Recently in Double Feature Category

I was impressed by Florida's Barrel of Monks when I sampled their Three Fates Tripel last year and have finally managed to procure more of their wares. Their wheelhouse appears to be straightforward Belgian styles or Trappist ales that don't inspire as much beer nerd enthusiasm as freaky sours or barrel-aged pastry stouts and the like. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, but it is genuinely nice to take a step back and try a straightforward Belgian Tripel or Dubbel. So when these two bottles came my way, I was ready.

First up is actually something a little more trendy that might twixt beer dorks' nethers more than the straightforward stuff. Monk de Soleil (Monk of the Sun?) certainly starts off as a simple Belgian Pale Ale, but it then undergoes a secondary fermentation with added Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and then endures some dry-hopping. This collaboration with 7venth Sun Brewery certainly hits that funky sweet spot that beer geeks crave:

Barrel of Monks Monk de Soleil - Pours a cloudy golden orange color with lots of head that sticks around for a bit. Smells fantastic, great earthy funk mixed with fruity esters and a little clove. Taste hits that funky Brett note pretty well, plenty of spicy phenols, a little bit of that fruit. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated, crisp, and effervescent, highly attenuated and dry. Overall, this is a great little Brett beer. A

Beer nerd Details: 7% ABV bottled (750 ml). Drank out of a charente glass on 6/24/17. Released 4/29/17.

Next, we've got a humble Belgian Dubbel. Not much else to it, except that like their Tripel, this is a very well executed take on a style most American brewers don't even try, let alone do well...

Barrel of Monks Abbey Terno - Pours a dark amber brown color with a couple fingers of fluffy, big bubbled head that sticks around for a bit. Smells nice, that trademark dubbel raisins and fruity esters, spicy phenols, clove. Taste has a great sweet and spicy character, a little caramelized dark fruit, raisins, plums, maybe a hint of toast in the background. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated, crisp, and effervescent, highly attenuated, relatively dry, making this dangerously quaffable. Overall, rich, c omplex, again one of the better American takes on a vaunted, traditional Belgian style. A-

Beer nerd Details: 7.5% ABV bottled (750 ml). Drank out of a teku glass on 6/27/17.

So these folks are 3 for 3. Not necessarily lighting the beer world on fire with trendy stuff, but I really appreciate the well executed Belgian styles.

It's a story as old as time. Or, like, 30 years. Something like that. Beer drinkers get fed up with expensive non-local beer, start homebrewing, get good at it, recognize the lack of a local brewing scene, and resolve to start up their own brewery.

Jupiter, Florida, probably most famous for housing a few baseball teams' spring training facilities, now has a growing hophead scene thanks to Civil Society brewing. When Kaedrin friend and beverage compatriot Steve moved to Florida, he was a little disappointed by the IPA scene (especially having been a fan of the vaunted Northeast IPA), but since these fellas have shown up, he's been having a better time of it. Let's dive into a couple of their common offerings, for a hoppy society is no doubt a civil society:

Civil Society Fresh - Pours a cloudy, pale yellow color with a finger or two of white, tight head. Smells great, lots of juicy citrus, a little pine. Taste is sweet, juicy, fruity, citrus hops, a little pine, just enough bitterness in the finish. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, quaffable. Overall, one damn fine NEIPA. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 6.2% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 6/23/17. No date on can, but I am assured that it was 1-2 weeks old.

Civil Society Blondes Make Me Hoppy (Citra) - Bonus points for not putting a buxom blonde woman on the label! Pours a cloudy pale yellow color with a few fingers of fluffy white head that leaves a bit of lacing. Smells great, lots of citrus and a more floral component than Fresh. Taste hits that citrus and floral hop note hard, finishes with a more bitter bite. Mouthfeel is light bodied, well carbonated, crushable. Overall, a damn fine sessionable hop bomb. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 4.9% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 6/24/17. No date on can, but I am assured that it was 1-2 weeks old.

These are not the first Civil Society beers I've had, and they hopefully won't be the last. In the same league with the latest wave of NEIPA brewers, for sure.

