Cocoa Mole

Lips of Faith, Lips of Faith. Aww, how I do love thee. New Belgium, you already became my favorite brewery doing nothing but releasing 1554, Triple, Abbey, Ranger, Mighty Arrow, 2 Below, Somersault… well the list goes on and on. With your year round releases you already stole my heart. I even remember my first Lips of Faith brew, La Folie 2010, which also was my first sour. You just do everything that makes me love thee and enlighten me into new styles of beer.

Ok, now that I kind of got that fan boy stuff out of my system, let’s talk about a Lips of Faith beer I thought that I was going to miss, Cocoa Mole. This beer was a new release along with an older beer, Biere de Mars… unless another came out that I do not know about. I’ve had that one several times and I believe SWMBO picked me up a bottle for when I return. I’m really looking forward to finding out what the beers are for the next quarter. Always a must find.



Cocoa Mole: An Ale with Cocoa and Spices. This beer poured with a very small head and it dissipated fairly quickly. It was a nice tan/reddish color that looked great on floating on top of the beer. The nose was very spicy. Cinnamon and Nutmeg come to mind but kind of hot. It almost reminded me of the eggnog that we make every year but then the chocolate from the cocoa came through. There was so much going on that I just had to sit there and sniff it for literally 5 minutes. I made the bartender sniff it and a few other people that were with me and at the bar.

On the first sip, I was kind of torn. I didn’t really know what to expect being I only had 3 different chili beers from 3 different breweries. But the chili pepper really stood out. The blend of spices were pretty crazy as well. It all melded together by the way of cinnamon if that makes any sense and then rounded out by the cocoa… Again, I really did not know what to think of this. I was sipping on this one for a while trying to see how the flavor would evolve throughout the bottle. It was very warming and went down quite easily. I thought the medium body and fairly low carbonation helped with that as well.

There was probably a lot more to this beer within the actual malt background of it, but that is what stood out to me the most. It was really complex coming together but melded. I am still torn on this one and I would love to give it another go sometime if I can still find it. Maybe I will be able to hone in on the subtleties a bit more on and see if my New Belgium fan boyism was just not letting me not like it. I did enjoy it quite a bit but just trying to wrap my head around everything that was going on took me a minute.

New Belgium, I will forever love you… especially with you upcoming move to Ashland… I plan to be there opening day. I will be out in NC for the next several years so the odds are kind of in my favor. HAH!

I still have to make it to the original brewery though.

Cheers To You!