(Fort Collins, CO & Chicago, IL) – New Belgium has a new anniversary beer coming soon.

From the New Belgium Brewing blog:

Our sensory specialist Lauren Salazar has a good friend out in the Chicago-Land area named Mitch Einhorn. Mitch and his brother Cliff own a bar called the Twisted Spoke (along with a couple of other establishments named Lush). This year is the Twisted Spoke’s 15th anniversary year and Lauren really wanted to help them celebrate. So Mitch came down to NBB HQ and started talking about a blend. Lauren set a bunch of beer in front of him and he started to mix, and what he came up with was this: Some sour beer from a couple of our Foudres (big oak barrels), and some sour beer that we had aging in an apple whiskey barrel (the fine folks over at Leopold Bro’s down in Denver gave us a few barrels to do some experimentation with, and it’s working), then he threw in some Transatlantique Kriek that Lauren had laying about, put in a little Abbey, and topped it off with some Trippel. And there you have Twisted Spoke’s 15th Anniversary Ale. The blend seems wild, but holy smokes does it taste good.

Here is the official mix per the label: “65% Ale aged in a wood barrel, 14% ale with cherries added and ale, 21% ale brewed with Coriander and 100% Aged in apple flavored whiskey barrels.” The beer was hand-bottled August 26, 2010.

According to NBB’s Salazar, “We are waiting for labels to come on, then we will hand number and then hand label. It’s a pallet of 750’s and 4 kegs. You can also taste it at Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beer in Chicago.” And in case there is any doubt, much of that pallet will be going right to the Twisted Spoke.