Festbier
Coulee Brew Co.

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor store - not sure why there are two versions of this style from this brewery available right now, and even though they have differing ABVs, I don't trust it if it's not written by the producer on the packaging.

This beer pours a clear, pale golden yellow colour, with four fingers of puffy, rocky, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some decent sudsy webbed lace around the glass as it lazily subsides.

It smells of biscuity and crackery pale malt, further toasted cereal notes, a mild pome fruitiness, and some crisp earthy, grassy, and dried hay-like hop bitters. The taste is bready and crackery pale malt, gritty multigrain breakfast cereal, some muddled pome and lesser citrus fruitiness, hints of gentle yeast, and more zingy leafy, weedy, and grassy noble hop bitterness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-pleasing frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and more or less smooth, with nothing particularly egregious extant here that might cause any sort of fuss. It finishes trending dry, the robust malt really making a meal out of it all.

Overall - well, comparing this to my review of the 'other' festbier I recently had from Coulee, it appears that there may actually be two different, albeit only slightly so, iterations out there. I guess that's what happens when you make exclusive versions for huge liquor store chains that presumably toss a whack of scratch at you. Fucking sigh.