Jester King Brewery - Le Petit Prince

It’s hard to think of a beer this refreshing and lean that still exhibits so much depth. Le Petit Prince has long been a favorite table beer of The Rare Beer Club, and we were super excited to be able to secure enough of it and the three other Jester King releases for an RBC special offer. We’ve heard from our members loud and clear, and we’ll be aiming to do these special offers a bit more frequently going forward—always trying to scout out the new and the great while, ideally, also creating a curated look into the fuller range of each producer’s releases.

Death rays, probes, and world domination? No, none of that here; our Little Prince just doesn’t have the desire for such things. He’s quite content exploring weightlessness and the simple wonders of new experience. Alien encounteres aren’t necessarily a thing to be feared. With a simple shift of perspective, something initially foreign can become quite familiar, even comforting. Such wisdom from such a small fellow; maybe bigger isn’t always better after all.

Le Petit Prince is a dry, unspiced, highly attenuated Table Beer unique to our land in the Texas Hill Country. Native yeast and bacteria impart a sense of place to this unfiltered, unpasteurized, 100% bottle conditioned beer. –Jester King Le Petit Prince label notes

We’ll start with the lightest, at least ABV-wise, of the bunch. We were at first admittedly just a touch hesitant given the super-modest alcohol levels of Petit Prince—but its flavor’s so far beyond expectation, and really no other option entirely captures, for us, what the Jester King experience is all about. It starts light and crisp and subtle enough, before expanding out into something else entirely: toasty and honeyed layers offset by mineral bitterness and generous bubbles. The bitter peppery note from the yeast is accompanied by vanilla and almond skins, even hints of green olives and herbaceousness. We found the label’s attention to detail to be a pretty apt parallel to the golden nectar within: offering up complexity wherever one looks.

A whole lot contributed to this precise package: Texas Hill Country well water, malted barley and wheat, a farmhouse yeast strain, native yeasts and souring bacteria from the surrounding air... Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Le Petit. Even the initially subtle aromatics open up with a bit of time in the glass: with pepper and soft spice alongside crackery toast, a drop of floral honey, herbal dimensions veering into grassiness, lime, spearmint and almond.

The hops in Jester King’s Le Petit Prince: Perle, Fuggle and Czech Saaz.

ABV aside, the bottle conditioning and significant yeast here suggest that this one might be a bit more resilient in your cellar than the heft suggests. Our experiences thus far with Le Petit Prince, though, has us digging this most when fresh—with all those herbal and grassy angles popping at their prime. Pairing opportunities go in a whole lot of directions, the carbonation and vanilla notes suggesting some endearing options with buttery fish, while a creamy herbal cheese and toasted-grain crackers would sync up with other core elements. Introducing ripe fruitiness—cherry to nectarine—affords complementary pairing to the vanilla and almonds.