Appearance - 5 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 5

Gusher. A clear golden beer with a big white head. Aroma of tart apples, pale malt, yeast. Taste of herbal pale malt, straw, yeast, hints of apples.

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5.5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Trockener, mild hefiger Beginn. Moderate Süße, getreidig, etwas hefig-bitter, Nuancen von Zitrus und Rosmarin. Mittellanger Abgang. 9/8/8/7/7/7

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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7

Saison in this Beerbugs series, a 'bierfirma' in Limburg which produces beers with names that usually refer to insects, which hits a sweet spot in me as an amateur naturalist. This one is called 'Thor' like the Germanic deity, but the name obviously pronounces as 'tor', which in Dutch is a synonym for 'kever' (beetle), hence the longhorn beetle depicted on the label (the current label, that is, not the one depicted here...). Thick and frothy, audibly crackling, snow white, bit foamy, stable, dot-lacing head sustained by fierce sparkling rushing upwards through a misty, golden-tinged straw blonde beer. Aroma of unripe pear, halfripe banana, Granny Smith apple slices, fresh white bread but also dough of a few days old, straw, hints of lemon zest, camomile, deadnettle flowers, gypsum. Very spritzy, sparkly onset, sharp carbonation but sufficiently 'small-bubbled' to qualify for typical saison carbonation levels, yet still on the strong side and distracting a bit too much from the actual initial flavours, which involve aspects of green apple (acetaldehyde!), banana (isoamylacetate - but fortunately only a hint here) and perhaps unripe pear and even a touch of gooseberry; supple, slick body, a tad thinnish perhaps, built by a smooth, crisp cereally maltiness with slight honeyish and doughy edges. A sourish undertone gains more strength towards the finish, when some spicy phenol effects seep in (clove, dried thyme) and a proportionally strong soapy effect from the wheat malts takes over, joined by a kind of 'raw' and rural graininess from the spelt. Floral, spicy hop bitterness in the end though in all remaining quite mild; still the finish is quite dry and very quenching, with the fruity aspects from the onset lingering alongside the soapy wheat and grainy spelt effects. Not a bad attempt at classic Belgian saison, with the right amount of spiciness, dryness and crispness, a tad overcarbonated perhaps and a tad 'understuffed', but as an easygoing summer quencher, this will certainly not disappoint. Cheers to the vast and colourful longhorn beetle family, I would like to add.