Dry Hop Saison
Old Abbey Ales

 

 

650ml bottle - oh, look, fellow Albertans, yet another nascent BC craft brewer whose bombers are suddenly cluttering our local bottleshop shelves - when will the insanity end? Anyways, I digress.

This beer pours a hazy, pale golden amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves some decent streaky and sudsy lace around the glass as it quickly dissolves.

It smells of grainy and slightly crackery pale malt, a twinge of spicy wheat chaff, easygoing yeast, zesty orange peel, muddled table-top pepper mill dust notes, clove, and leafy, weedy, and grassy hop bitters. The taste is edgy and rather phenolic yeast, gritty and grainy pale and wheat malt, bland white pepper and clove spice, fading orange and lemon citrus rind, and more plain leafy, earthy, and herbal hoppiness.

The bubbles are quite active in their palate tingling and strongly structural frothiness, the body an adequate medium weight, and not particularly smooth, as the yeast and perhaps the hops (?) settle in just a bit too much here. It finishes trending dry, the malt petering off, while the yeast and acerbic hops take it from there.

Overall, Old Abbey takes the style and bends it to its will, just as they described on their label screed on the matter. Bitter hops join the equally elevated yeasty component to assault my tongue, leaving most of the more agreeable flavours in the dust. An interesting attempt, experiment, wank-fest, whatever, but I can't really see why I would ever want more of this.

 

L: Dark amber colour, slight haze, two inches of loose, fluffy, white head
S: White pepper, cloves, orange zest, herbs, lightly roasted malt notes
T: Peppery, citrus, grassy, slightly bitter, dry, slight roasted notes, grainy
F: Medium bodied, well carbonated, finish is dry and slightly bitter
O: A very well done saison with a nice noble hop character, good balance between hop, malt and yeast character, making this a subtly complex belgian-style saison. Superb!