New Belgium La Folie clone have cherries?

So I am in the process of getting everything together for my first sour beer and I want to do a La Folie clone. I have read several recipes and have searched all I can.

The main question is do they use cherries in the real thing? The aroma just hits me with cherries and the BYO clone recipe I saw didn't have cherries in it.

Other than that I am really excited to brew it and even more excited that the Roeselare Blend is an all year offering now.

I believe that La Folie does NOT contain cherries. you get the cherry aroma from the Brett.

Yes, the Style has a sour cherry taste it appears at about 18 months, they don't add cherrys at all. The bad part is that it doesn't get good till about 24 months after brewing. PS: red has oak and brown does not.

Agreed, if you can get your hands on one of the corked and caged bottles add the dregs to your beer to get their microbes. We got a nice cherry character in our last Flanders Red, I added .5 lbs of sour cherries to half of my share to up the character, so that is an option as well.

Good luck.

It sounds a lot more complicated than that. They do some barrel aging and blending to get the final effect on their Red.

A good video from GABF where they sample the La Folie and Lauren Salazar from New Belgium talks a little about it:

http://www.justin.tv/brewingnetwork/b/270184534

I just took the New Belgium tour a few weeks ago. If I remember correctly they store the beer in French Oak barrels for a few years. I thought they used cherries, but perhaps that flavor came from the wood of the barrels. They were huge!

I have a small oak wine barrel but dont want to use it that long due to the large contact surface. I fear too much oak. I will add some sour cherries after a certain time period...probably around the 6 month mark to give it another 6+ months to develop with that.

I am trying to find a good medium between JZ's blend methods and that awesome tart cherry-ness of the La Folie.

I might go with some wine soaked french oak cubes at some point

Did your version of La Folie have the cork and cage? I know the 2008 version was wonderful and the 2009 La Folie with out the cork and cage, was just plain bad. I hope that's not what your going for. If you need a good example get a bottle of duchess de borugone, it's a little sweet but it's too style.

brett lambicus is known for it's cherry like aroma's. you might just wanna try an oud bruin or flander with cherries in it after a year. better yet, try the la folie clone and an oud bruin with cherries and see how they compare.

I tried a Duchesse de Bourgogne last night, and all I can say is, "I'm in love and in need of an oak barrel."

New Belgium does use cherries in their Lips of Faith Dark Kriek. There are no cherries in La Folie.