3RD ANNIVERSARY SAISON ~ LEFT FIELD

Left Field Brewery is celebrating their third anniversary with the release of two new beers, this saison and 1st & 3rd, a Berliner Weiss. This beer sampled from a bottle is a saison that has been dry hopped with New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops. I enjoyed this beer, and though it uses French saison yeast, the flavour to me was not saison-y. The beer was too hoppy for a traditional saison and the ABV was 7.6%, far from a sessionable beer to be enjoyed by farmers. Sampled from a bottle the beer poured a golden colour with a white head. The nose contained some Belgian spice, citrus and floral-pine hops and subtle fruit (grape, berry). The hops packed a serious kick , the spice was very buried and the ABV gave it a definite booziness. The finish was dry and crisp. Quite a pleasant beer, but not quite what I expected. 
UPDATE: A revisit on draught - this beer seems to have mellowed a bit - on draught I did not find the hops as powerful as I first did in the bottle.  I am liking this one more and more!

7.6% from East Toronto, Ontario 45 IBU

PHOTO COURTESY of LEFT FIELD