Weird Beard and Sad Robot - Saison 42

Yay! A beer made in reference to my favourite book ever! ... Wait... Oh no... This doesn't bode well at all. Did you read my review on the Discworld beers? I had pretty much come to the conclusion that no good can come from a beer that is made in reference to something awesome or by anyone in a metal band (Trooper sucked too.) I genuinely hope that this is the exception that proves the rule but it hasn't started well. As a general rule, I start to get pissed off with a beer if it takes longer than 3 minutes to pour. Longer than a minute is pretty shaky territory but 3 is, indeed, the magic number... FOR MY BOUNDLESS RAGE! This took around 2 and a half and it still looks like I need to go at it with a miniature shovel, a flake and a shell cone. As much as Weird Beard do indeed make some Rockin' Hot beer, they do seem to be a little inconsistent sometimes. I've poured a couple that have volcanoed from the bottle and there have been a few that simply exploded on the shelves. However, for every bottle bomb there has been a handful of beery beauties and I'm sure that these are probably just isolated exceptions so that doesn't automatically make it bad beer.

(I've recently noticed that the only ones that have lacked consistency are the collaborations. Weird Beard have enough of a name now, they don't have to do collaborations with smaller brewries, they can easily get away with doing some with the likes of Thornbridge, To Øl, Evil Twin maybe, all of whom seem to love collabs.)

As previously stated, it pours like an accident at a shampoo factory but produces a rich mahogany brown liquid which looks clean and crisp with intense carbonation. It has that good, stereotypical, Saison smell, though you've really got to bury your nose in deep to get much of it at all. The taste, however, is where it starts to pick up because it's zingy but also sweet and smooth with dollops of caramel and toffee. The zing can be bitter and sour but never impedes the sweet smoothness. I didn't think a Saison could be like this, I didn't think it could take me to the candy shop...

What started out as deeply disappointing turned into somewhat of a sweet little gem and at 5.7% I could see myself sessioning this... If I had an infinite amount of time.

I wish I'd made more hitchhiker jokes during this review but I reckon someone's probably already done that... And looked like a right knob. I'm a professional dammit!

Food suggestion: Have you ever cooked up a whole pack of smoky bacon just to eat it with nothing else to accompany it? No? Me neither, I'm not mad. However, it would be justified if you had a pint of this by your side.

Drink this if you like: Hitchhiker and waiting around.