The Bruery Saison Rue

Brewed by The Bruery
Style: Saison
Placentia, California USA

Bottle sample at the Draft Magazine PBS Beer Festival. Pours clear gold with a fizzy white head. The nose is fruit and spice. The taste is lemon zest, candy, light funk and fruit. Light prickly mouthfeel. Decent Saison.

This one was a serious gusher and didn’t stop foaming out of the bottle for several minutes. Poured a deep orange color with a huge, bubbly cream colored head that lasted forever. The aroma shows hints of citrus fruits, oranges, and lemon zest to go with some candied sugar, and the farmhouse style brett. The flavors follow suit with the orange citrus and lemon zest, candied sugar, and some spices. The rye malts come through and balance things out, while the brett dries things out and add tartness. Medium bodied with a lot of carbonation and a bone dry finish. This is a very unique and tasty saison.

This golden ale poured with an overactive beige head that took some time to recede. There is a strong citrus aroma and a strange mixture of flavors: lemon, pepper, brett yeast, caramel malt, grass and anise. It’s interesting, but doesn’t work that well in regard to taste.

Bottled. An amber beer with a thin beige head. The aroma is sweet with light notes of acidic lemon. The flavor is sweet with notes of malt and lemon, leading to a slightly tart finish.

Pale copper. Condensing mountainous white head morphs into a spongy and pasty froth. Perfumey phenols line the nose amid pungent scents of white pepper, sulfur, herbal hops, alcohol, juniper berries, and aniseed. Faint mustiness and overripe banana. Creamy carbonation. Deceptively full in body. Initially flabby with slick baked apple textures and considerable sugary weight. Sweetness persists with a rumlike quality coupled with a fusel and intensely peppery alcoholic bite. Malt isn’t particularly clean or vivid, as it lends more vanilla cake and honey-drenched bread-crust muscle which reinforces, rather than lifts, the unwavering sweetness. Phenols possess plenty of feistiness, but largely go by the wayside as a result of the omnipresent sweetness. Borderline medicinal, as well. Finishes amply bitter and torridly peppery, as distant mineralic and sulfuric vigor fuses with a fairly dull and unrefined hop punctuation. All in all, a rather muddled effort. Needs a simpler grain bill (simply too much heft, as is), cleaner attenuation, and the alcohol and spiciness need to be toned down to better allow the subtleties to come forward.

Bottled. Pours an orange, nice flower and hops and yeast to smell. Yeasty and citrusy. very good overall.

On tap at Bruery’s tap room in Placentia. Pours a hazy, golden body with a huge, white, frothy head that dissipates slowly and leaves a moderate lacing. Aroma is wheat and a moderately spiced yeast. Some fruity Belgian yeast as well with some citrus and bready malts. Flavor is peppery, yeasty, earthy, bready, and moderately sweet with some mixed fruits and citrus. Finishes with a light astringency and a growing grassy bitterness. Medium bodied, dry, soft carbonation, and a long lingering bitterness. Overall, a pretty solid saison. Sweet, but a pronounced spicing and long, lingering taste. Good one.

Has a cloudy golden color. Smells like cheap french perfume, leathery. Tastes is full of floral, yeast flavors. Has a smooth finish.