As I’m sure you’re all tired of hearing, I have drunk many, many different beers—roughly 2,300 by my best current reckoning. It has been, and continues to be, a really awesome, life-enriching hobby, with the incredibly minor drawback that finding something truly new and different seems to be increasingly difficult with each passing month. Innovation in the field of beer is constant, and I’m sure the surprises won’t ever really run out for me, but when I see a brewery like San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing put out an “Estonian-style ale,” yeah, I’m going to jump on that, because I’ve never had an Estonian-style ale!

Saaramaa Island Ale, the sixth brew in Anchor’s Zymaster series of experimental beers, was inspired by the Anchor brewmaster’s trip to, well, Estonia’s Saaremaa Island. He brought back a sample of the local yeast, and used it to ferment Saaremaa Island Ale. It was this last bit that really had me interested: A strain of brewing yeast that’s not Belgian or German or English or American, with the potential to produce new and unfamiliar flavors. This is the shit I get most excited for: A new hop that tastes like lemon and gunpowder; a beer aged, for the first time, in barrels that previously held gin; a yeast that—well, I don’t know yet. Let’s find out!

Okay. Hmm. Well. For a beer inspired by a distinctive brewing tradition, there’s a lot that’s familiar here. Saaremaa has a warm, friendly orange-gold color, with a quickly dissipating head. It’s a sweet beer with a slightly spicy finish, incorporating flavors of cantaloupe, banana, candi sugar and clove with minimal hop presence. If you read all of that and thought, “that sounds like a Belgian golden ale,” then we’re on the same page! There’s little, from what I can tell, to differentiate this from a Belgian golden or pale—and a good golden or pale, to be sure, but I have to admit to a bit of disappointment. And not because there’s anything wrong with this beer, at least as far as I can tell!

Part of never having had a beer from Saaremaa Island, and having had any Estonian malt beverage just the once when I was already drunk at a hipster bar in Chicago’s gay district, which, like, I’m still not even sure why they had bottles of Saku Originaal lager… anyway, what I’m getting at is that I don’t have even a remote reference point for the thing Anchor’s brewmaster was inspired by. This is certainly a very good beer, in that it tastes very good. It may also be a good Estonian-style beer; at the very least, I have no reason to doubt that it is. Its only failing is its failing to present my senses with something new, and the more I think about it, the more I doubt that I was reasonable in expecting that. Sometimes a beer’s just a beer.

lady snow says: It just tasted like a farmhouse ale to me. Maybe a farmhouse ale with honey. It’s very enjoyable! This is the sort of beer I think I could drink more of than most other beers. Nothing all that distinctive about it, but it’s just really good.

tl;dr: You’re even more justified than usual skipping to this line today, as much of the above comprises some extremely silly hemming and hawing about my personal expectations for the beer. It’s very good, and should be an especially big hit with any fan of the lighter Belgian styles.

Grade: I’m going to have a Wekken Sour next. It’s a blend of DeProef’s Zoetzuur wild ale and Left Hand’s Wake Up Dead imperial stout. It won’t be the first time I’ve had a sour stout, but it’ll be the first time I’ve had this one. Can’t wait.

make it snow is an alot of beer who couldn’t find a good free photo of Saaremaa Island. Image search that shit though, because it looks beautiful. He drank about an Imperial pint of Anchor Saaremaa Island Ale, and lady snow drank the rest. Drink something nice tonight yourself, will you? It’s only Sunday.