Clover
Hill Farmstead Brewery

 

375ml waxed and capped bottle into Torst stemware.

Pours a bright goldenrod color. 0.5 finger foamy white head. Little lace with thin legs. Nose is juicy pear, lemon zest, peppercorn, and a spritz and funky barnyard. Moderately aromatic. Beer opens lemon zest, apricot pit, with a slight touch of butter in the back. Funky towards the middle. Hints of bread, yeast, and peppercorn. Tart lemon seed in the finish. Lightly puckering aftertaste. Body is light with ample carbonation. Prickly and lively on the palate and goes down zesty, dry, with a long, lingering aftertaste.

Great complexity though I wish I'd continued to wait a bit before opening this.

Batch 3 bottle poured onsite at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro Bend, VT.

This one pours a clear golden yellow-ish orange, with a small head, and lots of lacing.

This smells like a sort of rustic oak thing, lemon peel, stone fruit, white wine, candied orange, and a dry hay like quality.

This is a blend of Flora, Art, and Ann, so it’s not surprising at all that this is really good. Having had all of those at this point, I wouldn’t say any one beer entirely stands out – this becomes its own thing that stands completely on its own, and might be better than each of the three titans that contributed. It’s very oaky, and orange-like, with a hay-like dry finish that is just so refreshing. There’s also stone fruit, white wine, dried lemon peel, with a restrained and very pleasant acidity.

This is light bodied, clean, lightly and pleasantly tart, and super drinkable.

This is absolutely fantastic, and might just crack the top 5 of Hill Farmstead beers that I’ve had – it’s just such a good and clearly deliberate blend.

 

 

Bottle. 2020 edition. At HF brewery.

White head with some lace. Clear golden color.

Such an excellent saison. Definitely has flavors of the base beers. Elegant is a great word for this beer. Drinks like a white wine maybe a Chardonnay. White grapes, oak, green apples, faint saison spice, wheat. Dry and bubbly. Smooth, light, easy drinking. Faint tartness, nice citrus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had at a Mortalis share. Definitely one of those taste the country yellow beers. Tart, crisp, light. Not my style, but come on now…these bottles shares are amazeballs. Lots of oak dryness.

 

Had b2 and b3 side by side. This rating is for b2, which was better in just about every category than b3. B3 wasnt bad by any means, but b2 was an amazing farmhouse ale /saison

Clear yellow-gold with minimal head formation dying to a clear, bubbly and uneven surface that disperses to a bubbly flat collar. The appearance was impressively identical between two different batches, which we were fortunate enough to enjoy in one evening.

Starting with batch 2, the oak is very expressive, yet gentle at the same time, backed by reduced citrus juice characteristics like grapefruit, orange and lemon. This was a smaller pour than I had of batch 3, but the contrasts were stark, while the more obscure parallels somehow held firm.

Out of batch 3, I perceive a larger presence of straw and young oak up front, but this quickly gives way to more acid than b2, while yet remaining palatably balanced. This acidity expresses like yellow raspberry and seedy passion fruit, countered by a frothy body that exhales refined oak threads. While that Ann oak in conjunction with the subtle funk of Art solidly affirm their support, it was clear that Flora's return to the blend saw her influence well exerted here.

This has been a very long time coming for me, and contrary to most experiences with meeting your idols, this did not let me down. I came away preferring b3, though absent of overwhelming confidence, as they were both phenomenal in different ways.

Bottle Conditioning since December 23, 2020. So, I believe batch 3.

Lemon & lime with soft oak & light earth. Vinous white wine notes. Lower carbonation.