Type: Saison
Color: Dark yellow/orange
Alcohol content: 7%
Recommended serving temperature: 10ºC/50ºF
Brewery: Fábrica Maravillas
Webpage: http://fabricamaravillas.es/
For the first post on craft beers I have chosen what has been until this point my favorite discovery of 2012. A shame, actually, as it is another very hard to find beer. Believe me, I do NOT do this on purpose at all. However, this beer does not even appear in the brewery's webpage (see link above).
I first tried the Saison Pera in the "Feria de Alimentos de Madrid y Cerveza Artesanal 2012" in Madrid in May 2012, where I went with my girlfriend.
This event is a food and beer fair of craft beers (brewed all around Spain) and food (from Madrid mainly), organized by the Cámara Agraria de Madrid in the Casa de Campo.
This was the first year I went and I was very pleasantly surprised, among others, by this brewery, which curiously had one of the smallest stands in the fair. But this is not surprising as, from what they told me at the time, they still had not opened their brewery, so I guess a stand was the least of their worries.
Out of the different varieties Fábrica Maravillas offered, the Saison Pera was my girlfriend's favorite, while I favored the Triple II (another fantastic beer which I hope to make the object of one of my next posts). However, that was that day. I bought four beers of each kind to take home, and over time (read, when I had not had several beers before it) I came to appreciate the Saison Pera's complexities to a point where I now find it the best beer I have tasted this year.
If I were to compare it with other beers, I would say it is a mix of the (maybe smell, maybe taste of the) Hoegaarden Verboden Vrucht, the taste of the Tripel Karmeliet, and the creamyness of the Hofbrau Weizenbier.
If I were to describe it on its own, I would say that it is a dark yellow, orange Weizen textured beer with a foam typical of precisely that sort of beer, if not even more long-lasting. In that sense, as you will see from the pictures below, the foam remains almost from the moment you open it until you finish it. Nevertheless, the Weizenbier comparison does not even begin to describe this beer.
Fig. 1: Recently poored
It is made with pear juice, which gives it a peary smell with a fruity and slightly acid taste, reminiscent of, as I mentioned before, Tripel Karmeliet. This makes it a beer everyone will enjoy regardless of whether they are usual beer drinkers or not. Nevertheless, if you are, you will probably also appreciate it especially.
Finally, it is a beer with a 7% alcohol content. As I have said in previous posts, I tend to like beers with a high alcohol content, which I find also in many cases contributes to their taste. This however is not the case in this beer, at least in the sense that you cannot at all taste the amount of alcohol in it. Sure, there is some hint of it, but that is all it is, a hint. Other than that you would think you are drinking barley juice.
Fig. 2: Halfway through
The combination makes it a very tasty and flavory beer, highly refreshing and slightly treacherous. It is so delicious and seamless that it is definitely one of those beers of which you want to have a couple at a time and, before you know it, it sneaks up on you and goes to your head. This is not too good if you plan to do anything for the rest of the day other than watch the world go by, but I do not think it is fair to blame the beer for one's own mistakes. You know, as they say, guns don't kill people, people kill people. So, all in all, regardless of that little glitch, I can honestly say that it is one of the best beers I have ever had the chance of trying.
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