This twin can release from La Sirène comes with one foot planted in brewing's past and one very much in its present. The former is Table Beer, their nod to the simple, rustic, low-alcohol beers that were often safer than water and thus consumed for hydration as much as pleasure.
We're told the approach here was in keeping with their lower-ABV core range Saisonette, in this case built with a simple recipe of local grain and hops, open-fermented in oak, and fermented with their house yeast. It lands in the glass looking rather like a trad lemonade and there’s a hint of the citric to the aroma, where I picked up some orange blossom too. But this feels driven more by the house yeast, which adds dry, peppery, herb garden elements to a beer that's light on the palate and aiming to quench.
Froot grew from conversations with a fellow brewer from Urban Artifact Brewery in Cincinatti, Ohio. Like the Reservoir operation, the Americans are big on using fresh fruit in beer and that's what's occurred here. Atop another simple farmouse ale base, they added fresh pulped passionfruit, mango, pineapple, mandarin and lime before re-fermenting on passionfruit pulp in the cans.
The outcome is a beer that's not shy in showcasingn its fruity enhancements but, equally, that could be passed off as a more traditional hazy pale ale to the unsuspecting drinker. That's in part because the farmhouse characteristics are minimal – very mildly funky, I'd say – and bitterness is low, a combination that should see this flow fast and freely wherever it touches down over summer.
James Smith
Published December 6, 2024 2024-12-06 00:00:00
