May 28, 2019
This week, we’re bringing you a special episode from our Into the Wild tour with New Belgium Brewing. This is a tour focused on wild, sour, and otherwise aged and blended beers in the vein of what New Belgium Brewing has been making for longer and more continuously than any brewer in America. This tour is visiting at least a half a dozen cities this year and we kicked it off in Seattle with a series of sensory-driven events. We did a sour beer and cheese pairing at The Pine Box with chef Angelica Garza, featuring some funky and surprising cheeses alongside New Belgium’s Wood Cellar beers. We held a smoked and fermented event at Central Smoke where they made a cocktail with a Transatlantique Kriek float. (It was delicious.) And we finished at The Masonry with chef Matt Storm, where we explored the relationship between acid and fat. It was a wild week. These two conversations you’re about to hear came out of my experiences there. First up, we’ll talk to Ian Roberts, one of the owners of The Pine Box, about the bar’s role in the city’s beer scene, and how customers have changed over time when it comes to sour beer. Then we’ll catch up with Chef Matt to talk about The Masonry, pizza, and other things. And if you want more, we have a great little article on the website from chef Angelica Garza about how she constructed the cheese pairings and how you can think about that the next time you want to host some of your friends around cheese and sour beer. As specific as these flavors and aromas can be, there’s some pretty good principles at play that will help you do it yourself.