So: let us do something familiar, and yet distinct.

“Dan drinks a beer while doing something else and writes about it” is a well-worn topic around here: Cf Music Box and that one where I talked about Doctor Who and had a weird paragraph at the end about how hot John Barrowman is.

This week a bottle caught my eye: SAISON BRETT, it said, and I like both of those things so sure, I’m on board! But the bottle also said Cider Creek, and so this is a cider, fermented with a saison yeast and then also Brettanomyces. Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this.

It’s actually part one in a three part series, and I bought all three, but we’ll see if I feel like taking a picture and jotting down notes for the other two.

My first impression is that it’s mot super funky. Sweetness up front that’s immediately cut down by some barnyard funk. Mild funk. The kind of funk that people won’t be threatened by. Ends dry, or perhaps medium.

Honestly, I’m not getting a lot of Brett. I enjoy the cider quite a lot, though: I think it’s the sort of cider I’d like to drink all the time. Not too sweet, not overpoweringly funky, but still enough understated complexity to make it interesting.

At 6.9%, this strikes me as closer to the strength of a beer than a wine, and this drinks much more like beer to me. The carbonation dissipates pretty quickly, making it almost more petulant than sparkling (yes, I admit I just like saying “petulant”), which adds to the overarching character summary in my mind of “you don’t have to give this much attention when you drink it, but you’re rewarded if you do.”

As for what I was doing while drinking this: a combination of Cutthroat Kitchen on Netflix and doing the dishes. Not particularly thrilling. I’ll try to have a more exciting life for you next time.

Until the, dear reader.