Rumor has it we may see some of these beers in Colorado soon. Anyone have any experience with their Slushy XLs since they fixed the abv issues?
They are what they are I guess. Minus their many issues that may or may not be in the past, the "best" ones I've had are no better than what's coming out of Northern CO at 1/2 the price.
As someone that is near them and has seen their meteoric rise, don't bother. They are inconsistent, expensive, and a novelty. Support local if you want that style of "beer", all fruit purees the same anyway
Curious what you would recommend as a local alternative. Seems like most of the Weldwerks or Wiley roots stuff doesn’t make it far from the front range, which is 7 hours away for me
Making your own seems the easiest. Get fruit puree or juice, blend with beer and enough sugar to hit 15 brix. It's about 17 teaspoons (68 grams) of sugar per 500ml of beer only. Since it's mixed with the puree, that sugar addition would need to be reduced
Those were going to be the ones I was going to recommend. Never specifically had any juice beers from them, but Something out of Brighton also seems to go big with the additives.
Having tried a bunch of Weldwerks Froot Camp and Wiley Roots Fruit Lady beers, I would typically recommend the Wiley Roots offerings- but getting them can be challenging. They sell out quickly and are not distributed IIRC. After the 450 North fiasco, I am not going to be quick to throw money their way. I also don't need cotton candy flavoring in my beers.
I'd be pretty curious to see someone run similar tests on Knotted Root's Paste and Goo series which they regularly list at 7-9% abv.
Are there any good threads about this apparent shit-show? I haven't read a good train wreck thread in a while.
Got a chance to try some of these to see for myself what all the hype is about. I’m actually a big fan of the smoothie sour style, but 450 North is among the worst I’ve tasted. I wanted to like these beers but the comments above are spot on. There are MUCH better versions out there; Weldwerks, Wiley Roots and Wild Mind all blow 450 North out of the water. Hate to say it, but don’t bother with 450 North especially given the price.
I need to ask a dumb question. Are all these fruit beers basically made the same way? So the 450 North examples, Weldwerks/Wiley Roots, Knotted Root's "goo" beers, are all essentially the same style? Is that true for New Glarus' fruit beers too? Because while it's fun to occasionally try a Weldwerks or Knotted Root blueberry pancake whatever, those New Glarus fruit beers taste a million times better to me.
I have no idea what NG's process is like and from what I gather, they're really secretive about it. I've known people that have actually worked there and they were still kept in the dark about how those beers are made. Whatever they're doing, to me there's a greater depth of flavor going on. At least compared to the fruit bomb items I've tried. To me New Glarus is closer to a back-sweetened lambic (taste-wise) than the 450's and Goo's of the world. They claim that there is spontaneous fermentation going on with Raspberry Tart, but I dunno about the others. From memory, I think Red and Serendipty began life as lagers.
