54/100) Goose Island (Guys)

I have set myself the goal to review three beers or ciders every week for 100 weeks. I will be learning about beer and ciders more as I do this, and if I am successful in this venture, I will have tried about 300 unique drinks. If you're curious how I'm doing, the number in the post's title tells you which week I am in now.

Gillian, Halia, Pepe Nero

Goose Island's farmhouse beers tend to have personal sounding names. I'm not sure of the origins behind these choices, but I realized after taking the above picture that I had grouped all the guys together. Regardless, whatever saison/farmhouse base Goose Island uses for these beers is top-notch. Also, all three of these were 2013 bottles, so a touch of aging has been applied.

Gillian) I got a lot of peppery notes on this one, and there were strawberries in the finish. They hide  and weren't there with every sip, but they were fresh and pleasant. The notes reminded me of the syrupy aroma found on sticky fingers following freshly picking a batch of the fruit. The effervescence is strong but not overwhelming. ☆☆☆☆

Halia) There was a light tartness, and just a breath of peaches that lingered on the finish. Like Gillian had strawberry touches, Halia's peach notes may have been the inspiration for the bottle's color scheme. What little bitterness or sourness was in this beer fades on the finish. ☆☆☆☆

Pepe Nero) Smelled lightly of chocolate and caramel but was the harshest and most unusual of the three. In fact, if there was a category for a stout saison or the like, this would be it. It had a lot of the same background saison flavors the other two have, but the malts dominated the up front flavors. ☆☆☆☆