Leelanau Good Harbor Golden

Leelanau Brewing Company
Brewed at Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
Style: Bière de Garde
Lake Leelanau, Michigan USA

At Vero. Hazy pale yellow with small off-white head. Pedio funk aroma. Smooth soft mouthfeel. Pedio, smooth, seed oil. Smooth, relatively simple and very nice.

Bottle courtesy of JMFG. Pours cloudy hay color with white head. Sour, funky aroma. Sour and sweet flavors with some funkiness and oak also. Medium body with average carbonation. It has that signature Jollly Pumpkin flavor to it. A very nice beer.

Pours hazy golden, rich white head with good retention. Aroma is woody, somewhat musty with a hint of sweet fruit and a noticeable suggestion of sourness. Flavor starts quite sweet, then develops a woody sourness that lingers through a long sour finish. Fairly light mouthfeel with light carbo. Really nice. I’m told this is actually a Jolly Pumpkin beer, which doesn’t surprise...chalk another one up in their column!

Hazy gold with a frothy white head. Nice aroma is spicy, cracker malts with a whiff of barnyard funk and wood. Frothy expansive mouthfeel. Mildly sour with flavors of dusty pale malts, dry wood and tart lemon and spices. A nicely complex pale brew here.

22oz bottle. Let me say right off the bat that I knew this was brewed by JP. You can absolutely taste it. Nose is tart and crazy with hints of straw and citrus bit of cherry and lemon. Sweet and slightly woody to start with some vanilla and caramel and big tart notes. Lemony but not soapy. This is a very cool Bier de Garde.

Pour is slightly hazed golden with a thin dense and sticky white head...smell is lightly fruity and sweet with pears and lemons....some corn too...taste is lightly sweet at first, with a light but consistent tartness and almost citric in nature...nice tart finish....interesting for a BdG, but delicious and not surprising for Ron!

A softer pour produces an almost three-finger thick, pale, off-white colored head. The beer is a light honey / gold color that shows a hazy, straw-gold color when held up to the light. The head leaves a layered lacing pattern on the sides of my glass as I work my way through this beer. The aroma has a bright, grassy grain character to it, a certain soft mustiness and even a hint of something like barnyard funk (though only the beginning stages of this last). Fruit aromatics of pear and tart, slightly under-ripe plum also play a significant role as does some floral and herbal aromatics that add a nice edge to the nose. This has quite a complex nose to it that makes this quite interesting and quite enjoyable to smell.

Still well carbonated, despite losing a quarter of its contents en route to me (which really means it must have started out excessively carbonated). The carbonation provides a nice textural component as well as accenting a peppery note that adds to the overall spiciness of this brew. This is quite spicy too with fermentation derived notes of ginger, white pepper and higher alcohols which all combine to give this brew a sort of piquancy. This has a nice, light tartness to it, but not much in the way of sweetness; the tartness accentuates fruit flavors of pear, melon and a certain character that makes me thing of some floral honey varietal. The higher alcohols provide a touch of heat to the finish at times, almost a bit like a spicy ginger or horse-radish would. This is highly quaffable and in fact drinks lighter than your typical 7.5% abv beer would.

This is a very enjoyable brew, I wouldn’t really characterize it as a Bier de Garde, but many of Jolly Pumpkin’s style designations are by inspiration only anyway. Still this is quite a tasty brew, one which I am happily quaffing. This doesn’t seem to have anything beyond a normal Belgian yeast strain funkiness to it (despite the notes in the nose), though it is certainly a characterful strain at the very least.

Bottle (750ml) shared with HogTownHarry, biegaman, rudolf & swoopjones -- courtesy of rudolf. Pours a cloudy pale yellow with an average size diminishing white head. Aroma: Oh yeah! Funky, citrusy and spicy! Awesome. Flavour’s funky, tart and spicy along with some bready malt, wood, sweetness and a slightly odd, long acidic finish. Average to medium bodied. Very good stuff.