For centuries, the the Delmarva Peninsula of Maryland has been known for producing bottles of barrel-aged sours that grow on trees. Truly a freak of nature, Maryland's own Evolution Craft Brewing has exploited that land for their "Hand Picked" series of beers. Straight from the tree!

Alright, fine, they grow fresh fruit on the the Delmarva Peninsula and that just happens to be right by Evolution, who use that in their series of barrel aged beers. I may have gotten some of the continuity wrong, all right? Get off my back. Anyway, I recently spent some time in Ocean City, Maryland, and on the way back to Kaedrin HQ, I met up with some friends and toured a few Maryland breweries. You will most certainly be hearing about them in later posts, but for now, we'll hit up Evolution. We're no strangers to their generally well received wares here, and these limited sours seemed worth a flier.

Both use their standard Belgian-style pale ale as a base, but the treatments are slightly different. One is aged in red wine barrels for 18 months with half a bushel of peaches per barrel and a melange of fermenting bugs: Brettanomyces Bruxellensis, Brettanomyces Lambicus, and L. Brevis. The other is aged in port barrels for 16 months with 100 pounds of raspberries and just Brettanomyces Lambicus. First up, the superior treatment:

Evolution Hand Picked Series Peach Sour - Pours a dark orange color with half a finger of fizzy, short lived head and visible sediment/floaters. Smells great though, lots of peach and a hefty oak character. Taste starts off sweet, lots of peaches, oak, some light lactic sourness in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, medium acidity. Overall, this is a rock solid sour, a little one-note, but the peach matches well. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7% ABV bottled (500 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a flute glass on 8/19/16.

Evolution Hand Picked Series Raspberry Tart - Pours a reddish brown color with a finger of fizzy, short lived head (no sediment/floaters in this one). Smells nice, raspberry fruit rollups dominate, but that oak is there too. Taste seems a little more muddled, much less raspberry than the nose would have you believe, muted oak, not even particularly sour, an almost bitter aftertaste. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, and lightly acidic. Balance seems a bit off here and the raspberry comes off a bit too artificial, but it's not excessively bad either. Overall, it's fine, but disappointing and the Peach was a lot better. C+

Beer Nerd Details: 7% ABV bottled (500 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a flute glass on 8/21/16.

So yeah, go for the Peach. They're better than raspberries anyway. Stay tuned for more from the Maryland trip, which should be coming once I finish drinking my way out of all these Vermont IPAs...

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry. You can find more information on The Session on Brookston Beer Bulletin.

I've sporadically participated in "The Session" many times over the years, but this is the first time I've hosted. Many thanks to those who took the time to put together a post on this month's chosen topic, a "Double Feature", wherein participants drank two beers, compared and contrasted, and maybe even paired with some form of media for extra credit. Let's check out your responses:

First up, Sara Q. Thompson takes on two Imperial Stouts made with coffee that were aged between 1.5 and 2 years. Coffee is one of those ingredients that tends to fall off over time, so this is certainly an interesting approach. For the media pairing, it Sara points to the Taster's Choice Gold Blend saga, a series of flirtatious coffee commercials (And she's in good company: Stanley Kubrick was apparently fascinated by the storytelling economy in coffee commercials, and would recut them to make them even more concise.)

Next, Sara's husband Mark Lindner went British, pairing two Samuel Smith Organic beers with the last two episodes of Doctor Who Series 2 [reboot, David Tennant]. I have to say, that pale ale doesn't look pale at all, and from the sounds of it, it wasn't particularly fresh, which is a pity. "So the moral, I guess, is old TV shows are OK to visit for either the first time or to revisit, as the case may be, but other than the beers-that-can-be-aged most beers should not be."

The Beer Nut has some choice words for celebrity chefs and their bumbling attempts at beer tie-ins. "It's always mediocre, lowest-common-denominator, beer for people who aren't especially interested in beer." J'accuse! Will Kevin Dundon's pair of beers, brewed "round the back of his posh country house hotel", break down The Beer Nut's cynicism? Or will they be the same bland, uninspired stuff of most celebrity chef fare? Only one way to find out, and along the way, we're treated to some thoughts on beer and food pairing as well.

