Saison Viejo Taste Test #1

The first taste test comes after 2 weeks of room temp condition/carbonating and 3 days in the fridge cold conditioning. A pretty young beer.  I love the color and the stability of the head, it doesn't fade too fast.  The initial aroma was very lemony.  I'm not sure if that really was the hops or not (Motueka described as lemon/lime/tropical), but it actually didn't remain the entire drink.  A more ripe fruit took over... small hints of banana (didn't want that in there at ALL) and other tropical fruits.  I'm really inclined to think the fruits are from yeast esters. A bit of earth is found in the flavor.

The mouthfeel is very slick.  Way more than I thought it would be. 7% rolled oats was probably too much for a saison (would probably work perfectly in a stout).  Almost seems like it detracts a bit from the carbonation which on the surface seemed to be at a fine level. In addition to that, almost everyone reports that Wyeast 3711 French Farmhouse lends a smooth body to beers even after chewing them down to a final gravities near 1.001 or 1.002, keeping them from feeling watery. Saisons really need to be effervescent and I don't think this is going to get there with the slickness from those two sources. An ABV of 7.1 may play a third part there too. I'm hoping even more carbonation develops in the bottles that have more than 2 weeks worth of conditioning at room temperature. My goal was to get this on almost the "too high" carbonation side.

At this point, it feels more like a cross between a Belgian Strong Pale and a Saison.  That said, I could drink a glass of this easily, and no off flavors to me of any sort, unless the ripe fruit levels remain high in which I would be leaning towards calling them an off-flavor... at least in terms of what I was going for.