OUTLAND SMOKY BUT NOT, Outland Brewery Paris, France
Date: Sept. 16, 2018
The Story— In yesterday’s post we mentioned Paris’s Academie de Bière’s irish beer tap takeover, but even with a half a dozen of its taps pouring ales from the Isle, there were interesting local options. We were deeply impressed by the beers from Outland brewery. Very few of the city’s craft breweries have tasting rooms. We were told that high rents meant crowded spaces and breweries were reluctant to give up brewing room to provide tasting areas. Outland, however is one that does have a tap room a ways away from the rather remote brewery but even the brewery tap is a ways from the center in the 11th arrondissment. Though if you’re in the neighborhood of Place de la Nation, site of one of the Revolution’s more active guillotines,, it’s quite close by.
Outland brews a nice range of styles and, at least in our limited samplings, brews them all well. The move to the suburbs gave it more space and by the time you get there they might have opened their on-site tasting room and a new section for bottle conditioning.
A smoked saison was a new one in our book and we ordered it more out of duty than desire. As it turned out, Ellie thought it was quite good and I thought it was sensational. The title is perfect and the smoke, which I expected to fight with the saison funk, behaved remarkable gently.
The Beer– Some smoke in the soft malt aroma yields to the saison funk and bitter by the finish. The continuing saison edge at the end seems softened by the smoke, however, even if the smoke is really quite subtle. Really interesting and more approachable than I expected.
Value — Very good. We paid about seven bucks for a standard 33cl bottle, and in Paris you can’t do much better than that.
ALL THIS WEEK– HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018– Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.” Prizes and surprises that we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities, which we plan on publishing in 2019.
About these posts: We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year. The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings. Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.
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