Pour is a well carbonated, light bronze affair with a slightly disappointingly modest head, little retention or lace. Color is a drab, Dubbel-like brown. The beer is not much to look at.

Nose offers quite a lot of acid, apple notes – a bit worrying as it smells a little like a classic infection. DON’T get me wrong, I’m not for one second suggesting that it IS infected, but it certainly smells alarming like a beer that is.

Tastes do not follow the nose (luckily). Rye elements seem on the light side and do not punch very hard. A little apple fruit comes into the beer, but I would say it is pretty mild.

For me there is an interesting mix of sweet caramel notes (good), and bold, brassy hop bitterness which is a little too brash for me. It clashes a bit with the sweetness and gives an aggressive edge. I usually find rye beers to be too aggressive for my palate, but often because the peppery rye stands out. Oddly here the palate battering elements are that of hops rather than rye, and the beer seems unnecessarily bold.

Perhaps in an odd juxtaposition, the farmhouse yeast strains save the beer for me, as they gather in complexity and presence halfway down the beer. Just when i was anticipating not bothering with the second half of the 750 mL bottle, the beer turns into what essentially could be called a bitter, hoppy saison. It’s a ll a little peculiar in fact, and I struggle to come to terms with what I’m tasting. The yeast presence and saison like quality DOES of course make much more sense of the apple notes that I detect 20 minutes before, and suddenly the beer begins to make more sense. The yeast element certainly takes me on a journey, but without it I think I would like this beer a lot less.

At the very end of the bottle the grapefruit notes finally come through and the bee sits there in all its glory.

Complicated, difficult to understand, and a beer that probably demands your attention more than most. A beer to get to know, rather than one to hit up and think that you understand from the get go. This is a MUCH better beer in the second half than I thought it would be in the first – much.

O.G. 1060.