Yina
Fair Isle Brewing

2023-05-05
750ml bottle split between a pair of tulip-ish wineglasses. Bottle doesn't seem to have a date on it.

Pours clear light yellow with slightly less than a finger of head on the pour, which settles into uneven clumps of a rather coarse appearance, looks like plenty of carbonation. Smell is light barnyard funk, bright fruity / grassy, maybe a little lemon tartness, maybe a bit of wood.

Taste is light and refreshing, hint of lemon, hint of herbal tea, really good balance of tartness and fruitiness and whatever you'd call all the other stuff -- funk and earthiness and floral and grass -- there's a lot going on and it's surprisingly harmonious.

Mouthfeel is light and clean, lively. Overall, I'm really impressed with this beer. Very nice.

another wonderful and unique brew here from fair isle, now one of my favorite breweries anywhere, and one of the least talked about for how good they are, still somehow under the radar, i love all they do. this is a sick bottle, gorgeous packaging as always, a golden saison, lightly tart, brewed with kiwi berries, lime leaves, coconut oolong tea, and aged in oak, wow! super pale in color, radiant yellow with well over an inch of lasting white head, puffy and airy and lasting, really delicate and excited looking, super sexy, the nose here is white wine for miles, cut flowers, the herbal tea evident too. kiwi berries seems subtle, add some tartness to this that plays well with the light astringency in their house yeast blend, and a little less fragrant lime leaf than expected, but its still there. mild floral tea, fleshy coconut, green grapes, mellow wood, fresh pils type malt, simple at its core, but not overly adjunct forward either, nice restraint it seems to me. the flavor confirms, tea and their now familiar year profile lead the way. i also get more wine character with the oak on this, subtle as it is, and the lime leaf plays in that springy sauvignon blanc space, way less intense than anticipated, but it fits in well. any coconut element is pretty light in the flavor, but the beer ends up really flavorful overall, tart but not sour, and still earthy and grainy like a saison should be. gorgeous execution here, insane quality, and a cool use of these fun ingredients rarely seen together. i love the high carbonation and found this quite refreshing and quenching for what it is. thanks a lot to my buddy for sharing this and another really heady fair isle bottle with me when i visited, i cant get enough from these guys right now. loved this, one of a kind!