Vliegende Paard Brewers, the Belgian team behind the Prearis brand of beers, is another craft upstart.  Homebrewers to start, Prearis entered a national homebrew competition in Belgium in April 2011 and won best home-brewed craft beer.  I'm not one to hold much stock in competitions no one has ever heard of.  Needless to say, a few months later, Vliegende was brewing commercially and now export their beers to slightly more than a half dozen countries.  How they got on the radar to get to Thailand is beyond me.        

Prearis Blond is what the label promises.  It's fruity, it's citrusy, it's mildly bitter.  Just like you'd expect from any saison. You wouldn't be disappointed if you selected this at your local bar for a quick one.      

But you wouldn't be blown away either.   You'd comment to yourself, "This is a tasty and refreshing Belgian brew," as you quickly forgot about it because it tasted as good as all the other tasty and refreshing Belgian brews you've been sampling.      

Today's Belgian craft upstarts have a different set of obstacles to face than the craft upstarts in the US three decades ago.  US craft brewers, circa 1985, had to convince a public whose taste buds had been detuned from a near half century of bland flavorless lagers to pay higher prices for a completely different taste.  Belgian upstarts already face a beer market that's already varied, delicious, and more costly than a buck a bottle.  As such, if they want to make heads turn, they need to brew something original, different, and memorable.          

Prearis Blond didn't make my head turn.