Smucker's Night Out 2.0
Roadmap Brewing

a strong saison with blackberry, full of potential but this iteration was by far one of my least favorite beers i had in here. It’s a little pink, but I expected a more dramatic color from the fruit, and its pretty still from the tap. the aroma is high tone belgian yeast esters, bordering on phenolic, without any funky or farmy elements to the fermentation profile at all. the fruit seems largely fermented out too, or maybe never even dosed that high, a more robust blackberry profile would help balance the yeast intensity and also the alcohol, but without that, it seems a little exposed to me at this strength. still sweet too, so it doesn’t have that refreshment value i like in saison, and without the high carbonation the style is known for, it’s a little bigger than it needs to be. i think at this strength in this style, you need some yeast nuance, a clean belgian strain done at the upper limit of its temperature range is not enough to make this good or interesting, and it was kind of lost on me overall. more fruit next time, maybe some brett in the mix, a wine barrel, it needs something…