Mickey Finns Miss Saison

Sampler at pub. Lighter yellow than the Belgian I started with, with a thin layer of foam. Malt smell is pretty light, but in the "refreshing" range. Taste shows a bit of orange peel and yeast (the beer menu suggests marmalade). Warming alcohol, with just the slightest note of farmhouse funk. I still haven’t pinned down how a saison "should" taste, but this one is nice.

Draught pint at the brewpub, mid-October 2006. Hazy, bright gold with a large slow-diminishing smooth white head, bit of soft lacing....delicate lemon-spicy (coriander, white pepper) dominated nose also shows touches of vanilla and is backed throughout by a pleasant sweet cookie-dough yeastiness that seems at first too soft but eventually offers a deeper earthiness....body is sweet at first but nice earthy, grainy and mineralic hints show up quickly, iron and sour wheat, sweet orange at the front slowly turning to bitter Seville orange at the dry finish....very full, smoothly and naturally carbonated, obviously unfiltered with a "rustic" mouthfeel full of light yeast fleck....the finish on the whole is a bit sharper, hoppier than might be truly authentic but all in all this is a fine example and easily the best beer I’ve had from this brewpub. Well done!

Hazy and barely peer-through-able with a dirty caramel lemon color. Head recedes to a soup white wrung and ice sheaf. Dough dinner rolls are aromatically alive with cackled cloves. Smooth vanilla, banana butter and meringue do a small aroma skirt with aged white pepper and orange crème-saturated grahams. Sweet orange peel jumps out of the flavor gate with a touch of Curacao for bitter splendor. Dry, earthy hop bite teams with a fresh hammered coriander fledge. The superfluous coriander is dramatically present. Sourdough with hop pellets decoratively caked to the butter-meringue glazed crust imparts a strange flavor hop derivative. Streaming effervescence and dry, dry, dry (to the point of stinging the tongue with pincers.) Bitter orange peel drives the finish home with starkly stinging flavors of cotton blankets.

A hazy wheat color with a small head. Aroma- Pepper, yeast, lemon, slight coriander. Taste- Pepper, spices, mild tobacco. Overall- A decent example of a saison, lack of a head detracts. Always good to see a saison at a brewpub.