GREAT DIVIDE SAISON

You know the horrible yet wonderful feeling of being defeated by abundance, right? You can only have two beers because you’re driving, and yet there are 257 beers you’d like to try? That was me at Decatur, GA’s BRICK STORE PUB the other night. I hit a homer with choice #1, the TERRAPIN 90 SHELLING scotch ale I wrote about yesterday, and for #2 I looked deep within my soul for inspiration, and decided that I needed a saison from a brewery that I can’t drink from in California. Hard as it was to pass up the other 256 treats I could have pulled for, that meant GREAT DIVIDE BREWING’s SAISON was to be the second and final beer for me.

GREAT DIVIDE SAISON has that beautiful pillowtop, fluffed-out head of foam. We could have just stopped right there, but there was the matter of drinking it. It’s a cloudy yellow (of course). A little biting – tastes a little stronger and more hoppy than most saisons I’ve had. In fact, the Brick Store Pub has it listed on their menu as a “Belgian IPA”, despite the word “saison” in the name of the beer. Could this secretly be Great Divide’s answer to the popular Belgian IPAs LA CHOUFFE and URTHEL HOP-IT? It’s really not as “earthy” the way your typical saison is, with that musty olde world farmhouse feelin’. I think there’s a little bait and switch going on here. Enough said – I thought it was very drinkable and quite good, and I give it a 7/10.