Salo
Our Mutual Friend Malt & Brew

 

a gorgeous can conditioned saison done with colorado grown hops and malts, but also apparently fermented with fantome yeast, which is rad, obviously one of the kings of this style space so using that yeast is way cool. i think the beer is excellent, and every time i drink a good beer from these guys, which is all of them now, i think back to their early days and how lame and bad it kind of was, and just how they turned it around and now its so good, cool trajectory, you cant help but be amazed, and this is truly great stuff, in part of its simplicity, good ingredients and technique, thats really it. blonde to honey colored from the can, nice carbonation and a short but lasting white head on it, looks awesome. the nose is slightly hoppy at first, lawn clippings, lemongrass, herbal green tea, that sort of thing, then the yeast hits, white wine, white pepper, subtle coriander, light funk without being bretty, high tone and belgian but also spicy and rustic and farmy, really appealing, but overall this presents as very light beer, pale wheat malt and some pils type barley i would guess, not super exotic, but it sets this up well for volume drinking. the flavor is similar, and i guess i can tease out a recognizable fantome element in it, more as it warms a bit maybe, white and black pepper, dried flowers, some faint astringency, but this is canned and fantome beers always come in green glass and are so often a bit (at least) oxidized that its hard to really tease that out perfectly in this very fresh tasting and lively feeling beer. i like the bit of hop bitterness this has, seems near noble even though its from colorado, dosed pretty robustly, some cool complimentary back end spice, fresh and simple grain bill, clean and well conditioned in the can, i could drink a ton of this, some white wine comes on late, lemon, minerality, its lovely, subtle overall despite the hops, and the ferment is distinctive. excellent, id buy this all the time if it were available here in idaho...