Nikolai
Fair Isle Brewing

i was so excited for this one, i always am for new fair isle stuff. this is a collaboration with otherlands, and is open fermented, low alcohol, and hopped with saaz and hallertau mittelfruh. i love beer thats at the same time super simple and super complex, and this is that. there is yeast sediment all up around the neck of the bottle, suggesting a pretty aggressive bottle referment took place, but its not real effervescent. blonde and a little cloudy with some fine sediment at the bottom and a short lived fizzy white head. it immediately smells like the green glass has skunked it up a bit, which might work against the hops, but it kind of reminds me of fantome, which is a good thing. light sulfur which never quite blows off, funky saison yeast a little more weird than the normal fair isle profile but still not really bretty, and then with the spicy hops on the back end, somewhat broken down, but also really farmy and rustic. the flavor is all of this, and brings layers of white wine, mowed lawn, and green gooseberry. definite skunk and paper, wet concrete or slate, some lemon from the hops, decent back end bitterness, white florals, raw wheat, insanely light on the malt side but also kind of rugged and almost like it wasnt boiled or something, neat base for this. the ferment is delicious, partially wild to me, less estery, lots of fruitiness from it, high end white wine, green grape. i really like it, and its weird, but its also nowhere near as refined as the best beers they make, and not in like a rustic way, even though this is, it presents as perhaps a touch sloppy, which is maybe unfair, but once i think that i cant really stop, and the hops that are supposed to lead this are definitely negatively impacted by the green glass, intentional or not. definitely has a flavor profile that could have come from belgium, which is cool, and i love how low alcohol and dry it is. a little something different here, my stoke for fair isle is unwavering!