New Belgium Lips of Faith Prickly Passion Saison

New Belgium Lips of Faith Prickly Passion Saison. I don't have a bottle, drinking off tap, so I won't be reading the silly label copy for you. Instead, just click the link, and see how awful it is for yourself. (I had a bottle, but shared it with a friend, knowing I had a keg to tap soon.)

(Hold the phone! A little Googling leads me to realize that stuff on the website is not the label copy, which I suddenly remember more clearly now. A found it reprinted on another blog/site/thing, and here it is: Peter [Bouckaert, Brewmaster] picked a prickly pear and paired it with a passion fruit. 'Perfect! Pitch it in!' he proclaimed. Now we have this pleasing prickly passion saison brewed with fruit juices and french saison yeast to our brewmaster's picking.

We've got a saison, flavored with prickly pear juice and passion fruit. It's clear and amber-colored (ostentatious-ly, nonetheless), with creamy off-white foam that starts big and slims down, but sticks around. Tiny dots, with big pools.

Aromatics: Sweetness and spice. Belgian yeast. Very fruity. Peach and apricot, passion fruit, melon, mango, and mellow pear. With funk and spice mingling in.

Taste: Starts with mild bitterness, leads into fruit, gets right into Belgian yeast character, while remaining a smooth ride. Soft, supple, and almost creamy. Very clean, other than the tasty Belgian yeast component. Well-integrated mix of fruit, nothing too "off" in this, quite delicious. Yup. Deee-licious.

Lightish body, long, lean, fruity finish. Lingering bitterness happily matched the malt and yeast character. I haven't called this "yummy" yet, but I'm close to doing so.

I like this one a lot, just enough sweet fruit flavor to match the dry-ness of a classic farmhouse ale. I will miss it when it is gone. The 8.5% ABV is starting to dent my braincase a bit.