Brewer's Vacation
Town Square Brewing Co.

1L howler from the brewpub - a collaboration with imminent Edmonton-based start-up Ale Architect, which has produced a 'dry-hopped super Saison'.

This beer pours a hazy, medium copper amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat bubbly bone-white head, which leaves some hanging curtain lace around the glass as it quickly sinks out of sight.

It smells of gritty and grainy pale malt, banana chips, some spicy yeastiness, faint clove and black peppercorn, muddled domestic citrus rind, and some plain leafy, weedy, and herbal green hop bitters. The taste is bready and grainy cereal malt, estery yeast, still kind of hard to delineate citrus peel, a mixed earthy spiciness, fading dried banana, and more understated musty, weedy, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-pinging frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, just a touch of yeasty astringency maybe getting a bit up in my grill here. It finishes trending dry, the crackery malt, yeast, and blended fruitiness working it well past last call.

Overall - well, this comes across essentially like a regular version of the style, excepting for the fact that it sports a couple or so extra points of the ol' wowee sauce, which are virtually undetectable (for the moment, natch). Well-made, and sure, a tad hoppier than the norm, but you don't really notice it after a spell.