Southern Tier Cherry Saison

Brewed by Southern Tier Brewing Company
Style: Saison
Lakewood, New York USA

Pours murky golden color with a small tight white head. Aroma is of musty cherries. Im not sure what to say about this beer. It wasn’t close to what I thought it would be. Can’t say i likeed it at all.

Golden with very slight haze. Footy, fecal aroma with a hint of cherr. Some dusty, footy taste with a very minor cherry accent. Some vague spice. Succeeds neither as a saison nor a fruit beer.

22 oz. bottle. Pours a hazy dark golden color with a smaller white head and a decent amount of carbonation. The aroma is spicy, dry malt, and exhibits decent wood character. The description describes this as being "aged with French Oak staves, imparting overtones of spice and balancing the natural sweetness of the cherries." I think it would be more accurate to say destroying any and all evidence that cherries were ever present. This is mainly moderately sweet dry malt, somewhat spicy, a slight medicinal note, and light bitterness. I really enjoy most of the ST Blackwater beers, but this one is not one of my favorites.

On tap at the Knickerbocker. Very light aroma, mild sweetness and a bit funky. Very little cherry or hops in the nose. Clear golden with mild haze, topped with thin lacing white head. Medium watery body with heavy carbonation. Starts with mild sweet pilsner malt, light oak, and a bit of barnyard yeastiness. Cherry skin bitterness and light bitter astringent hops at the finish. Dry chalky after. Interesting saison. Can taste oak but not much cherry. A bit more in the nose as it warms.

Bomber. Pours hazy golden yellow with small, but persistent, white head and lots of rising bubbles. The aroma is nondescript overripened fruit, freshly cut hay, earth, and a faint mustiness. The flavor is pleasantly earthy with a light fruity sweetness behind it. A kind of hay/straw/grass bitterness quickly follows. It finishes with a slight peppery tone, and melds into an aftertaste which has the only trace of cherry I noticed (and it’s quite distant). Still a decent saison, though, and honestly I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.

At Vero. Bright, light golden. Heavy pedio stank. bacterial and vegetal. Light soft effervescence. Some tart cherry on a plastic background. Medicinal and odd.

22 oz bottle poured into a tulip glass has a slightly hazed golden color and a white one finger head. aroma has fresh flowers, pollen, lightly spiced yeast, anise, a touch of oak, and faint sour cherry. mouth feel is medium low with fairly high carbonation. flavor has green fresh flowers, bitter malts, spiced yeast, and light oak. sweetness is low, and where the hell are the cherries? you would think from the cherry breaking the truck there would be some in the beer. finish becomes dry with floral, spice, and bitters.

BIG thanks to GMCC2181 for sending this (and a ton of other great stuff) my way recently. I liked this one a lot, but I can see why it might be ranked so low on this site. I think this is mainly due to the fact that its very mild, no real spiciness to this one, as there is ina lot of Saisons. For me, this is a great thing, because the over spice is a big turn off. I loved the way ST made this one subtle. Hints of jasmine and flowers, nice notes of wood and vanilla. Nice malty profile, but with some bitter hop in the background. What’s missing here? The cherries! And this is the second reason I think this beer is getting such a low score...for a beer called CHERRY Saison with a picture of a GIANT DAMN CHERRY on the bottle, the cherries in this one are waaaay in the background. They are there, but you have to search really hard to find them. ST should have cranked up the cherry flavor big time on this one, and it would have been simply awesome. As it stand though, it is still another great offering from ST. Thanks again Gabe!