Flying Dog Garde Dog Bière de Garde

Why oh why do I keep trying all these summer beers. A good light ale is so hard to make and to find that I should just stick with what I know. Light-boddied and fizzy. A bit of fruit and a lot of peat. This is my first biere de garde; maybe I just need to try more.

Twelve ounce bottle. Clean golden body. Fizzy head. Hard to get much out of the nose at all, besides a lot of funkiness. Flavor wise, it’s very tame and only shows hints of sour fruits. Not any sweet toasty malts. I’m not an expert on the style, but it doesn’t seem true to me at all.

12 oz. bottle, coded bottling date in the lower right hand corner of the label (225FX08), sampled in a tulip glass. L: Hazy golden copper with a frothy, bubbly topped white head of fluffed foam, decent head retention that slowly settled into a creamy skim. Light amounts of splotchy lace dots rings the glass, other than that, no real evidence of any sticky lace clinging to sides of the glass. S: Tame, mellow nose that more resembles a dull blonde ale than a Bière de Garde. Softly tart fruit aromas, apples, pears and hints of citric fruity lemon, but no traces of the earthy mustiness that I love in the Bière de Garde style. I also pick up a mild pale malt sweetness, something a kin to honey covered saltine crackers and dry biscuits. Overall, I am less than impressed with the aroma of Garde Dog. F&T: The carbonation fades rather fast, the carbonation has no zippy staying power, leading to a drab and flat feeling light body. The lack of carbonation also means Garde Dog is robbed of the spryly dry crispness found in a good, above average Bière de Garde. I love the Bière de Garde style because each sip brings out a new complexity of tastes, each sip needs to be savored to enhanced the enjoyment. Garde Dog is so simple tasting that I come away with the feeling that this was brewed to be a mad gulper, finish this quickly so we can turnover your table for the next customer kind of gulper. Garde Dog does possess a hidden cellar earthiness, you really have to search for it, so you can call this something in the Bière de Garde style, but altogether, the tastes are fast and fleeting. A briskly tart fruitiness, namely pears with squeezed lemon wedges, dry biscuits and grainy crackers with touches of honey poured over them, then finishing with notes of a Noble hop spiciness. The alcohol is evident by the solvent tasting warmth in the back of palate, highlighting the lack of cohesion, balance in the taste. I realize Flying Dog didn’t brew Garde Dog to be a world class Bière de Garde, this was geared towards being an affordable seasonal offering from this Colorado brewery, but still I was disappointed. Maybe my hopes were too high because this is my favorite style of beer, plus because I have a high opinion of many of the special and seasonal releases from Flying Dog I’ve tried in the past, but Garde Dog was just plain disappointing all around, I will be passing this by in the future.

Bottle... Clear, light golden ale with a small, creamy, off-white head. The nose provides peppery, spicy notes flanking a lesser touch of honey. Medium-bodied with prickly carbonation. Bland, minerally flavor with whispers of pale grains. Balanced and inoffensive, but not much of a show-stopper. Minerally, watery finish.

From a bottle poured a clear light amber color with a small head. Sweet malty flavor with a quick finish.