Pain D'Epices
Donner Creek Brewing

cool beer, spiced super saison in the amber sort of biere de garde range, nice and malty, weird on the ferment in a couple of ways, and quite heavily hit with fall spices, an interesting and cozy beer that hits as really original, but one i like a little less as i keep drinking on it and as it warms up. deep amber colored brew under a full inch of fizzy off white head, relatively well refined looking overall and quite excited. i smell all kinds of baking spices, cinnamon, clove, anise, subtle root beer and sarsaparilla, light vanilla, gingerbread, and bran muffin, lots of grain support, festive without being sweet which is cool, rustic and earthy still like i want in a farmhouse type, lightly vinous from the yeast, white and black pepper character too there, but then subtle almost sweaty stink to it, a detergent aspect, and thats where it turns a little amateur for me. the flavor does the same thing, on the edge of being over spiced and certainly would be if this were a pale saison, but the malt complexity and depth keeps it close to balanced, some graham cracker and even chestnut character to it, a bit of sugar but not too sweet overall. warming with the spices, i actually think the alcohol is pretty well hidden, but its the yeast side that kind of knocks this down a bit for me, not quite cheesy but definitely not clean and it doesnt present as intentional funk or anything either, like it got too hot, not well oxygenated, underpitched, something, but it does turn me off a little bit. still, this has some small timey charm and i think the recipe is cool, neat to go into a little place like this and see such ambitious beers, the world doesnt need another spot making red ale and blonde ale and brown ale, and these guys are definitely doing some ambitious stuff, so even if the execution here is off a little, i still appreciated this. tidy it up a bit and maybe dial back the spices and its a real winner, french-esque and old worldy to a degree, intriguing anyway...