Saison Lacombe Lumière
Blindman Brewing

 

 

1L howler, once again from the increasingly appealing local liquor chain outlet. I've received zero response from this brewery as to the provenance of this offering for 5 days now, so to me, it's a new brew.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, pale golden yellow colour, with two fingers of puffy, chunky, and mildly fizzy bone-white head, which leaves a bit of stringy remote island group lace around the glass as things quickly progress.

It smells of musty and earthy yeast, gritty and grainy wheat malt, some muddled domestic citrus and pome fruitiness, a hint of zingy black peppercorn spice, and very tame leafy, weedy, and dead floral green hop bitters. The taste is bready and crackery pale malt, a lesser grainy wheatiness, estery Saison yeast, a mixed exotic stone fruit and more pedestrian citrus fruitiness, faint spoiled milk notes, and more understated weedy, herbal, and grassy verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-coddling frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and mostly smooth, with a subtle poor-man's creaminess sidling in as things warm up a bit. It finishes off-dry, the base malt and (hoppy?) fruity essences keeping us rolling right along.

Overall, this is a more straight-up version of the style than this outfit's line of numbered kettle sours or their 'seasonal' Saisons. Solid, simply rendered, and quite easy to drink, even if I still wonder whether someone just mis-labeled this one - ah, not my problem anymore.