Holy Mountain Release Party - Pine Box 10 / 14

The long awaited Holy Mountain will have 4 beers at Pine Box on 10 / 14.

Equinox Fresh Hop
The Seer Hoppy Saison
Kings Head Double Oat Brown
Gose

It's a nice spread of styles. Good to see someone coming out with a brown and gose right outta the gates.

 

My take on the brews.

The brown was excellent - nutty, pretty full bodied, more in an English style (in my uninformed opinion) as the hops weren't prominent ... but on steroids. I don't know of anyone around Seattle making a big brown remotely like this. BA browns have potential - FW does their Bravo, several Florida breweries like Funky Buddha do a lot of BA browns - so I'm really curious to see where this goes. I'm probably in the minority, but this was my favorite beer of theirs ... in part due to them going after a non-sexy style and nailing it.

The un-oaked stout was also excellent. Drier, RIS-ish, but without a lot of dark fruit that I can recall ... and though very roasted, avoids the bitter charred character that comes into some RIS. On a first pass, I put this up there with some of the best non BA stouts.

The Gose was juicy. WAY juicy ... almost radler-like. And while really thirst quenching I would have like a bit more of the coriander notes and maybe a touch more salt / sour to balance it. That said, I could still drink a lot of this and no one around Seattle is making a gose at all that I can tell.

The saison was my least favorite. As it warmed, it had a lot of great fruit aromas, presumable from the hops, but not a lot of discernable saison character. This carried through the flavor ... but what ruined it for me was that all the fruit flavors of the middle dropped out quickly in the finish leaving a sustained unpleasant bitterness. Yes, it was a hoppy saison but hop bitterness without anything "saison-y" to balance it isn't friendly. Has potential but needs work.

The FH equinox I sampled before and thought it was very nice but can't recall enough detail to say more.