Freestyle #36: Biere De Garde
Oxbow Brewing Company in Newcastle, Maine, United States 🇺🇸
Farmhouse - Bière de Garde Series Out of Production|
Score
6.88
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
At the bottling place: pours red with a white head. Aroma is malts, bubblegums, lightest roasts, and light fruitiness. Taste is a rounded sweetness. Quite malty. Ok.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
Draft at the Portland Blending and Bottling location. Strong malty aroma of caramel, toffee, and a little toast. Earth, grains, spice, and a bit of funk. Very drinkable for an 8% beer. Malt forward with a good yeast component.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Draught at the brewery, 7/4 and 7/10/16.
Minimally hazy, copper-amber body is well-carbonated and shows a small, off-white head of modest retention.
Initially notes of dryish caramel/toffee beset the nose but quickly give way to softer base malt honey-vanilla and rustic grain. Doesn’t seem particularly bready, nor overly toasty from the specialty malts, which is always step one in any amber-colored beer, as I feel that’s the easiest way to ruin a perfectly good beer and a big reason why so few people care for amber ales/amber lagers/amber Belgians, etc....Anyhow, back to the aroma, a good phenolic pepperiness rises up as well, with very minimal, lightly floral and herbal hop notes remaining mostly in the background. Phenolics and light earthiness from the yeast help balance the maltiness and some light peach/nectarine/apple ester is added, softening things further and helping add some levity. No alcohol whatsoever, which is impressive given its size and relatively delicate nose.
Honey-caramel quickly dries out through the phenolic (pepper, light clove) and ester (nectarine, apple, pear) notes found in the beer. Texture is mostly soft base malts, well-attenuated, with some lightly grainy interludes and minimal bread/toast. Hops are delicate and light adding only light floral and herbal suggestions while the beer finishes with grain/malt and light clove-pepper notes. Lightly earthy. Pretty solid, not-flashy BdG, as you’d expect from Oxbow. Still hard to believe it’s 8% as it drinks much, much lighter than that.