The Easygoing Drink
Garden Path Fermentation

Slightly hazy yellow pour with a medium white head. The aroma brings grain, lemon, floral tones, and a touch of funk. The flavor is lightly tart and crisp, delivering the refreshing, easy‑drinking character promised on the label

 

 

 

16 oz can

Hazy yellow straw color with minimal head and lacing, as expected for the style.

Aroma has notes of lemongrass, cereal grains, and light earthy funk.

Light but complex flavor. Notes of lemon, ginger, honey, grass, and cereal grains. Very faint funk character.

Light bodied with prickly carbonation. Crisp and dry. Absurdly drinkable.

This is a fantastic grisette. So drinkable. It's funky and citrusy and lightly tart. Everything I want from this type of beer.

RB Transfer

Poured from 16oz can into a dimpled mug. No date on the can, but I picked this up at the brewery just a couple weeks ago.

Appearance: pale straw hue with a soupçon of haze and a thin finger of ivory foam.

Smell: light, grainy, and ever-so-slightly tart aroma. Low-key, and hinting at something very drinkable indeed.

Taste: a bit sweeter than the aroma, but still with that light grain character. Instead of tartness, there’s a lovely funk to this beer — I’m one of those guys that thinks a grisette should not be particularly sour, if at all, so this really works for me. What a lovely table beer!

Mouthfeel: light body with a big carbonation. Not quite hefty enough to be creamy, but it has some nice texture going on.

Overall: a super drinkable table grisette; light, but with an earthy funkiness that keeps me coming back for more. This is probably phenomenal with a meal.

 

Poured into a Seattle Beer Week pint glass. Pours a lightly hazy, light golden amber with a fine, one finger white head with great retention and nice lacing. Aroma of bready and grainy malt, lemon, fresh bread yeast and a touch of honey. Flavor follows, with bready and grainy malt, saison yeast, a touch of brett, lightly tart lemon and the taste of honey, but only a hint of sweetness; mostly dry. Pleasant lemon aftertaste. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess. Most of the ales from this brewery are in the tarter wild ale category, but I enjoyed the last, less wild saison from them and this one sounded more like my style and it is. Just some mild tartness appropriate for its lemony profile and solid farmhouse malt and yeast. Quite laid back in flavor, but exactly what I'd expect a low ABV farmhands ale would be like after a hard morning or afternoon of work. Mellow, but pleasant. I'd like to see what Garden Path might do with a more robust, but dry and grainy saison. I'll be watching for one.

 

This current batch is even easier-going at 3.8 percent. I taste the yeast mostly, with a modest tart edge. It's all very light but definitely wild tasting with just a hint of honey taste. A bit of fruit and a hint of sweetness would make this less austere. Lively on the tongue but not overly acidic. Mineral aftertaste with some stemmy brambles. From the 16 oz can purchased at Garden Path. Nearly clear with a flicker of foam in the goblet.

2022-04-29
16oz can served in a footed pilsner glass. Dated "THE EASYGOING CAN". Thanks a lot, Garden Path.

Pours light yellow with a flash of carbonation that settles into a thin even skin with a smallish ring, lots of active carbonation. Basically clear. Smell is soft lemon, maybe a hint of banana, yeasty/bready, vaguely floral.

Taste is a little bit of a departure. More of an earthy bitterness with a honeysuckle sweetness, maybe a slight woody character.

Mouthfeel is very light and smooth. Overall, this is very nice and I could drink a lot of it.

 

Slightly hazy straw color with a sudsy white head, the nose is tart lemons, with a little sweetness mixed in - and of course, da funk.

Tart lemons that are nicely funky on the taste with a nice funky flavor and a bit of sweetness at the back of the palate for balance, I’m assuming from the honey.

The mouthfeel is bright and bubbly. This is Kool-Aid for beer nerds, and it is delicious.

tallboy dated 7/7/21; today is 2/13/22
pours a super hazy mellow yellow gold with a chalk white head that billows but has low retention, leaving no lacing behind as it settles to a super thin murky cap with a thin but defined halo

aroma is lemon drop with metallic tinge and earthy oak inners; slightly grassy hop that hits with lemon, peel and all

taste follows suite with super juiciness

mouthfeel is high carbonation and medium-light bodied that runs chewy, prickly, and pillowed before finishing super dry and leaving a grassy hopped tinged feeling of having licked a lemon and then crunching down on the peel and flesh of the lemon for the aftertaste

overall:
super easy, super funky, super lemon faced farmhouse brew from someone who totally didnt try and make jester king pop...but did anyway............

 

This is how the modern saison/grissette should be brewed. This is also how American Wilds should be brewed (but many, alas, are not.)

However you might classify this Easygoing Drink, I am rating it highly against its peers in the saison family... my favorite style. This is Drink's second release, packaged on 10/10/18, its label has a koala hanging from limb with glass in hand and the slug is "A Skagitonian Grisette." (Skagit does not sound like a village in the Ardennes. It is a Valley that produces this ale's ingredients with terrain varying from the volcanic Northwest to the Puget Sound.) Anyway, I bought my copy from The Beer Temple in Chicago.

While Drink has a nice clarity, it does Look more like a Wild than a bubbly, protein-whirling saison. Drink starts by Smelling like a lemony saison (not much yeast/bacteria funk in the nose.) Tastes are perfectly refreshing; like slaking the thirst of miners that the grisette was designed for. The finish is close to bone-dry and leaves an impression of wine (you guess the varietal as it has been too many decades since I drank that stuff.)

Too many Wilds ruin my mouthfeel with a sour that is almost catastrophic with food. Not with this Drink; it only is mildly tart and was a great accompaniment to a medley of summer appetizers. Even two snobby wine drinkers went "yum-yum" for this beer.

My first from Garden Path, I went on their website and was impressed by their dedication and credentials. The founder was a managing partner at Jester King and I can taste that. Garden Path is only a few years old in a rural, mountainous corner of the country. So how lucky am I to get a taste of that in the flat, geographically homogeneous Midwest ?

 

Packaged 10/10/18
Pours a light fluffy foamy medium head with med retention decent soapy lacing, very clear light pale colour

Nose brings big funky barnyard Brett, big Brett B farmhouse with some tart grassy hay, lemony notes, grainy malt, hint of honey and butter oak, light fruity notes

Taste brings more Brett B funk but not as dominating, barnyard, farmhouse saison funk, light spices and fruity notes, light buttery oak, lemony tartness, little grassy grainy malt, fair lemony, little tart acidity, hint of floral herbal hops, some dry honey flavor, fair honey overall, dry finish with more honey and fruity tart

Mouth is lighter bod and thin watery, fair effervescent carb, dry slight astringent finest

Overall not bad, tasty if you like Brett B, too watery overall, and to funky and sour for a typical grisette. But still good