Lift Bridge Brewery
Stillwater, MN
Available: MN, WI
Farm Girl Saison is named after a wife of one of the owners who grew up on a farm. The beer has as little bit of orange peel added to boil adding a hint of citrus. The Lift Bridge Brewery is the first brewery in Stillwater, MN since Prohibition.
ABV: 5.8
ABW: 4.5
Color: 6
Bitterness: 19
Original gravity: 1051
“Ale brewed with orange peel,” it says, and there’s no denying it! Sweet clementine jumps right out of the glass, with a slight rustic background. I’m not sure about the saison-ness of it all, though, because the beer disappoints in the mouth. There’s a sweet doughy dullness to it, muddled with orange and a bit of peel-pith. There’s a hoppy clench at the end, but it’s too late to save it. Needs to be brighter, I’m afraid.
Hazy gold in color and boasting that notably spicy aroma so often attributable to some form of Belgian ale yeast, here is yet another in a lengthening line of American interpretations of the saison style, itself something so ambiguous—even within Belgium!—that I’m starting to think it defies description. There is orange peel in this one, obvious on the palate, and while the front is fairly sweet and fruity, the finish dries nicely with a light jolt of bitterness. A pleasant companion to a ham sandwich.
Lew Bryson writes about beer and whiskey from his home in southeast Pennsylvania. He has a family and two dogs. That's all you need to know.
Once described as “beerdom's Brillat-Savarin,” Stephen Beaumont is the author of five books and countless articles on beer, spirits, food, travel, and how it all goes together.
