach flavor- some brett, and funk, and a bit earthy-dirtiness. Moderate to heavy sourness, but nothing too sharp or over-the-top on this one as I was expecting. Still, it was cool to try and I liked it.