Diffusion
Mystic Brewery

Can. Pours pretty hazily. A nicely constructed hive-crown of bubbly head. Aroma is medium power. This isn't super fresh (1 month old) but it's held up okay. The only reason why I bring it up is because I get a bit of Belgian yeast. Interesting. Flavor also tastes a wee bit Belgian. The other elements of the beer are New England-y. It doesn't taste too broken down which is good. Some of these beers shit the bed after 3 weeks. I do think this is just more of a mild flavored beer. Easy sipping. Nothing is really turned up higher than a 6. Perhaps it's biggest achievement is the body and how the 7% is absolutely veiled. Even locally, these beers are pricey so a single in a mix-a-4-pack of 16 oz cans (what decade is this?) is enough.

From a 16oz can, dated 02/26/19. Purchased at the brewery 03/25/19, one of the last couple of four-packs left on the premises. Mr. Tap-puller-man said that it had originally been intended to be a brut IPA but that it hadn’t quite worked out that way. At any rate, served in a spiegelau IPA glass.

Pours a lightly hazed, pale yellow with three fingers of tight, creamy head. Retention is very good, leaving a thick, foamy cap and wads of lacing.

Smell is sharp and funky, bright and lemony - in fact, it smells like a saison.

Taste is... interesting? There is a brett character to the beer but, more so, a slippery, lemony, dish-soapy sweetness, which is less unpleasant than it sounds, followed by a mild, tongue-coating saccharine aftertaste.

Feel is... I feel like I covered mouthfeel under ‘taste’ but, anyway, slippery, soapy and tongue-coating, as noted. Medium-plus bodied with super-fine, prickly carbonation.

Overall, a difficult beer to judge, stylistically - it set out to be a brut IPA, it’s labeled simply as an IPA but, if I were to have drunk it blind, I’d have pegged it as a Belgian or even a saison. Judging it merely as ‘beer,’ I’d have to say that, while not bad, and definitely not so bad that it shouldn’t have even been canned, it’s probably not something that needs to be brewed again.