St. Anthony's Fire
Urban Family Brewing Co.

 

 

a farmhouse rye saison, bretty for sure, and to a degree anyway, better refined and more mature than a lot of the other urban family stuff, which for me, by and large, always has the same slightly off amateur brett immaturity, but this is a step in the right direction. pale cloudy matte straw colored brew with a tall white head, continuously rising and really airy. aroma is fresh pale rye malt, i really get it strongly here. the brett is there, similar to the culture i get in a lot of their other beers, but drier and better here, less cheesy weirdness than i am used to in their stuff. the flavor is nice, really led by the rye, but with the musty yeasty funk right behind it. some lighter, more belgian type saison notes here too, white wine and spice there, but still feeling really thick and starchy, even with the nice carbonation it seems a bit heavy. cool mix of funky yeast and spicy rye malt, the flavors here are good, and i could see this maturing in the bottle into something complex and dry and really dialed, but its not quite there yet. their packaging and ambitious beer recipes and descriptions always sell me on their beer, but i never quite finish one off feeling completely stoked about what i just drank. this is better than others, and the effervescence is awesome, even the hop note it finishes with is delicious, but something about their yeast mix just isnt perfected yet...

From July 21st, 2017.
This was poured into a tulip.
The appearance was a pale burnt yellow color with a nice finger's worth of white foamy head that slid off at a moderate pace. Sly lace.
The aroma had some sweet floral rye notes up front flowing into a super subtle spice and then aligning with a fair balanced and clean semi-sweet malt bill.
The flavor copied the aroma fairly nice to present a refined floral to grassy sweet, slightly lemongrass to rye sort of aftertaste.
The mouthfeel was almost medium bodied and had a decent sessionability about it. Rye imparts a super nice flow as it doesn't let any distracting capabilities from it's "sometimes" spicy harshness and ended up giving off a pretty nice smooth sort of floral relaxing sort of feel along my tongue.
Overall, that's what I want in a rye saison, and I hope that's what most people would want in a rye saison. Good job, Urban Family and thank you for distributing to Vermont!

12/04/2016