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T&T Echo

Tasted 2025-07 (month known; exact date not recorded) · isolate: pass

Echo bottle, Time & Tide: brown bottle with a gold crown cap and an orange label showing a cartoon bird with a propeller cap and a megaphone, text reading Time & Tide, Echo, Saison ABV 5.9% Echo, Time & Tide: saison, 5.9% ABV (from the label).

Pale, hazy golden beer in a stemmed tulip glass decorated with black running figures, with a loose white head In the glass.

Impression

Found in a garden centre, and it immediately caught my attention: I had never seen anything there other than traditional English beers and IPAs. The date on the bottle was 2017.

There were bottles with two different kinds of cap, so I got one of each, thinking they'd be ruined anyway. The first was totally flat and oxidised, and could not be drunk. The second had a cap with a plastic under-cap, which had obviously held pretty well.

Two crown caps, inside up: on the left a gold cap with a white plastic insert, on the right a silver cap with a flat white liner Left: cap with the plastic insert, which held. Right: the cap that failed.

That second bottle was actually quite good and interesting. I was expecting a bone-dry, funky beer with no phenolic character or hops. What I got was clearly an aged saison: pale, very dry, no signs of oxidation, minimal funk, no aroma hops but a lingering bitterness. Quite surprisingly for me, after about 8 years the beer had held up to the spicy, peppery and 4-VG flavours.

The bugs

Sold as a bretted saison. Dregs not examined, no plating done.

Decision

Pass. Not of interest.