Surface Tension
Parleaux Beer Lab

 

Lightly hazy and very pale straw gold with a short white head leaving microfiber curtains of lace.

Very mild and a little watery--like from a natural stream--this may be closer to the roots of the style, but it's not what I've come to enjoy in Grisette. At the same time, it's fairly quaffable in a subtle way that keeps growing on me.

Appearance: Pours a lightly cloudy, straw-toned body with an instantly thinning, white head.

Smell: A mottled scent of tropical, new-fangled hops in the nose, albeit modestly. Even for a somewhat subdued style, this one's coming up a bit blank.

Taste: Citrusy with a tangy tropical tartness, though, again, it's pretty muted. The merest drop of sweetness. Bitterness is quite minimal, too. If you're like me, you may be waiting for something more to come aboard, a new flavor to emerge, something, anything! ... but it never does.

Mouthfeel: Light-bodied. Reasonably well-carbonated. Scant smoothness in the mouthfeel.

Overall: "Oh boy!" I exclaimed, looking over their beer list. I got suckered in seeing grisette on the laminated menu affixed to the door. Perhaps innocently enough, perhaps a bit weaselly, but, either way, I'm left feeling a little disappointed.

So Parleaux is canning now...nabbed a 4 pack of 16 fl oz pull-tab cans at a beer store in New Orleans, LA for $11.99 USD plus tax. I dig the label design, but it'd be nice if Parleaux would print the ABV on the can, a brewed on date, and/or a best before date...

"Dry hopped grisette ale." From their Facebook page: "4.5%" "Dry hopped with NZ Wai-iti & NZ Waimea
50/50% Pilsner and Wheat"

APPEARANCE: Hazy yellow of below average vibrance. Murky and nontransparent. Doesn't appear to be filtered. Head is maybe .5cm in height and lasts less than a minute.

Not much to look at, but it seems well carbonated for the style.

AROMA: Quite faint. I get creamy wheat like that you'd find in a turbid IPA plus some faint New World tropical hop character. I'm not finding any spicy Belgian yeast, clove, allspice, farmhouse funkiness, barnyard character, or really anything you'd expect to encounter aromatically in a traditional grisette.

Frankly, this seems like a watered down turbid pale ale that they've marketed as a grisette to rope in discerning drinkers familiar with the obscure style. I'm not optimistic going in...

TASTE & TEXTURE: Citrusy yet dry, with that dryness accentuating its subtle spicy yeast...I'm happy to be wrong about this beer not having the spicy Belgian yeast a grisette/saison requires. Hints of tangerine and grapefruit/orange peel are present along with some subtle peppery flavours. It doesn't taste overhopped which was my main concern coming in given how much the label pushes its dry hopping (I mean really, who gives a shit about dry hops in a grisette except those who don't like the style as it's brewed traditionally?) coupled with the fact they chose kiwi hops for a Belgian beer style.

It does feel a bit thin, though, and even a bit empty texturally. It's certainly a simple brew for the style...I mean Jester King's Le Petit Prince is lower in ABV but has triple the intricacy and flavour this does. There's not a lot going on here, and it feels a bit bland mid-second act. But it's balanced enough and it's certainly approachable...more of a table beer to mindlessly pair with food than a beer one can really dig deep into.

Well carbonated. Smooth. More coarseness would help coax out the pleasant peppery spiciness.

I do dig its dried citrus peel fruit flavours, but I have to imagine the spicy yeast would be better served by a different citrus fruit...Szechuan pepper would be my top choice, with yuzu as a distant second. The orange/grapefruit vibe this targets is nice but not standout.

OVERALL: A bit clinical for a farmhouse ale, and not really strictly within grisette style guidelines as I understand them...I don't pretend to have had a great deal of expressions of the style, not that there are that many out there - but dig out your history books and show me a traditional grisette brewed with Wai-iti and Waimea, or even a grisette that emphasized whatever hops were used over its wheat and/or spelt malt and yeast flavours. Anyway, what I mean by "clinical" is it's not really barnyard-redolent or farmhouse-y in the ways all saisons are. There's no brettanomyces here, no spontaneous fermentation with bacteria, no microflora...drinking it one knows it came from a stainless steel fermenter and it isn't really a rustic beer of the land.

It's a better beer than I thought it'd be coming in. Slapping the name grisette on a beer and brewing it with New World hops is such an obvious recipe for marketing-over-merit brewing, but Parleaux's execution of this was quality enough for me to bury my skepticism after a few sips. Still, at ~$13+ a 4 pack, it's far from good enough to warrant a second purchase what with Prairie Artisan Ales, Perennial, and Ommegang all available in the same markets as this for those craving a farmhouse ale. And how often do you see someone holding up Prairie as a more affordable alternative?

Low B- (3.28) / WORTHY