Heavyweight Saison de la Soeur Hoppy

Formerly brewed at Heavyweight Brewing Company
Style: Saison
Ocean Township, New Jersey USA

Pour is hazy orangey gold with some floaties and a nice dense white head...smell is mildly horseblanket with some tangerine and other mild citrus notes...upfront flavors are sweet and funky with a nice strong aggressively bitter building finish...thanks Jon!

Couleur ambrée, apparence pleinement opaque, surmonté d’une abondante et persistante mousse crémeuse. Axés sur une levure à caractère épicée, terreuse et organique, tapissés d’esthers fruités, style pêches et nectarine, et de dattes confites. Saveurs de houblons frais et verts sous des notes boisées, poivrées et résineuses. Texture laiteuse, carbonatation active et piquante, corps ample, final semi sèche. Encore une autre création mémorable de la soeur.

This poured amber with a whit head. The nose is hoppy , duh! The taste was good and smooth, lemon citrus hops. Good quality brew here folks.

Pours an orange/red body with a small white head. Citrus hops, spices, and yeast on the nose. Strong hop flavor up front with a grassy barnyard taste. Becomes citrusy in the finish. Like Doclock, I too bought this one at State Line and my cap also seemed to be loose. I’d like to try this again sometime. Hopefully, my second pour won’t be clumpy...it wasn’t :)

Pours a hazy, orangish tinted amber color and is topped by a frothy, fairly thick pale tan colored head. The aroma is at first hoppy with a grassy herbal note, but then picks up a suprising amount of maltiness to it (notes of fresh toasted bread, and a bit of a caramel note to it as well). The taste is at once spritzy, yet lightly swee. Of course there is a bracing hop note throughout: from the bitterness that starts up front and continues through to the finish, to the mix herbal, grassy, and perhaps lemon-like hop flavors. This beer has a fair amount of body to it, which I normally would not like in a Saison, but it works here, the ample hop levels even require it in order for this beer to gain some balance. With the body there is a definite malty background that is reminiscent of a slightly toasted crust on a fresh baget of french bread; toasty and biscuit-like.

This beer is quite quaffable, even the hoppiness of the beer does not interfere with the easy drinking frame-set. Especially as it warms up, the hop notes become a bit softer and the maltiness becomes a little more assertive. The hop note on this is really a spicy mix of pine, mint, basil, hints of lemon. This is a nice easy drinking beer, and I really like the sharp spicy character that this beer picked up from the yeast; a mix of ginger and pepper, but really not either.

Bottle from State Line. I believe I got a bad bottle of this, as the cap wasn’t very tightly attached, and I saw no head, a lot of big carbonation bubbles, and a clot of yeast that made the second pour look horrible. I love Heavyweight beers, and I love Tom Baker’s innovativeness, but this one had gone sour. I actually poured most of the second pour out. I will rerate. I did get a hazy orange/deep copper pour with aromas of hops, spice, citrus, barnyard, and flavors of hops, some malt, florals, tons of spices including sage. The flavor, however, was muddled and the beer felt dead in my mouth. Out of 2139, this is my first "turned" beer.

The Lure:
Piney, earthy and spicy hops thrive abundantly within in a multi-dimensional, yet never loud, presentation. Oranges and other fruity allusions cuddle with the toasted malts. Intriguing and saliva-inducing.

The Festivities:
Pine and the earth from which it grew traverse a yeast storm which tends to momentarily blind the view. A muscular back bitterness continues the wooden theme (resinous, spicy, musty), and attempts to pull the many flavors facets out of their muddled leanings. Quite flavorful and original, another very interesting beer from Heavyweight.

Transcendence:
Nature has the unique power to wake you up and calm you down all at once.

Huge rocky, perfect foam shaped off-white head tops the sunset deep sand (orange-amber) colored body. The gentle malt sweetness comes up biscuity and toasty, honeyish while the yeast is all about its multiple range of esters with hard to pick up individual spices and fruits while the obviously spicy, earthy hops act like a mellow perfume. Musty, peppery nature, pineapple touched sage? Notes. Elegant, very pleasant soft medium body, expanding foamy texture, citric, mineral hard wateriness and the mellowest alcohol are all part of the journey. Delicious, once again. The last of the 4 Heavyweight Saisons and I’d gladly drink a 750 of any of them by my lonesome, truly a successful line of experiments.