Review: Great Lakes' Chill Winston Grisette (Saison)

With the craft industry booming in Ontario, the sales over at Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto are as well, in fact - they are toying around with a lot of one-offs as part of their popular Tank 10 series, where they dedicate one of their tanks (No. 10) to the creation of experimental and one off beers for the true geeks to salivate over. Tonight's beer is their Chill Winston Grisette.

Opening up the Chill Winston Grisette, I didn't know what style it was. I knew it had to be either a saison or a nice craft pilsner as it had a mixture of a real grit graininess to it like a standard pilsner, with a decent amount of citrus zest like a saison. Light amount of Belgianesque yeast in there.

It's quite a satisfying beer, and at only 3.8%, it's a definite session ale. It's decently hopped and nice citrus bite which still makes me wonder.. is this a saison or a pilsner? It doesn't have quite enough Belgian-like yeast to be a saison, and nowhere near as cloudy or sweet, yet a bit too Belgiany to be a pilsner. It's quite light on the appearance as well, a very pale blonde, as light as a "low cal beer" like Molson 67, but of course, has substancially more flavour -- and none of the corniness.

Very refreshing, not quite a saison, not quite a pilsner in my mind but great combo of the two. Easily 3/5 Pints for this beer crank.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great Lakes is ripping off Boulevard with the Tank 10 series, but nonetheless I'd liked to try this.