The Yukon Brewing company has produced a Saison with orange, grapefruit, and peppercorns, which apparently makes it Spring-friendly.

This 650ml bottle pours a slightly hazy, medium golden yellow colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy bone-white head, which leaves some streaky flock of seagulls pattern lace around the glass as it slowly sinks out of sight.

It smells of semi-sweet, gritty and grainy cereal malt, mixed domestic citrus rind, subtle earthy peppercorn, a hint of estery yeastiness, and rather tame leafy, herbal, and floral green hop bitters.  The taste is bready and doughy pale malt, a lesser grainy wheatiness, still hard to differentiate citrus zest, pretty limp-seeming ground pepper notes, a thankfully mellow yeasty character, and more understated earthy, musty, and floral hoppiness.  The carbonation is quite active in its effervescent frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, as nothing really goes out of its way to cause any sort of fuss at this particular moment.  It finishes off-dry, the malt asserting its alpha male dominance over the other meek lingering essences.

Overall – while the guest ingredients essentially just dial it in here, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.  This is indeed a tasty Saison, full-flavoured and easy to put back – I just don’t know if it actually reminds me of the sunshine currently pouring through my basement windows.