I met up with some friends up in Hudson, MA a week ago for a night out. It was my first time in that area, but it's a recently gentrified old mill town with a really promising food scene that is developing. After a great dinner and dessert, we ended up at Medusa Brewing Company. We have a lot of brewpubs down my way, but this was the first nano/taproom style brewery I've been to. The taproom was a decent size and clean & well-maintained. Entertainment was a dude on mandolin playing an eclectic mix of tunes (I don't remember his whole set, but there was some 70's Bowie at one point).
Anyways, onto the beer. They had a really nice selection, with many sessionable brews and only a couple of IPA's (one being a session IPA). I started off with Sir Terry, which is a 3.8% dark mild that goes down really easy. There were toasty/nutty malt notes with hints of fruity esters and roasty chocolate. It was a little more watery than I'd like, but there was enough of a mineral character to dry out the finish and counteract that wateriness. I made a note that it would be killer on cask. I think the carbonation level may have made it seem a bit thin.
My buddy had their 80/-. I didn't take any detailed notes, but it was damn good. I remember thinking that this is what Belhaven must taste like fresh at the brewery.
Then I had Fermette, which is a 6% saison, dry-hopped with Sorachi and Centennial. My friends (who are admittedly not beer nerds like me) all made "the face" when they tried it - "not my tastes". Then I tried it. I made "the face", too. My notes read "Lemony, soapy, meaty. Something went wrong." Soap is almost definitely the hops. I'm not quite sure where the meaty thing is coming from. I always hear that this is an autolysis issue, but any time I've experienced that it's been in an overaged beer and it's been closer to soy sauce. This was more like chicken broth.
Overall, I was pretty happy with Medusa. I will definitely stop back in next time I'm in the area. But man, I wish they would have dumped that batch of saison. They're fairly new (open less than a year from what I've been told), so I hope they learn that it's OK to dump a beer. It's less expensive in the long run to lose a batch of beer than to lose customers.
Topic: Medusa Brewing Company (Read 1528 times)