Gary Gillman over at Beer et seq. busts out "two beers, both lagers, yet different as can be." Unimpressed with each, he takes to blending the two together to see if a more harmonious brew results, always an interesting exercise.

Derrick Peterman at Ramblings of a Beer Runner strains our premise to near its breaking point by drinking a pair of Ciders. Ciders! Actually, I love that he went far afield on this one, and I learned that ciders are more of "a study in subtleties". Plus, Derrick perfectly captures what I was going for when I chose my topic:

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for crystal ball gazing, thinking deeply on esoteric beer concepts, or waxing philosophical on beer culture. But I love his Session topic harks back to an earlier, simpler time of The Session, where the idea was let's all drink a beer and talk about it. Maybe too many topics only a hard core beer geek could possibly care about, let alone write about, was a big part of why The Session was almost no more.

Tom Bedell recalls previous beer duos and then devises some of the most excellent movie pairings for those beers that I've seen (certainly the best of this Session!) Filmic choices range from Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, to Anchorman, Rocky, and even Sophie's Choice (that last a particularly good choice when rating two great beers). The movie nerd in me adores this post. Well done Tom!

The Brew Site's Jon Abernathy also picks up on my purpose for the topic, noting recent higher-concept sessions and calling this one a homecoming of sorts. To celebrate, Jon picks up two canned, hop-driven session beers, one a hoppy saison, the other a straight up session IPA. Both sound great!

Sean Inman at Beer Search Party surveys a pair of Victory beers, going for a sorta old-school East Coast IPA battle I guess. I like how Headwaters has morphed from an American Pale Ale to a "Quasi-Session IPA" because that's basically what a Session IPA is anyway. While he's at it, he dissects the can designs as well. For the movie pairing, he picks a duo of Steve Jobs bio-picks and laments the lack of available suds at movie theaters (dear Alamo Draft House, if you're reading, please open theaters in LA and Philadelphia, thank you.)

A Good Beer Blog's Alan McLeod has done this. He's done this a lot. Over a decade ago. In fact, he points to a couple of quadruple features and a triple feature before settling on an actual double feature (interesting tidbit, I'm pretty sure that's my buddy Mike correcting the location of Victory brewing on that IPA post, heh). He mentions these exercises were helpful in trying to "figure out my own lexicon of tastes and descriptions", and that's my recollection as well. Bonus: we get another round in Alan's ongoing feud with Oliver Gray. Delicious.

Finally, your humble host contributed a pair of entries of his own. One welcoming Almanac to Pennsylvania, the other a more harmonious combination of beer and movies, a tribute to Wes Craven. And I'm sure I'll continue to play with such things in the future, so stay tuned!

Also of note, Boak and Baily didn't get a chance to put together a post for this session, but as it turns out, they were already embroiled in a series of posts on Bottled Milds that actually seems appropriate. This one even compares a canned mild versus the same beer in a bottle. That is a great double feature, if you ask me!

And that just about covers it. If I missed you or if you want to be a little late to the party, feel free to send your post to me via email at mciocco at gmail dot com or hit me up on twitter @KaedrinBeer (apologies again for the misbehaving comment system I have in this antiquated blog).

Next up for The Session, while not officially announced just yet, appears to be Holiday Beers, hosted by one of the founders of the Session, Jay at Brookston Beer Bulletin.

Update: Added another entry from Beer Search Party...

On the first Friday of every month, there's a beer blog roundup called The Session. Someone picks a topic, and everyone blogs about it. This time around, I'm hosting a discussion on Double Features:

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to drink two beers, compare and contrast. No need for slavish tasting notes, but if you want to, that's fine too. The important part is to highlight how the two beers interact with one another during your session (pun intended!) For extra credit, pair your beers with two films to make your own Double Feature. Now, I'm a big tent kinda guy, so feel free to stretch this premise to its breaking point. The possibilities are endless!

