Thiriez Les Frères de la Bière

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Draft, 16oz, $7.. The Avenue Pub, NOLA .. . Pours a corny gold .. high foam .. medium lacing .. . grass, hay, earth and honey .. . medium bitterness .. . pretty nice saison .. . .

Well, I'm here if you want to pick my brain.

Maybe we should leave it alone and let it heal.

Aroma: 10 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Bottle: Poured a dirty beige color ale with a huge pure white foamy head with perfect retention and great lacing. Aroma of funky notes with some dry and bitter English style hops. Taste is also a weird mix between some funky farmhouse style ester with some dry notes coming from the English style hops with a nice Belgian style malt backbone. Full body with limited filtration and great carbonation. Very different but interesting experiment in the end.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 5 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 5 | Overall: 5

Tasted at the April Northern California Beer Tasting. This saison poured a light orange gold color from a corked 750ml bottle. Large sized white foamy head. The aroma was fruity and spicy, with a definite ‘herbal’ aroma. A light to medium bodied saison. The malts were fruity and sweet. The hops were herbal. I suspect they used summit or one of those other ‘herbal’ hops, although I know they probably didn’t. This beer can be summed up with the tern HERB, or gonja. It was OK, but the spices used were not to my liking. A touch thin and watery as well. Mouthfeel is thin. Finish is clean and crisp. Aftertaste is slightly bitter.

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

For a relaxing Saturday lunch, I decided to slice up an array of various cheeses, and make my own cheese plate to munch on while curled up with a good book. What to wash it down with, though? I wanted something classy, but not balls-to-the-wall in alcohol. This 750mL Saison, clocking in at a very sessionable 4.5%ABV, caught my eye..., and soon enough, ended up in my Jack Russell Brewing Co. Farmhouse Ale goblet.

Easier said than done, actually. While this was not all that explosive when I popped the bottle-cap, once I started to pour it, the foam rose up in a rather mountainous fashion. Took quite a while to get a decent amount of actual beer into my glass, vice "little beer+tons o' foam". Dry-hopping may have lent itself to the abnormally high foaming of the beer, which is not a big deal, as long as the beer itself is not too carbonated (read: overall fizzy and filling).

No, once this beer calmed down with the foam (leaving behind some thick-as-hell lacing, BTW), things were pretty nice with this beer, all told.

Seems to fall outside of the more typical Saison/Biere de Garde range, with the typical "fresh hay" and "earthy" notes supplanted by the hops (both kettle and dry), it seems almost as if this beer gravitates more towards it's semi-namesake, the De Ranke XX Bitter, than it's Northwestern French/Southern Belgian brethren.

Not that it's a bad thing, mind you. But I did feel that if you're going to have the hop angle so prominently advertised, you need to bring the goods. Yes, this has the sharp hoppy/vegetal-ish notes one would expect from a dry-hopped Belgian beer -- Saaz? or Styrian Goldings? -- but really could be so much more, but still not coming across as an over-hopped American Hopbomb, of course. To wit: the aforementioned De Ranke XX Bitter, as well as the Poperings Hommel Bier are better than this IMO.

Pleasant enough, but kinda pricey for what you get out of it (and all of that foam you get out of it too).

Oh BTW, in case you're keeping track of the various beer+cheese pairings I tried, I tend to think that this worked best with (believe it or not!) the Spanish Manchego cheese.... ;)

Music: Motorhead's "Bastards"
//TB