Ponderosa Pine Tree Saison
The Hidden Mother Brewery

 

a super unique beer that apparently changes from batch to batch. wort is run through a fresh cut pine tree mid boil, a super unique technique, and so based on the tree and its variability, the beer also is unique each time. i believe it also has some pink peppercorn in it, unless they did that only with a special edition, it has that floral almost perfume character though, so i suspect that its part of the main recipe. the alcohol also is variable, i have seen this in the low sixes and high sevens already, so obviously some tweaking and/or unpredictability going on with it, but its an awesome brew nevertheless, my favorite from these guys so far, although i love the creativity across the board from them! a little reddish hue to this brew, not as much head as expected from the tap for a saison, and a little haziness, some fine tuning and cleaning up overall could make this world class, but they are super new still, so i expect this to get dialed in even more over time. the aroma and flavor here are real different, some hot sappy sharpness to the pine, a more herbal fresh plucked pine needle thing too, but it almost seems like running this through the tree post boil would be better than when its that hot, like something was past cooked to scalded, rather than steeped or something. its obviously pine though, its wet and fresh, and its neat with the esters of the saison yeast, which sure seem like they have been allowed to run in a pretty warm fermentation, pear and white wine and cotton candy all kind of leap forth, some white pepper notes too are nice with the pine. this isnt tart or anything, and its certainly not wild, but it has some weirdness, cool, but weird. lightly astringent and bitter from the pine it seems, but some malt sweetness also remains. a very peculiar brew, but one with all the potential in the world to be amazing, already good and memorable as it is. ill look for this to improve over time though. i think i have seen it listed under a few different names around town too, any clarity on that, on various editions, or anything else about its evolution would be welcome! fun stuff, one of the more interesting beers around spokane right now for sure, these guys are going to make some waves! ill update this review as often as i drink this one and learn more...