First up, a double feature of convenience. Longtime readers know I'm a big fan of San Francisco's Almanac Beer Co. and while I've been able to snag a bottle here or there through means, they've just recently started distributing to the Philadelphia area in earnest. As such, every time I go to the store, I find myself drawn to purchase another of their delicious beers I've not had before. A hearty welcome to Pennsylvania from all of us (i.e. me) here at Kaedrin:

Anywho, here are two beers I cracked open this weekend whilst viewing a bunch of horror movies in honor of Halloween (notably Trick 'r Treat and Ghostbusters, neither of which are particularly well suited to the beers I'm drinking except that, well, they're all quite good!) First up is Citra Sour, the first of a new series of single hopped sour beers (up next is Simcoe Sour), an interesting fusion of styles that has never quite caught on, but which might if efforts like this keep things going. Truth be told, I think I prefer the straight up fruited sours moreso than hopped sours, but variety is a good thing, and this is pretty tasty.

Almanac Citra Sour - Pours a cloudy straw yellow with a finger of white head that sticks around for a while. Smells... interesting, that Citra hop character is prominent, floral citrus notes, but an underlying sour twang is there as well. Taste is a good deal more vinous than the nose would suggest, clearly those wine barrels kicking in, and the oak features prominently as well. The Citra hops do kick in about halfway through and persist through the sour finish. Quite puckering, actually, I think the hops only serve to intensify the sourness. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, light, bright, and quite acidic. Overall, I'm still not convinced that high amounts of hops are a great match with sour, but this is still rather nice. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7% ABV bottled (375 ml). Drank out of a flute glass on 10/30/15. Bottled July 2015.

After letting the palate cool off for a bit, I cracked open Farmer's Reserve Citrus, which I believe is the same base Sour Blond Ale aged in wine barrels, but instead of hops, we've got a melange of citrus fruits, including Buddha's Hand Citron, Blood Orange, and Yuzu. The Farmer's Reserve stuff have been my favorite offerings from Almanac, and this one did not disappoint:

Almanac Farmer's Reserve Citrus - Pours a mostly clear golden yellow color with a finger of short lived white head. Smells more funky, some citrus and sour twang, but some earthy Brett character pitching in here too. Taste again hits with that earthy, musty funk, lots of tart citrus fruit, a little wine barrel, oak and vanilla, and finishing with a nice sour bite. Mouthfeel is slightly less carbonated, still light and bright, the acidity feeling a bit less intense too. Overall, this is not quite as intense, but it is much more balanced than the Citra Sour. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 7% ABV bottled (375 ml). Drank out of a flute glass on 10/30/15. Bottled June 2015.

So there you have it. Next up in the Double Feature realm will be a much more harmonious beer and filmic pairing centered around Wes Craven. Stay tuned! And if you've got a blog, feel free to play along. More details on The Session and how to participate can be read here!

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry. You can find more information on The Session on Brookston Beer Bulletin.

Update: The Session has come and gone, and the roundup of participants has been posted!

After last month's brief existential crisis, I volunteered to host a Session. It appears I was not alone, and perhaps this little setback was just what we needed to put a swift end to any doubts about the endurance of the Session. We've got at least 9 months of sessions scheduled out, and I'm sure more will carry the torch when the time comes.

For this installment, I'd like to revisit that glorious time of beer drinking when I was just starting to realize what I was getting into. One of my favorite ways to learn about beer was to do comparative tastings. Drink two beers (usually of the same style) with a critical eye, compare and contrast. Because I'm also a movie nerd, this would often be accompanied by a film pairing. It was fun, and I still enjoy doing such things to this day!

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to drink two beers, compare and contrast. No need for slavish tasting notes, but if you want to, that's fine too. The important part is to highlight how the two beers interact with one another during your session (pun intended!) For extra credit, pair your beers with two films to make your own Double Feature. Now, I'm a big tent kinda guy, so feel free to stretch this premise to its breaking point. The possibilities are endless!

