Pope Crisco: Belgo by New Belgium Brewery

Hope everyone is enjoying their lives today. Despite being back in the hunt for employment again, my day was fairly productive and enjoyable. Starting the day off with a hearty breakfast, half a pot of coffee, and a cigar or two, I got back to the task of submitting resumes for employment, and even found a moment or two to work on Intoxico, making a banner, a graphic for a linkshare project, and a new background.

I feel that as long as I keep busy and make effective use of this downtime to develop the site, and myself, good things will happen.To celebrate my fruitful afternoon, I am unwinding with New Belgium’s Belgo, a “Belgian Style IPA.”

Decanting the beverage, it pours out a hyper clear orange with just oodles and oodles of active carbonation. Tiny bubbles scurry to the top of the beverage and converge atop a decent, creamy, orange hued head that sits about a silver dollar’s width atop the drink. The lacing is impressive, and just shy of awe inspiring

The aroma wafting from the freshly poured beverage suggests balance between both the Belgian style, with fruity, clove and banana malt essence, and the India Pale Ale style with as a nice, crisp lemon hop nose.

The first sip of this medium bodied ale carries the maltiness of a prototypical Belgian style beer, knocking taste buds over with the same clove and banana profile that was on the nose. Where a normal Belgian’s malt forwardness tends to be cloyingly sweet, this beer quickly develops a bitterness that cuts through the fruitiness, adding both a floral and citrus back-end to the beverage.

In summation, while there are characteristics of this beer that speak to the quality of the ingredients and skill that created this beverage, I feel the execution has created a beer that suffers from dissonance that I find hard to enjoy, as opposed to the harmony I assume they were trying to bring with the two diverging styles.

Prost!

I brew and drink beer, smoke pipes and cigars, eat till I’ve had more than my fill, and escape in pulp rags till my eyes turn buggy. I don’t claim any expertise in any subject other than the chase of my own earthly pleasures. I write to help others find their own pleasures so that together we will decay in spirit with these lesser pursuits.