New Belgium Springboard Ale

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

Bottle. Pours a hazy yellow color with a frothy white head. This beer actually smells bad, not just "not good"! The aroma has notes of soil, kind of a squash-like vegetal note and aromas I associate with babies and feet. Clean buttery and fruity flavor but there’s no way to drink it without smelling it so it’s hard to enjoy. Re-Rate> This one at cellar temp. The aroma is still strange to me. Fruity flavor when warmer. Toasted malts with a watermelon-like note.

12oz bottle. Hazy yellow, with a thick white head initially, which dissolves into a small floating island of foam. delicate aroma of malt, yeast, grass, and a bit of lime. Very sweet malty flavor, a bit cloying. Finishes with a bitter orange rind flavor which coats the tongue.

Another great label from the folks at NBB. Pours hazy and golden with a fleeting white head. Strong aromas feature spicy hops, spicebox, and some dark fruit... plums... Palate is dry but drinkable, with a nice balance of hops and malts. It’s the light taste that clashes a bit with the malts in here. The spicing is a little hot. Good hop presence, though. Fresh, different.

I thought this was great. The taste is very like a cider, with an apple level that never leaves. The advertised dryness keeps it from getting silly, but certainly a sweet beer. Also a very slight note of mint, and the dryest under-ripe strawberry.

This essentially tastes very similar to Fat Tire, which I am not really a fan of. Same biscuit like malts observed in Fat Tire. Other than the 1554, none of what New Belgium imports into MN excites me. Now if we could get the abbey dubbel, abbey tripel, and La Folie, then I might get more excited about this brewery. I had this a beer tasting in a wine specialty store.

12 oz bottle pours a hazy golden with thin white head. Sweet, floral aroma. Flavor is citrus, floral, and in some ways medicinal.

Bottle. Poured cloudy blonde with big foamy white head. Faint vegetable aroma, like a salad. Tart flavour with more vegetable overtones. Thin mouthfeel. Flat finish, like a lime carbonated soda. Not to be damned, but I can’t praise this one either.

Bottle pours a pale yellow with a decent white head and some decent lace. The aroma is of some mild hops and malt. The flavor is sweet, fruity, and somewhat complex. There is a bitterness that comes not from the hops, perhaps the wormwood? Rather a little bit of everything here, but not enough pull in any specific direction to establish much. I don’t find it offensive in any stretch of the imagination, just not real appealing or impressive.