• Drink two beers of the same style, pair with a double feature of horror movies (it being October and all - it's what I'll be doing!)
• Drink two vintages of the same beer, pair with a famous double album (The White Album, The Wall, Exile on Main Street, etc...)
• Throw caution to the wind and do a triple feature!
• Drink a base beer and its barrel aged variant, pair with two episodes of your favorite TV show.
• Actually, lots of other types of variants out there too: base beer and it's Brett-dosed counterpart, base and a fruited variant, base and spiced variant, base and a dry hopped variant, many possibilities here... Pair with video games.
• Play master blender by taking two beers, tasting both, then blending them together in the perfect proportion for the ultimate whatever. Then say nuts to pairing it with non-beer stuff, because you're just that cool.
• Test your endurance by taking down two bottles of Black Tuesday solo, then documenting the resultant trip to the emergency room*.
• Recount a previous comparative tasting experience that proved formative.
• Drink a fresh IPA and a six-month old IPA and discuss where you fall on the "Freshness Fetish" scale.
• Drink a beer and compare with wine or bourbon or coke or whatever strikes your fancy. One should probably be beer though. I said "big tent" not "no tent"...
• "These two beers are in my fridge, I should probably drink them or something." (Pair with leftovers.)
• Drink a beer and a homebrewed clone of that beer (an obscure one that requires you to have both readily available, but this is part of the fun!)
• Hold a March Madness style beer tournament, pitting beer versus beer in a series of brackets in order to determine the supreme winner.
• Devise a two course beer dinner, pairing two beers with various foodstuffs.
• If any of you people live near an Alamo Drafthouse, I think you know what you need to do. Do it for me; I don't have the awesomeness that is Alamo anywhere near me and wish to live vicariously through your sublime double feature.
• Collect an insane amount of barleywines and drink them with your friends, making sure to do the appropriate statistical analysis of everyone's ratings.
• Go to a bar, have your friends choose two beers for you, but make sure they don't tell you what the beers are. Compare, contrast, guess what they are, and bask in the glory of blind tasting.
• Lecture me on the evils of comparative tasting and let me have it with both barrels. We'll love you for it, but you're probably wrong.

Truly, there are a plethora of ways to take this, so hop to it!

To participate, simply write up a recap of your double feature, post it on or around November 6, and send it to me at mciocco at gmail dot com. You can try to leave a comment on this post, but my commenting system is borked pretty hardcore at this point (you fancy schmancy Wordpress bloggers should be fine, but Google/Blogger dropped support for my current platform). I will try to fix it in time for the session, but to be safe, just email me or drop me a line on twitter @KaedrinBeer. My plan is to post the recap on Sunday, November 8, so don't feel bad about posting on Saturday or Sunday if Friday is too busy for ya! Have fun, and be safe!

* Kaedrin does not endorse this suggestion, which was only included as a satirical aside and not meant to be taken seriously. If, on the other hand, you'd like to pit Black Tuesday versus Pugachev's Cobra, that would be awesome**.

** Awesome, but also not endorsed. This was only included as a satirical aside to make the previous asterisked point more palatable and because I enjoy footnotes within footnotes, don't you?

Update: The Session has come and gone, and the roundup of participants has been posted!

Tahoe Mountain is a new brewery to me, introduced by our mutual friend Jay from Beer Samizdat in a recent cross-country trade. They appear to hail from Truckee, CA, on the Eastern side of the state near, you guessed it, Lake Tahoe. In fact, it appears they're just a few miles down the road from Kaedrin favorite FiftyFifty, which makes Truckee a pretty impressive little brewing town considering its location. They seem to be big on experimentation and barrel-aging, which is music to my earballs, so let's take a closer look at the two beers Jay flung my way, drunk whilst engaging in a mini-Larry Cohen horror movie marathon.

First up is their "full-bodied, yet sessionable rustic multi-grain Farmhouse Ale", a description bound to annoy English readers since it clocks in at 6.2% ABV. Perhaps these guys graduated from the Adam Avery "They're all session beers" school of thought, though this is admittedly a pretty easy going beer. Strap in folks, it's going to be a relatively smooth ride, but you can never be too careful:

Tahoe Mountain Provisions - Pours a hazy golden yellow color with several fingers of fluffy white head that sticks around and leaves lacing all over the place. Smells spicy, bready belgian yeast, with an almost grapelike fruit aroma kicking in too. Taste crackles with that spicy character, a little bit of a bite there, with only hints of yeasty esters lingering towards the finish. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated, crisp, and effervescent, very dry, but with enough firepower to keep it from feeling slight. Overall, what we have here is yet another rock solid but traditional style saison. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 6.2% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a Teku glass on 9/25/15.

