A light yellow beer, a head is big and blond. Aroma has strong frutiness of perries and spicyness of peppers, also flowers. Taste has perries and fruitness, spicyness with strong peppers, quite dry. Alcohol can be noticed. Medium bodied, high carbonation. Not the one of the easy saison, strong perry and pepper.

hazy yellow smooth white head. aroma is beligan yeasty , herbal and quite fruity for a saison. flavor is malty, yeasty, spicy, warm spices , good saison, a little bit sweet, but the sweetness is a nice dry herbal kind of sweetness, like the spices you would put into a tomato soup.

330ml bottle,late evening outside at Fyntani, Rethymnon, shared with Eivind Arne. Foamy white head slowly diminishing. Hazy grey-golden body. Herbal fruity hops on the nose. Spiced mid-sweet fruity flavours with a yeasty touch. Mid-dry and mid-sweet fruity ending. Medium bodied. Soft, almost fizzy, on the swallow. Likable, without greater excitements. (Crete 10.06.2017).

Bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck, a Cretan saison (never thought I’d have to use those two words in a single phrase). Lots of pressure but no gushing. Egg-white, thick, moussy head, slowly showing a few small gaps in the middle but retaining well and leaving behind a membrane of lacing, atop a pure golden blonde beer with olive green tinge, clear initially but carrying a ’fog’ of yeast bits throughout and therefore unsurprisingly resulting in a cloudy, ’dotted’ ochre-ish but still brightly golden appearance when the sediment is added. Aroma initially disabled by strong DMS (overcooked white cabbage) - I hate that but fortunately it fades a bit after a while - on top of gentler impressions of yellow plum, overripe pear, banana and bubblegum, sweetclover, honey, camomile flowers, pumpkin flesh, stewed turnip, grass, old cake, soap (coriander seed alert!), white bread dough, canned pineapple slices, sweetbread, fresh wormwood leaves, green apple, cooked rhubarb, dry earth, almond. Crisp, fruity onset, very fizzy and minerally (over-)carbonation even for a ’saison’, lots of banana ester alongside hints of pineapple, ripe pear and unripe peach with a souring undercurrent of unripe gooseberry but softly so, resulting in a good mix of sweet and sour fit for the style; mouthfeel is supple by nature but coarsened by that harsh carbonation. These very expressively minerally, sparkling water-like carbonation effects detract a bit from an otherwise bready, cereally, soft pale malt sweetish core, carrying the fruity esters to a mildly drying finish with some retronasal spicy phenols and lingering fruitiness, earthy and lightly bready yeast effects and a grassy, earthy, slightly peppery hop bitterishness, balancing out the sweetness shortly after the banana ester effect has faded completely; a resiny, soapy coriander seed flavour establishes the same effect and lends this beer an extremely ’Belgian’ feeling but not in a good way. I understand what these people were trying to do, I guess the general ’feeling’ concerning something as versatile and loosely defined as ’saison’: creating a crisp, fruity, minerally and effervescent Belgian blonde ale that ends dry and ’noble’ hoppy, and I have to admit that this preposition has been carried out quite well - apart from that strong initial DMS effect, obviously, a foul odour that keeps plagueing this beer all the way through, though it does become weaker in the end. Not a bad attempt per se, but saison is a difficult thing to grasp, having more to do with a kind of ’rural’ and hard-to-describe old school farmhouse spirit than with actual physical style outlines in terms of ingredients or brewing methods; it is only thanks to the American beer geeks’ discovery of Dupont’s range that ’saison’ has gained an independent and often highly acclaimed status and I won’t go into that ongoing discussion here, but brewing a sufficiently hoppy and drying, quenching Belgian blonde is perhaps the essence of it. These guys did exactly that, but I guess the beer hasn’t been cooking for long enough or was cooled too slowly, resulting in this strong DMS effect which seriously bothered me from the first sip to the last.

Pours unclear blonde, small white head. Smell is bit dry, mild malts. Some hay notes from saison yeast, but not as clear, dry as its Belgian nephews. Taste is sharp, mild bitter, rather dry, bit fruity/hay from the saison yeast. too high carbo for me. Dry ending. Pretty nice approach to the style.

Fra flaske på Mi2 Cardinal april-17: uklar korgul med flott skum som varrer. Deilig, krydret aroma og smak med appelsin, koriander, tropiske frukter. Herlig saisonpreg med krydret, tørr avslutning. Midt i blinken for meg som er så glad i denne stilarten.

Shared bottle at Mi2 at Cardinal 10.04.17. Hazy pale straw colour. Foamy, dense and persistent off-white head and lacing. Fine aroma of berries, fruits and coriander. Taste of dried tropical fruit, corinader, succade and pale malt. Good drinkability!

330 ml bottle, Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger. ABV is 6.5%, 25 IBU. Hazy golden colour, moderate white head. Moderate herbal, grassy and spicy aroma. Fizzy mouthfeel. Distinctly herbal, spicy and yeasty flavour, with a bitter finish - I would have guessed far more than 25 IBU.

Hazy blond with fluffy head. Aroma has lots of yeast and bread. Flavour is much brighter with zestiness and a yeasty tang.