Dooryard Summer Ale
Picaroons Traditional Ales

 

 

 

 

Hazy golden with decent head. No nose to speak of. Thin wheaty body with slight crispness. Plain but thirst-quenching.

A nice beer to have anytime.

I have love this one, this wheat ale is refreshing.

Got it again on Friday, May 12, 2017. Same refreshing taste

 

 

My mother raves about this beer, but to be honest, that could be just because she likes the name. "Out in the dooryard" is a phrase I often heard from her mother, who grew up in south-central New Brunswick and whose mother was of Irish descent.

A: Cloudy and straw-coloured.
S: Lightly floral, some honey, hay.
T: Conventional.
F: I'd like it to be crisper.

 

A Dooryard is a garden by the door of a house. I had to look that up; I didn't know. The beer that bears that name, however, definitely looks familiar. Pale yellow, clear, flat offerings like this are dime-a-dozen and don't make a particularly exciting first impression.

I see orange peel and coriander on the ingredients list but I'm not really smelling them, which is odd since they are both especially aromatic. In truth, there's little to this aroma beyond the dry, plain scent of cereal grain. Smells a little like something you'd feed to a horse.

Beer is made from fermented grain. Barley is far and away the most common but really any will do the trick. Wheat is popular too and with good reason; it makes for a crisp, light quaff that still offers a tasty, wholesome flavour. Dooryard has a lot of that grainy, bready wheat presence.

'Farm to Fork' is a popular concept and, although I've no idea where the brewery sources its wheat from, this tastes remarkably farm-fresh. The spice and citrus notes being more or less absent, this has a very grainy, grassy mouthfeel that gives it a 'harvest time' kind of air.

Just as you'd expect, Dooryard Summer Ale is an uncomplicated, agreeable and conventional beer. The lack of character is a sore spot for me, personally, but likely won't bother mainstream drinkers. In fact, this makes a good candidate for nursing people off of industrial lager and into craft.

Serving Type: 500 mL

A- Pours a slightly hazy Golden topped by a 1 finger head that works down quickly to a thin skim.

S- Fruity (pear/apple) upfront with a wheaty maltiness in the background.

T- Pear, orange peel, and soft wheat up front. Slight hop bitterness comes in near the end to balance things out nicely.

M- Low-Medium Carbonation with a fairly hefty medium body. Easy drinking.

O- After hearing so much about Dooryard Summer Ale, I can say that I was not disappointed when I finally had the chance to have it.

 

 

 

500ml bottle. Just for fun, get a native Maritimer to pronounce the name of this brew to you - I still can't recreate in my mind how I heard it.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium golden straw colour, with two skinny fingers of puffy, rocky, and lazily bubbly dirty white head, which leaves some spooky haunted forest lace around the glass as it swiftly abates.

It smells of sugary pale and grainy wheat malt, applesauce, pear compote, lightly spiced orange rind, earthy yeast, and mild leafy, grassy, hay-like hops. The taste is more sweet orchard fruit - the usual suspects of apple, orange, pear, and lemon all representing their cause - alongside a decent grainy, bready, and somewhat crackery pale malt, a sort of separate yeasty wheatiness, and soft piney, leafy, and earthy noble hops.

The bubbles are quite understated, barely raising the hackles of any of my various palates, the body medium-light in weight, and actually fairly smooth, with a certain well-bred creaminess to boot. It finishes off-dry, the breadiness of the blended malt maintaining some hefty staying power, while the fruit, yeast, and old-world hops bonk heads on their slow, meandering way out.

Without the wheat on the malt bill, this would surely fall into the catch-all category of American Blonde Ale, which is strangely growing its own personality of late - sweet, fruity, bready, low alcohol and meek hops. Sound familiar? Yup, but this hardly a bad thing, in fact, it's what the doctor (should have, at least) ordered for days like this - unbearably hot in the rooms where the oscillating fan isn't, with some wafting Northern forest fire ashes to breath, just for fun. Yeah, give me one of these right now, no matter how you spit out its name.

Appearance - Pours a light amber with a finger of frothy white head. Pleasant lacing that sticks to the glass.

Smell - wheat, lightly toasted grains, citrus (orange/lemon), light spicy notes, and hint of noble hops.

Taste - Starts off strong with wheat and citrus flavours followed by the lightly toasted grains, spicy notes, and hint of noble hops.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with light to moderate carbonation. Finishes dry with a light bitterness.

Overall - A refreshing wheat beer that is easily enjoyed on anyone's patio/back deck. A perfect compliment to this warm day in Cowtown.