New Belgium Springboard Ale

Brewed by New Belgium Brewing Company
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Fort Collins, Colorado USA

Pours hay yellow with full white head. Arma is fruit, floral, and wheat. Taste is grainy, malty, and tastes like there are natural herbs in this like berries and other plants I would find in my backyard. This is not a bad beer though and is good for early spring.

Bottles from HEB (Congress/Oltorf): From the interesting lists of ingredients, you can imagine how different this beer tastes. Not so much like a beer, really, almost a tea or herbal remedy. Very earthy. A nice cloudy blonde/yellow/green color with light white head. Seems like a beer you would find in the book SACRED AND HERBAL HEALING BEERS (Stephen Buhner; 1998, Siris Books). Like something they’d brew and drink in a remote mountain village - maybe by Ewoks? Unique and hard to pinpoint.

Robe blonde claire surmontée d’une mousse blanche en dentelle qui persiste. Arômes d’épices et de houblon aromatique. Saveurs de houblon aromatique, d’épices et de céréales.

Bottle from Whole Foods. Straw yellow with a cloudy tinge, very faint smell of malt. Tastes slight sweet malty and a slight hop bite. Has a extremely slight juniper taste to it (slight wormwood?) anyway, the wormwood, goji, and schisandra seem to not lend much or were used in such small quantities that it is more for marketing than taste. Not a bad beer, but if you are looking for something beyond a slightly matly ale that is rather light, there are many others out there.

Admittedly, I don’t really have a frame of reference for goji berries, wormwood or schisandra since I don’t recall ever tasting any of them at any time in my life. With that being said, this wasn’t a bad tasting beer. Crisp, light, refreshing. Aroma was sweet, fruity, wheaty with a subtle lemony character. Appearance was a pale yellow with a decent off-white head. Flavor was all over the place. It had subtle sweet fruits, lemons, spices, with a low hop bitterness that finished it off nicely. It’s not going to garner much attention, simply because it’s a lighter beer. Still, I’m sure it has a time and place.

Light colored cloudy grassy hay infused beer with a light full head of pure white. Light white lacing. Very fruity and spicey aromas. Berry and melon with hints of belgian yeast. Bright floral aromatics but just lacking some overall depth of aroma. Not sure about this beer. Doesn’t really have much flavor going on and leaves a ruddled gritty film on my tongue on the finish. Grassy light melon flavors thin mouth. Light spice and herbal quality, slight belgian yeast flavors. I guess these could be good on a warm day but otherwise something I’m not diggin.

Very light golden color with a white head. Sweet malty/grainy flavors, slightly fruity and very pale-lager-ish. Had some strange spiciness along with some hops, but fairly dull. I didn’t catch too much of the "herbs" or whatever, maybe a slight grassiness, but nothing much. Really seemed a lot like an overly sweet pale lager. Probably won’t drink this one again.

drank this beer right after i finished a marathon ending at the NBBC tried and thought it was fantastic. a perfect welcome into summer witha nice golden color. much, much lighter than the fat tire and able to enjoy more times than once.