pFriem Belgian Strong Blonde

Time to see what the hype is all about. pFriem, local Oregon favorites, finally started bottling, so I now have no excuse not to try any.

This has a really nice color. It's a kind of peach-tone gradient with little bubbles and a creamy white head. It also has a great mouthfeel, rich and creamy. Smell is punchy, and I think there's a little too much coriander here for my taste. But other than coriander, it tastes kinda like banana (but less sweet), and maybe peach (though really it more looks like a peach than tastes like one). Other than that, not tons going on here, though assuming this is bottle conditioned (judging by the sediment), I could see this improving with age.

The label, incidentally, said it would taste like pear and clove. I don't really taste either.

In conclusion, this beer is good, and I look forward to trying more from pFriem. Corked and caged 375mL bottle makes for a nice presentation and is an appropriate size to share or consume by yourself. Was it worth $6? Not to me, but in the immortal parlance of LeVar Burton, you don't have to take my word for it.

de Garde Tableau Rouge

Smells sour, maybe like wild strawberries, with a slight off-note which reminds me of dishwater.
Taste is tart and dry, floral with that same wild strawberry. Lingers a bit (you'll want a glass of seltzer to go with it), but overall pretty balanced and tasty. Glad I grabbed this when I did, as it seemed to be flying off the shelves at the Whole Foods in the Pearl. Fuckin' hipsters. They can have the sour beer; I'll take the smoky beer.

Which is not to say that I don't appreciate a good sour beer now and then. Nor to espouse undue hatred on the hip—my own facial hair style is goofier than most and all of my clothes are secondhand. But there is a certain type of sour-beer-swiller (you can tell, because they were swilling IPAs two years ago) who would be just as happy sipping some carbonated apple cider vinegar as a decent beer.

A rep once explained the Cantillon mystery to me (it always tasted like vinegar to my palate). He said that Cantillon was a famous brewery that produced great sour beer, but had to ramp up production in the face of widespread demand. This caused a shift in their product towards tasting oppressively of vinegar, but with their brand recognition, whenever a neophyte sipped this vinegar brew, heralded as the best of the best, they formed an impression that vinegar was how sour beers are supposed to taste, and the rest is history. Narsty, narsty history.

Anyway de Garde is producing some pretty darn good beers, and I say that as a non-sour-head. I have noted the dishwater smell in Petit Desay, so it may simply be an ester from their house/local yeast. And this beer is pretty good as well. Not stupidly expensive (less than half the price of a Cascade), and also not terribly high in alcohol (5%). Seems like this could go with sushi or chevre or greens or maybe I'm saying that because it reminds me a little bit of a raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing.