Open Air
Oxbow Brewing Company

 

April 2018 bottle from the brewery in Portland during 2020 trip to Maine. Pours an opaque amber orange with minimal head, smell is tart cherries and raspberries up front with hints of sherry, the back end is bitter grassy funk, taste is sour raspberry lollipop, sweet cherry liquor (almost like from a boozy chocolate candy), hints of peach, bitter lemon, and apple seed, finishes with a mellow grassy funk, feel is light, well carbonated and juicy. An excellent, fruity, and sour hard candy treat.

Opened November 2019.
Poured a beautiful peach/amber color.
Light tracing on glass, slight head.
Subtle fruit notes, and beautiful mouth feel across the whole pallet. Looking forward to see what my other bottle develops into.

this was stupidly good, done in collaboration with fonta flora, and a pricey little bottle, but we get what we pay for in this instance, and as is almost always the case with oxbow. the beer is wild inoculated, wet hopped, and blended with a saison aged on cherries and raspberries. it has a light haze but still a delicate look to it, a very airy champagne sort of head from the bottle, a little sediment at the bottom, sparkling carbonation, and a sort rose pink hue to it, not as electrically fruity looking as some, more subtle in appearance here. the aroma is killer, i get some of the usual oxbow funk and esters here, but also a really neat complexity to the fermentation profile from the coolship aspect, bretty and mature now, lightly medicinal but not quite iodine or anything, gives it a lambic appeal. the fruit is subtle too, equal parts cherries and raspberries to my senses, some tang and some sweetness from both, very natural, and not dosed boldly enough to interrupt what the yeast is saying, and i appreciate that in a wild beer like this. the overall quality here is insane, the nuance is unrivaled, and that is what i have come to expect from both of these breweries. the fruit is a nice touch, but it would be killer even without that. i dont get much from the wet cascade hops, but i dont need to, it finishes just a touch bitter and thats right for what it is. the lack of oak on this keeps it feeling delicate to me, even clean at the end for what it is. impressive beer overall, i knew it would be, i cant get enough from these guys right now!