Flying Dog Garde Dog Bière de Garde

Brewed by Flying Dog Brewery
Style: Bière de Garde
Frederick, Maryland USA

12 oz. bottle from Plaza Liquors - Pours a crystal clear golden color with a one finger thick white head. Light lacing. Aroma is yeast, esters, and light spice. Quite pleasant. Flavor is very light. Light malt and hops. What a disappointment after a decent aroma. Medium body. This beer started off on the right foot, but stumbled toward the finish.

12 oz bottle. Pours a clear gold with 1 cm of off white bubbly head that is mostly diminishing. Aroma is sweet and floral, light. Initial flavor of fruit and bread. Flavor ends the same but with a hint spice and tart. Light flavored. Thin body, moderate carbonation, nearly no lacing, and no real alcohol presence noted. Light, drinkable beer for people who are fans of lighter beers, but a let down for me as I hold Flying Dog to a higher standard than this.

(12oz bottle) Crystal clear apple juice body topped by thin off-white head. Aroma is medium sweet, floral, light honey, spicy. Taste is medium sweet, spicy/floral, light honey, flower/peach. Light-medium body. They may use French hops, but that doesn’t make this filtered beer a BdG. Not bad, but not a BdG either.

(Bottle from <A HREF=http://www.ratebeer.com/Place/maine/augusta/l target=blank>Lou’s Beverage Barn) Really pretty weak...Pours clear bright slightly reddish gold-amber. Thin white head melts away to edges. Aroma is kind of sweetish and fruity, maybe light hint of citrus but overall kind of non-descript. Mouthfeel is rather thin and loose, a bit prickly, a tad syrupy and sticky. Flavor is quite bland but I pulled out some hints of light peach/citrus and perhaps bread - really only slightly more flavorful than your average pale lager. Very poor example of a biere de garde. Pass.

Hmm. Some of Flying Dogs attempts at more exotic craft brew styles produced some great beers, and this coming from someone who thought of Flying Dog as boring for years. This however, goes back to the boring category, although I will admit there are some nice parts to this beer. There is a nice hop aroma that comes across slightly musty. The malt is nice, although the initial cracker malt flavor dissipates quickly and leaves you with a watery finish. There’s also a bit of very ripe apple and pear fruitiness in there as well, but overall, this is just an easy-to-drink beer than you’ll forget a few minutes after the last sip.

Bottle (12oz). Clear brassy pour with a very small fizzy white head (3-). Not much aroma at all - a little cereal tang and mild weedy hop bitterness, not any spice I can detect. The taste is pretty much a slightly grassy generic golden ale with a tiny bit more yeast and cereal tingle to it - thin, slick, not much palate character at all. Like the description says, with spicy food, sure - you won’t notice how bland it is then. Cool Steadman dog pic on the label, though.

Peppery honey nose. Rich gold with hints of orange, small head. Subtle sugar biscuit sweetness, tart bitterness. Fizzy, slight skunk, but finishes smooth with lasting biscuit notes.

Blah. A very subpar beer from the brewery with the best labels in the business (other than that nakid beer but that’s another story). Aroma of metal with a floral butterness. Pour was a flat boring light gold with no bubbles and no head. Taste was like drinking sugar water aged in rose bush barrels and dry hopped with corn. Terrible.