Perennial Ales Woodside
I’d heard a bunch of pretty good things being said about Missouri’s Perennial Artisan Ales over the past year or so, but it wasn’t until just recently that I’ve come across their products on shelves here in Virginia. I decided that my first introduction to the brewery would be their Woodside, a big 9.1% ABV Belgian-style tripel brewed with honey. This particular brew was bottled June 2013 (I enjoyed it early February of this year).
It seems that I’ve had a few beers lately that have been incorporating honey into the mix. The most recent was Starr Hill’s Taste of Honey, a Belgian-style dubbel. Perennial’s Woodside uses honey and a tripel’s traditional characteristics to greater effect than the brew from Starr Hill, but the big boozy nature of this beer combined with that honey leaves a bit of a medicinal character in its wake.
Appearance
Golden amber in color, the beer sits with a dense stack of off-white foam.
Aroma
Belgian yeast, fruit, grain and distant honey notes fill the nose with a clean aroma.
Taste
the fruitiness and yeast arrive immediately followed swiftly by a light bitterness and rapidly-drying finish. The earthy honey lingers late and when combined with the quite warming alcohol presence, there’s a medicinal character left behind.
Overall
Woodside is a big, boozy beer. It’s bold in flavor, but also a quickly over-powering dryness and medicinal character in the finish. I’m not sure if it’s due to a few months of sitting in the bottle, or if these traits were there from the start, but they are both pretty darn strong at this stage in the beer’s life. Other than those two nits, this was a pretty solid introduction to the brewery — one which results in some additional tasty brews, but those reviews are for a future date.
Rating: 3.5/5
