Sassypants
Roc Brewing Company

A-pours a hazy golden color with some sediment, white head with average retention
S-jalapeno, cracked black pepper, honey, pineapple
T-sweet malt, some estery yeast, lots of jalapeno throughout, tropical fruit notes are a bit muted by the spice
M-medium bodied with average retention
O-unique brew, heat is pretty well balance but definitely takes away from the nuance of a saison. Worth trying

 

Summer in a glass at Roc....mango and jalapeño were evident but not overdone; I could not taste the pineapple. A true taste of summer without too much heat.

 

This brew was served on tap at L & M Lanes in Rochester, New York. It arrived in a Three Heads pint glass, showing off a cloudy pale orange glow. A watery, quarter finger sized head topped the beer, but this was gone before we had even gotten back to our table from the bar. No sediment was noted amongst the haze, and carbonation appeared to be light. The aroma gave big hints of charred jalapeños, salty smoked ham, twine, Magic Marker and plastic phenols, spicy black peppercorns, bitter dried grassy hop pellets, brass, gravel, hair dye plastics, cinnamon, brown sugar, burnt wheat, white flour, drying amber grain, and a sticky Belgian yeastiness. Flavors included denser cooked Belgian graininess, sweet dark wheat wash, crumbling charcoal at the end of its burn, bright banana esters, white sugar sweetness, bittered orange peel, light coriander spice, balsa wood, cheddar cheese, chives, dried maple candies, hickory smoke, honey glazed ham, burnt wheat bread, and honey drizzled oats. The aftertaste maybe, just maybe, had the tiniest echoes of pineapple juiciness, but this may only because we were looking so hard for them. The body was light and watered,, and carbonation sat lightly. Slurp, smack, cream, and froth were thin, and only okay. The mouth was left lightly puckered, but mainly washed and clean feeling, with a subtle rumble of heat emanating from the back of the throat. The abv was appropriate, and the beer drank back smoothly enough.

Overall, what a difference there was here between the nose and the taste. I feel like we’ve been picking up on this kind of thing a lot lately, but it just seems like we’ve found a lot discordance between the two lately. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, although the beer was tasty and different enough, we felt it leaned more towards the latter, with a dollop of novelty thrown into the mix. The three key, advertised ingredients were jalapeños, mango, and pineapple. The aroma did a nice job of at least working the first one in there. It came less in the form of heat and more in the form of bright, meaty and woody smokiness. The jalapeños were also present in the taste, with a tinge of burning left at the back of the mouth following each sip. The fruit is all but lost here, as we could hardly pick up either the mango or the pineapple in either realm. This made things seem rather one-dimensional. Between the smoke and the curiously Belgian-tilted grain and yeast profiles, it was even hard for us to think of this one as a “saison”. This has become a bit of a catchall style of beer, and Sassypants is a good example as to why. Criticality aside, this was a nice beer to help lubricate our bowling muscles, but it isn’t something we needed more than one of.