We Pucker Up For New Belgium's Tartastic Sour Ale

Jeff

I've been very pleased in the last few years to see ginger become a more popular flavoring for beers. Ginger is such a complex blend of sweet and spicy that it makes everything more interesting. So when I saw that New Belgium had combined ginger with lemon to make this sour ale I was pretty excited.

First, the good. This is a very light beer that reminds me almost of a weizen. The lemon flavor is natural tasting and adds some sourness without being super fruity or sweet.

The problems are that even the flavor that is present, like the lemon, is very light. And, sadly, the ginger is just non-existent. I was hoping for a real ginger kick. Ginger should be able to be detected by a little nasal hit or simply by the strong flavor it imparts to things. None of that is present here. The lemon, while it does add some sourness, doesn't add a lot of sourness and could be stronger tasting as well.

That being said, this is a very refreshing beer. I know there are some sour beers out there that take their category as a challenge to see how unpleasantly sour they can be. This is not one of those beers. So if you want a more mild sour in a lighter beer, this would be a good choice. But if you are really looking for that ginger tang, this isn't the beer for you.

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Haley

So this beer label at least has a bit of style, even if it does resemble something out of a botanical notebook from the 1890s. At least there's a picture! It is just a very, very literal picture. Lemons and ginger! Wow!

I do like the fonts and I like the red and yellow combination. Please note the colors in the first picture appear more vibrant but this individual pic is a little more accurate. They are slightly muted but they do go together nicely, with the dark green of the leaves being a nice way to make the red pop and connect it all together. The fonts and colors also work nicely with their logo.

Overall this is a solid yet stodgy design, literal in it's execution and straightforward in the choices made to create it. It totally resembles the corporate product within it, so while I can't fault that I can't really celebrate it either.