Beer of the Week: June 22

The Lost Abbey / New Belgium Mo Betta Bretta and Brett Beer

by Brandon Hernández

Posted Friday, June 22, 2012, 10:27AM

Photo by Brandon Hernández

Wild Ale (6.3% & 7.5% ABV)

Both of these are beers you’ll want to purchase and hold to appreciate down the road.

Collaboration beers offer the opportunity for brewers to do something special. Sometimes this means going outside one’s comfort zone. Tomme Arthur, director of brewery operations for The Lost Abbey, operates outside of most brewers’ comfort zone on a regular basis. His work with barrel-aging and wild yeasts has earned him a worldwide reputation as one of the foremost experts in these areas. So, when brewmaster Peter Bouckaert of Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing came to America’s Finest to collab with Arthur, they ventured to recreate Mo Betta Bretta, a beer last produced by Arthur in 2004 when he was brewing at Pizza Port’s Solana Beach brewpub. The result is a Brettanomyces-stoked, fruit-forward brew with bright pineapple and citrus notes, plus a mild barnyard character that will become more pronounced as the beer matures. Both this and the batch produced on New Belgium’s system (labeled as Brett Beer) are beers you’ll want to purchase and hold to appreciate down the road.

Available at: Mo Betta Bretta is available on tap and in the bottle at The Lost Abbey’s tasting room (155 Mata Way, Ste. 104, San Marcos), while Brett Beer will be available as the latest in New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series of quarterly specialty beers. Look for the latter at bottle shops, well-stocked grocery stores and BevMo.