Bramble Garden Ale
Freehold Brewing Co.

Appearance - Pours a gold with two fingers of foamy white head.

Smell - bready malts, brown sugar, spicy earthy hops, rhubarb, and spicy earthy yeast.

Taste - bready malts and brown sugar upfront. The spicy earthy hops come through next followed by the rhubarb. The spicy earthy yeast finishes the brew off.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes crisp and dry alongside the tartness from the rhubarb.

Overall - An interesting and approachable brew from the folks at Freehold. Seeing as this is my first go at an offering from this local Cowtown brewery, it is a highly drinkable and flavourful brew.

473ml can - a 'Rhubarb Tripel Ale', with lots of nostalgia about 'unruly' backyard gardens of yore.

This beer pours a mostly clear, pale golden yellow colour, with one chubby finger of puffy, loosely foamy, and mildly bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some decent boiling cauldron profile lace around the glass as it quickly evaporates.

It smells of tart green vegetation, gritty and grainy cereal malt, brown sugar, some estery yeastiness, and very, very tame earthy, musty, and floral hops. The taste is grainy and crackery pale malt, underripe rhubarb, kind of sour yeast, faded dark sugary notes, and more well-understated leafy, musty, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-pinging frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and sort of smooth, as that veggie acridity takes things down a notch or so at this particular point in the game. It finishes trending dry, the yeast and rhubarb essences showing the most lingering leg.

Overall - yup, this one certainly delivers the goods, if more on the rhubarb side than that of the brown sugar, and it doesn't taste like a typical Tripel, rather a high-test Berliner Weisse. At any rate, it's good, and I'm glad to see this outfit trying to do more adventurous releases.