North Coast Le Merle

Brewed by North Coast Brewing Company
Style: Saison
Fort Bragg, California USA

Listed as Whole Foods Silver Jubilee. Cloudy golden color with a medium head. Nice spiced, farmhouse-citrus aroma. Flavor is a nice mix of spice and subtle hops with just enough citrus, coriander, and sweet malts to make it all work. Pretty good Saison.

750 mL bottle purchased at the Food Co-Op in Davis, CA. Damn, I thought that this was some sort of new brew, but apparently not. Lots of yeast esters in the nose with some peppery spicy notes as well as some banana aromas. A little bit of orange and coriander may also e present. Quite floral and rather aromatic. Pleasant. Moderately hazy honey-colored body with a large, fluffy white head and nice lacing present. About as good as a saison can look. Wow, this is spicy as hell. Tingling mouthfeel to start with a some sweet, sugary, honey-like flavors present in the middle. Short-lived. Floral flavors are also abundant finishing with more spiciness and a bit of ethanol burn. Warming and just hoppy enough. This is well-done.

9/19/07 From the bottle. Aroma is sweet malt and phenols forward followed by toffee, light alcohol and some pearlike yeast notes. Appearance is hazy golden straw with a moderate white head. Flavor is pear forward, sour, lightly spicy, phenolic with a sour finish. Mouthfeel is light bodied with moderate warmth and a medium/high carb feel. Overall, this is a very complex brew with some fighting between flavors, but this would probably be great with food.

Pours the color of a navel orange peel with a sizeable foamy head that settles to a cm thick cover. Tangy citruses on the nose somewhat akin to a hefewezen, the bite of a gueuze on the tongue, more sour zesty citrus and a green apple tartness, floral bitterness and a touch of butterscotch diacetyl in the finish. Not really what I was expecting, but not bad. Just not particularly like other saisons I’ve tried.

Hazy amber body with a big but quickly dissipating fizzy head. Spice, fruit, floral hops, strong yeast, rubber in the nose. Medium to full bodied with a tingly feel in the mouth. Spice dominated the taste and was not enjoyable to me.

Two Finger thick, frothy, fairly large bubbled, off white colored head that sits atop a lightly hazy, lightly amber tinged, copper colored beer. Quite dry smelling, with dusty, freshly crushed malt, soda crackers and grassy grain aromatics. Lightly tart smelling, which accentuates some notes of green apples and even something like kiwi. Fairly hoppy, with a nice grassy, fresh mown hay sort of thing as well as some herbal notes going on. And now that I dig around here, it is actually quite fruity as well, with a nicely done, sweet flower nectar-like thing (honeysuckly, orange blossom and peach like aromatics come to mind.

Fairly well carbonated, yet still manages to feel creamy on the tongue. Fairly dry, yet it does have some clean, lightly sweet, pale malt notes to it. This finishes with a solid bitterness, which mixes with touches of tartness and an astringent herbal quality. The hops also seem to lend some fruit notes here (or at least the combination of hop and malts does) which definitely remind me of apricots and peaches. Dusty malt flavors of biscuits and crushed soda crackers are noticeable in the last half of a sip.

This is quite a bit nicer than I was expecting. I am really digging the how quaffable this is; it is only lightly sweet, but the hop-fruit character adds another dimension without adding any cloyingness. At first the fruit notes in both the aroma and flavor were hard to pick out, but once I stumbled upon them they became quite distinct and a major contributor to the overall character of the beer. Especially as the beer warms, it becomes much more fruity, with a amplified peach note becoming quite noticeable.

Purchased: <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Places/ShowPlace.asp? Liquors, Tucson, AZ

25 oz bottle, shared by mj. Pours a cloudy orangish gold body under a nice fluffy white head. Fruity yeasty nose with lots of bready notes, some lemon and citrus rinds. Nice fruity estery flavor with fluffy wheat and yeast all over the place. Finishes with a nice citrusy and peppery kick. Mouthfeel is fluffy with soft efforvescent carbonation. A pretty nice beer, not a whole lot of "farmhouse" going on here though, it really resembled a lighter Triple more than a Saison. A nice refresher on a warm day though.

750ml. appearance from the pour yields a tiny bubbly avg size head, though quickly receding, and a golden orange haze. aromas of peach skins and mango milkshakes fill my nose, as does passion fruit and perhaps even some cantalope and orange cream soda. it’s very lively, yet approachable. on the palate, it’s a little dirty. there’s the fruity aspect, which is filled with grapefruit rind (which lasts through to the finish), lemon zest, and a bit of tart ripe oranges. it’s bittersweet, honestly. there’s a woody aspect, but it’s not oak...maybe birch, or maple. it’s lingering on the finish. it’s a puzzling ale, indeed a farmhouse brew. enjoyable nonetheless. i dig it, for what it is. overall, i can’t say i’d go back to it many more times.