Okay, this one is genuinely delightful and I need you to know that immediately. Ah-Choo!! is Off Color Brewing's springtime honey saison, brewed in partnership with the American Honey Council using lemon blossom honey, koji inoculated rice from their sake program, and actual bee pollen, and somehow it all comes together instead of turning into a science fair project.
Here's the thing about saisons: they're supposed to be light and effervescent, and a lot of breweries treat "light" as an excuse to phone it in. Not this one. A carefully controlled fermentation keeps that delicate lemon blossom aroma completely intact, so what you get is bright, floral, just sweet enough, at a perfectly reasonable 6% ABV that means you can absolutely have a second pour without any complicated feelings about it.
Chicago's Off Color has this whole "Mice en Place" bottle series, and every single one of them takes some odd little brewing tradition and pushes it somewhere unexpected. Ah-Choo!! is honestly the most immediately charming of the bunch I've come across, a beer that wears its whimsy right on the label, bees and all, and then backs it up completely once it's in the glass.
Available on draft now, releasing in 375ml bottles to go exclusively at Mousetrap this Friday at noon, for ten dollars, which at this point feels like it should cost more.
Spring came and went already, technically, but this beer clearly didn't get the memo, and I am so glad about that.