More facial hair

As promised, here are my thoughts on some more Weird Beard Brews following a post earlier this month. Four saisons and an IPA.

Saison 14 gives everything I look for in a saison, Belgian nose of honeyed yeast esters, big wheaty spicy body and a little funkiness in the finish. It made an excellent dry pre-dinner aperitif and one i will be visiting again. On a par with their Black Perle and fighting for top place with Fade to Black.

The same can't be said of Saison 42 (a hitchiker's guide to the galaxy reference and a collaboration with new Swedish micro Sad Robot) which is rather flat and tasteless. It finishes fairly sweet and heavy too, maybe it has a lower proportion of wheat in it?

Its quirkier brother 42e is more like it, primed with elderflower cordial in the bottle it has a wild feel to it. There's some heavy candy sugar towards the end but it sings with a floral elderflower refrain that demands another glug.

Collaboration is the name of the game as the next saison is also a colabeeration with Andy (@tabamatu) or more rightly a scale up of one of his many successful home brews. Cheers Andy for lugging this up to Edinburgh for me! A great showcase for the gooseberry side of the Nelson sauvin hop, though perhaps a little too high in alcohol for my liking. Well made and pretty well balanced, seek it out if Nelson Saison your thing!

Finally Hit the Lights is the IPA Miss the Lights was planned to be. I certainly preferred it to the earlier iteration. Well balanced with red berries and sage/ lemon balm in the aroma. It drinks well, with more of those red berries, though is a little to hefty to make it sessionable.

Weird Beard has two other brews that I've not yet had the chance to try and narrowly missed out on trying at EBBC13 this weekend! Ah well, you can't try it all. More on EC13 later this week (when I have my notes and thoughts in order!)