Next up, we have a wild ale "aged two years in oak cabernet barrels with fresh cherries and blueberries", which sounds a mighty bit more experimental than the previous beer. Let's see what's up:

Tahoe Mountain Viejo Rojo - Pours a dark amber color, deep robey tones, nice looking when held up to light, with a finger of off white head. Smells Flandersy, acetic sour cherries, a little oak and vanilla rounding things out. Taste has a nice rich sweetness to it, some of those sour cherries pitching in, dark vinous fruit, clearly some dark (but not roasty) malts contributing, vinegar and a nice, well matched sourness puckering things up in the finish. As it warms, the tartness creeps up earlier into the taste, but regardless, it's more sweet than sour. Mouthfeel is full bodied and rich, well carbonated, some vinegary acidity cuts through it all, but is not overpowering. Overall, this is a really nice sour, along the lines of a Flanders red, and makes me want to check out more Tahoe Mountain stuff. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 7.8% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a wine glass on 9/25/15.

Certainly a promising start for a brewery I've never heard of before. Here's to hoping Jay slings more of these my way in future trades!

This brewery is named after the Trillium, a perennial flowering plant native to North America. Translating to "three parted lily", it is often associated with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (because of its three flowers as part of one plant) and perhaps due to its early medicinal use among Native Americans, some think it symbolizes American durability and balance. The Boston homebrewer-turned-pro JC Tetreault (Interestingly, his blog from homebrewing days is still online) thinks it symbolizes what he's attempting to achieve with his brewery.

I had the great fortune of stopping in at their brewery during Operation Chowder to pick up some bottles. It's a neat little place, located in Boston proper, they appear to have crammed a lot into a rather small space (including what appear to be quite a few barrels, which is pretty exciting). The retail shop is really only for selling bottles and growlers (apparently in their early days, they would serve beer there, but as their popularity waxes, they have to keep that line moving), and I was happy to snag a handful of such. They recently announced plans to open a new, larger facility, so here's to hoping these beers become more plentiful.

What we're covering today is Congress Street IPA (guess what street the brewery is located on?), which appears to be a Columbus and Galaxy hopped wonder. Then we've got a "Super Saison" dry hopped with Centennial hops called Sunshower. Both are music to my earballs, so let's dive in:

Trillium Congress Street IPA - Pours a murky, cloudy light yellow color with a finger of white head (very in line with the Hill Farmsteads and Tired Hands IPAs of the world). Smells intensely of tropical fruit hops (Mosaic up in here? Nope, apparently that's Galaxy hops), almost like mango juice or something like that, a superb, amazing nose. Taste has a sweetness up front that quickly transitions to citrusy, fruity hops, less juicy than the nose would imply, a little dry bitterness in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, crisp, and refreshing, more highly attenuated and dry than expected, but really quite quaffable. Overall, rock solid IPA and it's holding its own despite my attempt to drown myself in hoppy Vermont beer. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 7.2% ABV bottled (750 ml capped). Drank out of a tulip glass on 6/6/15. Bottled: 05/26/15.

Trillium Centennial Dry Hopped Sunshower - Pours a mostly clear straw yellow color with a finger of white head. Smells of peppery saison yeast, clove, coriander, with big floral notes and hints of citrus. Once again, the nose on this is absolutely beautiful and I could sniff this stuff all night. Taste follows the nose, lots of spicy saison yeast, pepper, and clove, hints of citrus peeking in towards the middle. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, lower medium bodied, smooth. Feels much lighter than an 8.5% ABV saison. Overall, this is very nice stuff. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV bottled (750 ml capped). Drank out of a flute glass on 6/6/15. Bottled: 05/26/15.

Well that's quite a nice first impression. I have bottles of Vicinity Double IPA (which will almost certainly be consumed this weekend) and Trillium Saison (which may wait a bit, but will surely not be long for this world). And it's a place I will most certainly have to return to again someday (and maybe finally get some lunch/dinner at Row 34, as that place looks amazing).