Harvest IPA Mosaic
Tempest Brewing Company

 

 

 

Pale orange with a thin white head. Green bitterness, a bit of sourness, farmhouse funk, unripe mango, gooseberries and yeast. Dry and bitter. A damn good saison.

 

 

Hazy light orange color with white head. Aroma has fruity hops but also some fruity yeast esters. I get stonefruits and some earthy funk notes. Taste starts fruity and yeasty, very balanced at first, gets more bitter towards the finish and lingers on the aftertaste. Body and carbonation are medium. You get the bitterness and hoppiness of an IPA but overall it's leaning more towards the saison style.

It doesn't taste like an IPA at all, the smell is very yeasty, slightly spicy, no tropical fruits or hops at all, 0 foam, I thought it was a sour beer at first. The taste is on the toasted grains at first with a round feel. Again, you taste the funk from a sour beer although it's mild and doesn't taste sour, but slightly bitter from the hops. I mean, did I get a bad batch ? There's like 0 fruit in there. It's enjoyable but weird. I had batch 000181.

[edit]After coming back to it, I think Tempeset Brewing made a mistake calling this an IPA. This is like 80% a Belgian beer (a strong saison with yeasty characters), and only 20% an IPA. The fruitiness is really masked by all the toasted character. But I like it in the end because I like to be challenged. It is so funny to see all those reviewers on RateBeer talking rubbish after seeing IPA : you see them coming with the classic IPA tasting notes while it's not like that at all. Maybe they called it an IPA as a joke to see what kind of crazy tasting notes people would come up with ?

[edit2]Tempest answered my e-mail, and tasted that batch again. They agree that the fruitiness isn't there on this batch, apparently they're having trouble sourcing fresh American hops on every batch. When I get the chance I'll try another batch see if the fruits finally come through.

R: Pours a very pale golden colour with a white head.
N: Lots of mango from the mosaic hops.
B: Fairly restrained hops, with a spicy saison bite and crisp malt. Good fizz with quite a full body.