Last October, RedRock Brewing pulled of a big win at the Great American 
Beer Festival, coming away with a Gold Medal for Paardebloem
, a barrel aged ale made with dandelion greens, in the 
Experimental Beer category. We talk about
 Paardebloem often around here,
 but it's not wildly known that our favorite local, dandelion ale is and
 has always been a collaborative effort between RedRock & New Belgium 
Brewing.

Usually Chris McCombs, the plant manager at New Belgium Brewery comes to 
Salt Lake to take part in the brew, this year there's been a change. Due
 to Paardebloem's recent high praise at The Great American Beer Festival. New Belgium has decided to
 brew the collaboration Dandelion ale again and make it part of their Lips of 
Faith series. A few years back NB released a version of this ale but it 
was never bottled or barrel aged. This time it's due to go "big time".
"Beer Yogi", Kevin Templin - Asst. Brewer, Chris Harlin & Brewers 

Liaison,  Erika Palmer are in Fort Collins, Colorado this morning 
assisting in the creation of approximately 23,000 Hectoliters of Dandelion Ale.  NB will be releasing their version of 
Paardebloem on April 1st and RedRock will release with in two weeks of 
that date.
RedRock will reportedly get some of New Belgium's version for sale at 
their restaurants & some of RR's will go to Fort Collins. This ale never disappoints, we'll keep you in the loop as the dates get closer. 
This will hopefully pave the way for New Belgium to enter the Utah Market. Hey, weirder things have happened...
Cheers!
Photo courtesy: B. Doran & SLUG Magazine 
Chris  McCombs & Kevin Templin (left), Chris Harlin (right) 
 
5 comments:
Nice writeup! We are excited to have my old friends at Red Rock up here to collaborate on this beer... T minus 18 hours to 1st mash-in!
A couple of clarifications- I am actually a Plant Engineer, not the Plant Manager, and we planned this collaboration as part of Lips of Faith a couple months before the medal at GABF. That was just icing on the cake! Cheers, Chris
Also, we are brewing 1600 hl, not quite 23,000 hl. That's the equivalent of 1,342 barrels, 42,267gallons or 671 hogsheads
This is awesome. Red Rock is one of my favorite local breweries and New Belgium is one of my favorite out-of-state breweries. I can't wait to give this one a try.
Loves me some Paardebloom!!
Paardebloem is one of my favorite's, I wonder if we'll ever get it in the Liquor stores here...New Belgium, please come to Utah, pretty please.
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