Experimental Forest #4 (for Simona Kossak)
Zebulon Artisan Ales

Picked up a 500 ml bottle from the Appalachian Vintner 1-23-23 for $9.99. 2022 edition; consumed 2-6-24.

Beer poured pale golden with a beautiful long lasting white head in the Belgian fashion.

Nose is nice with notes of spruce tips and pine needles.

Taste is a light bodied pale malt base in which i am getting juniper berries and pine. Finishes with a spruce tip light resin, very nicely balanced.

Mouthfeel is light bodied and so very soft and smooth with each sip gliding across my palate.

Overall i admit going into this bottle with trepidation but i am getting a really well brewed Belgian ale that is a delight to sip!

 

 

Somewhat of a forager's take on beer making, Zebulon gets traditional, if not historic, when choosing what they're calling local spice bush and berries with spruce tips to give their Grisette-styled beer uniqueness, charm and rusticity.

Pale and hazy gold, Experimental Forest 4 kicks off with a cottony white foam and a bright and tangy scent of sourdough, light orchard fruits and citrus, cider, white wine and a peps of ginger, spruce and clove. Supple sweetness provides a juicy malt profile of fresh baking bread, a hint of honey and wafers.

As the spices billow on the middle palate, the sweetness dissolves and a near juniper character brings a floral spruce, tangy green berry and a spicy phenol blend of chai, ginger, clove, white pepper and rosemary that quickly commands the balance against a drying fruit display of lemon, apple, pear and melon. A sprucy bitterness trails with suggestions of lemon pepper, hay and vinous spice in a nearly saison kind of way.

Medium bodied, creamy and malty-dry, the beer finishes pleasantly warming with cider and wine with an extension of sprucy, grassy and herbal bitterness.