New Belgium makes plum-lavender bock as part of foraged beer program

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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OK, these people REALLY belong here.

New Belgium’s “Beers made by walking” crew

As part of the “Beers made by walking” program from Focus on the Beer, the New Belgium crew walked the edible landscaping of its Fort Collins property, seeking wild inspiration: Beer ingredients growing locally, discovered on a company walk.

The crew selected local plums and lavender for a specialty bock:

The general idea is as follows: take a walk in your natural surrounding, find an ingredient to use in the beer making process, pick or order the ingredient in question (depending on the circumstances), make a beer using the ingredient, and lastly, enjoy the beer made by walking. Lots of people and breweries have gotten in on this action over the last several months, and now, I am happy to report, New Belgium has joined the fun…

About six weeks ago we took our walk. We have a very good, natural (and edible) landscape on the NBB property, so we decided to walk the grounds. We stumbled upon gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, hops, sage, and other useable plants. All of them seemed great, but when we came upon the lavender and the plums we knew we had a match made in experimental-beer-heaven. I picked and dried the lavender, and we ordered the plum juice as it was late in the season and the birds (plus co-workers) had picked the plum tree pretty clean. I took counsel with plant engineer and brewer, Chris McCombs (AKA Puffy) to help with the recipe (and all the other stuff, like brewing and fermenting, etc…). He thought the plum and lavender flavors would display nicely in a something a bit sweeter, with a very low hop profile. He suggested we brew a bock, so that’s what we’re doing.

Read the whole thing here in the New Belgium Brewing blog. It’s so Asheville, it’s like it’s from the Disclaimer.

Unfortunately, the lavender-plum beer is a very limited edition only available at special events and the Fort Collins tasting room.

Welcome to Asheville, NBB. We are gonna get along GREAT.