As some of you may remember, DDB did a piece for Craft Beer and Brewing on the Trinity Brett Tour.  I was hit up by a Colorado Springs newspaper for comment and left it at that.  Head brewer, Jason Yester, never one to back away from a controversy, took it in jest and here we are.

We have a lot of fun with Trinity here at DDB largely due to the opinionated brewer, but also because many of their offerings are legitimately tasty. I wont dig into the Levi Funk v. Yester backstory, but, suffice it to say, the boys are Trinity are legitimately passionate about beer, from toe to tip.  So let’s review some of their new offerings to see if they are still on that TPS Report level of quality, or if shit has sunken into that acetic nightmare that was WILD GROWTH.

Let’s find out:

One Ear is an unspiced ‘naked’ Saison brewed with barley, oats, and rye. A Free-Rise fermentation develops a light fruit and pepper, while the assertive hoping profile creates a dry finish. 6.5 % ABV; 35 IBUs

To be honest I am torn over this one.  On the one hand, you have a legitimately well crafted saison that could hit mass markets and subvert people from drinking Hennepin and Red Barn, but, on the other hand this isn’t an exceptionally exciting beer either.  At the outset you have all of the classic Dupont-y underpinnings that would appeal to any entry level farmhouse consumer.  You know, dudes in that shed level, not quite ready for farmhouses but they are Farm-curious.

The nose has hints of saltine cracker, a minerality to the water profile that is akin to Perrier and lemon zest that blasts springtime radiance like “Fresh Air” febreeze. The oats and rye provide structure to the body and light creaminess but the beer is relatively insubstantial, for better or worse.  There’s a gentle pepper aspect like pink peppercorn massaged from the rye I am assuming and a lingering almost brackishness to the swallow.  This is intensely drinkable albeit more, as advertised, a “naked” saison.  It feels like the saison with roll up windows and door handles not painted to match the body. Perhaps the wider net requires accessibility, or maybe this beer is extremely competitively priced.

It is not bad by any means but with small format Logsdon Seizoen bretta, they would have to be serving this at like the movie theater of pricing 6 packs at like $11.99 to get me throbbing.

This is Menacing Kumquat and it is a saison that uses Citra hops.  6.5%-AbV and 45 IBU

Right out of the gates I was gritting my teeth with PTSD at how fucking sour the SitR Kumquat was, getting fever dreams of those pithy tart tannins.  Shockingly, this goes ultra gentle, opting more for fleshy juice and smashed seed profile.  The body is paper thin and leaves much to be desired as the relatively low acidity doesn’t have much tether to move around with in orbit.

Thankfully, the spray of the kumquat skins makes this feel almost prototypically saison in execution, like the Yankee Candle approximation.  I dont mean that it seems like synthetic kumquat, in that it is so overwhelmingly kumquat that you can imagine you are in the backyard stealing them from the tree before Nana spanks your ass stopsign red for being a “red supporter” and why was she even-

This is akin to a more crushable version of “Kumquat Bu” which I can only assume exists, since, kumquats exist. Some people said they got phenolic tire notes, which I almost wish were present in mine because I could have had a fucking field day, but this is drillable, refreshing, yellow fanta meets Avril.

The beer lacks depth but delivers the two things it promised: citra and kumquats.  When you go to my free cam girls, there better be three things 1) cams 2) girls and 3) freedom. Such is this kumquat saison.  The “menacing” is a serious misnomer since this beer is the furthest thing from challenging or threatening in any modicum of the term.

Edit: here is the eloquent response from the Brewer