Old Jake's Dark Saison
Alley Kat Brewing Company

650ml bottle - a tribute to Jake, the brewery's resident pet pooch, who has always been a pleasure to meet when strolling through the front door.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium bronzed amber colour, with three fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly beige head, which leaves a bit of awkwardly webbed lace around the glass as it slowly but surely dissipates.

It smells of estery yeast, gritty and grainy pale malt, some spicy wheatiness, faint apple and pear fruity notes, a mild free-range ashiness, and some plain earthy, musty, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is toasted grainy and bready cereal malt, wet Wheat Thins, a thankfully fading yeastiness, muddled pome fruit, and more understated musty, leafy, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly tame in its palate-boring frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a ho-hum time at this particular point in the process. It finishes trending dry, the Alberta cereal malt character predominating.

Overall - this comes across as more of a thin amber ale than a proper Saison, but experiments being what they are, it's not exactly surprising. I'm assuming that at 16 years old, and their use of the past tense in referring to the real life Jake, that he's passed on. And this offering is not as sad as that, by a long shot.