Fields of Rye - Summer 2018
Rowley Farmhouse Ales

summer 2018 edition, a lower abv than others have had, and fermented with dupont saison yeast at a pretty warm local ambient temperature. apparently, these elements change from season to season in this fields of rye series, a pretty cool idea for a run of beers. i like this being low alcohol in the heat, but i was kind of hoping it would have some funk to it, which is what i expected all the beers to have when we visited this place, but they do a heap of clean stuff in addition to their more well known wild stuff. this has still got some body to it, a little rye spice but to me its covered up a bit by the intense belgian esters of the yeast, strong white wine, green skinny pear, fragrant blooming flowers like lilac or something, and a bit of residual grain sugar for what this is and what it is supposed to be from what i understand. not heavy or slow to drink, just a little out of balance perhaps and not as sessionable to me as the low abv suggests. i want to taste a bit more of the rye, but i like the beer a lot overall. i would love to try some others in this series, a nice new school dry hop would do a lot for this one, so would a slightly lower fermentation temperature, but its old school seasonal beer as it might have been in the days before glycol controlled fermenters...