Hitachino Nest Saison du Japon

We've been kid free for the last couple of days due to a couple of groovy grandparents, and Paige and i decided to hit up the wonderful happy hour over at Uchiko for some food and drinks.  Said drink for me came in the form of the Hitachino Nest Saison du Japon from Kiuchi Brewery, a farmhouse ale brewed with local wheat and koji (malted rice).  The 5% ABV brew pours a nice gold with a white head with sweet aromas of lemon, fruit, grass, and some notes of yeast.  The flavor is sweet and citrusy with some notes of rice and sake, and maybe some hints of wheatgrass as well.  It's a perfect dinner beer.

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Jester King Entombment

Looking for a wind down the other night and i found it in Jester King's Entombment, a 10.8% ABV Farmhouse Ale brewed with caramelized Texas wildflower honey and aged in Balcones whisky barrels.  The beer pours a reddish copper color with a small and dissipating white head and smells of tart fruit, oak, and some booze.  The flavor is sweet, tart, and boozy, almost feeling like you're drinking a cocktail, like a Sazerac or something, instead of a beer.  It's a wonderful way to end a stressful day.

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Mystic Luminous Ruins

As it turns out, when i was in Washington last month, i also drank a lot of beer not from the Pacific Northwest.  My old friend up there is a fellow beer nerd, so naturally we imbibed brews from all over the country.  One of the more delightful and summery concoctions came from Massachusetts' Mystic Brewery, with their very limited Luminous Ruins, a dry hopped sour farmhouse ale.  The beer pours a hazy and bubbly gold with a thick white head and smells of citrus, orange, grass, yeast, and just a little bit of funk.  The flavor is fruity and tart with some subtle hop hints and finishes crisp and dry.  All in all, it's quite a refreshing little 4.3% ABV brew, that unfortunately was only brewed once.

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Figlet

Two of my favorite things in Austin are the beers from Jester King and BBQ from Franklin...and lo and behold, the two collaborated on a beer earlier this year.  The Figlet is a 6.2% ABV farmhouse ale refermented with smoked Texas figs caramelized with heat and cold smoked at Franklin Barbecue.  The beer pours a nice amber and smells slightly bready and sweet with subtle hints of smoke and fig.  Fairly light bodied, the beer is sweet, the smoke and fig flavors playing well with the brew's overall sourness, the result of the wild yeasts the brewers at Jester King are so fond of.  It's different and it's tasty and i actually bought this bottle earlier this year and forgot about it in the back of my refrigerator until Saturday.  Kids man.

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Gotlandsdricka

I've been chiming in about this beer on Facebook and Twitter for the last couple of weeks, so i figured it was time to actually do a blog on the stuff.  Gotlandsdricka translates roughly to "Drink of the Good Land," and comes to us courtesy of central Texas brewery Jester King.  Aside from having one of the most awesome and creepiest bottle labels to ever grace a craft brew, the beer is pretty damn tasty too.  A farmhouse ale, the beer is brewed with rye, juniper, smoked malt, and birchwood.  It's got a light sour flavor to it and feels like it would go great paired with variety of cheeses.  Definitely worth your time, if anything just to feel like a Viking for a little while.

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