After a long week I went to the local Stop n Shop in the midst of a small Spring snowstorm to pick up some liquid refreshment for my Friday night at home. Surprisingly, there weren’t many people there freaking out and stocking up on milk and eggs. I guess when it is snowing in late March, people have finally had enough with their irrational weather freak outs. I can’t wait until everyone brings out the short shorts when it it is barely 50 (Fahrenheit, in case you’re the one Canadian/Euro centric celsius using freak reading this). Anyway. I had to pick a beer, because what else can I do on a snowy Friday night? The only local choice was Two Roads brewery, which is a company I actually really like and visit frequently. But it was my only choice, and this is America, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. I grabbed their Workers Comp Saison off the shelf, a farmhouse ale weighing in at a light 4.8% ABV.
Brought this baby home and got straight to it. took a sip and Wow! All I can think is one thing: this tastes exactly how Two Roads Brewery smells. It is an amazing smell…..heavy raw hoppy scent: like they took a barrel of hops and just ground them together completely dry to let out the aromatics. Upon further tasting investigation, it seems yeasty too; but light at the same time. I’m so confused, like those two weeks I thought I was a lesbian freshman year.
Ironically, I had tried this beer fresh out of the tap in the brewery’s tap room and wasn’t particularly impressed. In my previous encounter, there was nothing notable whatsoever. After the bottle at home though, I’m considering putting this in my top 10 because it is that good. The weirdest part is only one thing changed: the atmosphere. I think the fact that this literally tastes like the brewery at home brought incredible, euphoric thoughts to my mind of craft beer goodness. At the brewery itself, the whole place already smelled like this, so the subtleties of the beer were not allowed to shine. Oh, the humanity.
While sitting there drowning away my Friday night sorrows, my girlfriend asked me what a saison was. After running a beer blog you’d think I would be able to answer that question pretty quickly. All I could think at first was…..uhhhh……. Apparently, saison is a very broad term! When I drank them in the past they were typically very strong or funky, has a distinct bottle conditioned, sedimenty taste. This beer barely fits that category of things I assumed always to be true. I do admit it has a slight yeasty funk, but there is so much great hop aroma in there that is somehow not bitter at all; it is MUCH more balanced than a beer drinker may think when seeing the saison label.
I suppose next time I’m at the brewery I’ll try it fresh again. But I’m not sure if it even makes sense to bother. I can bring the brewery experience right to my living room with this bottle of amazingness. Shut up spell check! That is definitely a word now.
BUCTDIOS: 4.0