"Let there be...Saisons!"
New York this time of year has somewhat dismal weather. The grey lurks through most days, clouds shunt the suns paltry attempts at relaying any semblance of warmth, and night settles early, often accompanied by biting winds and rain. Times like these call for beers that harken to summer - its long, sunlit days, warm, breeze-filled nights, and the many wonderful social gathering outdoors that give it a pleasantly active sense of relaxation.
Belgian farm-workers in the French speaking part of the country inaugurated the overarching style of the Saison. They brewed during the cooler months of the winter, then stored the ale in barrels in farmhouses or barns to ferment until the warmer summer months. At that point, they enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
The grand-daddy of the style is Saison Dupont Vielle Provision, still brewed out of Brasserie Dupont in Belgium. After crafting the initial brew, the beer is placed in thick-walled green glass bottles for secondary fermentation, where the brewer's yeast digests the remaining brewing matter left in the corked bottle. This results in an unfiltered beer with strong natural carbonation.
It's important to note at this point that Saison still lacks a particular specificity. Any number of beers brewed in some level of concordance with the tradition of brewing Saisons in Belgium can claim to be Saisons, but their character, flavor, and ABV can vary appreciably. Thus, it's perhaps more helpful to think of a Saison as a larger umbrella for a series of smaller subsets of beers (much like how you'd hear the term Sour used in beer naming). The shared characteristics tend to be bottle-conditioning / secondary fermentation, smells/tastes of yeast, straw, barnyard, spices, and faint citrus, a light mouthfeel, and a dry finish.
A few Saturdays ago, two beer-loving friends visited me in New York, trekking in from rural Massachusetts and Washington DC, respectively, to enjoy a weekend of ale-appreciation. My girlfriend joined as well. The four of us (who had been on a trivia team in college at the local pub) gathered round and tasted our way through four Saisons (pictured above, left to right):
- Anchorage Brewing Company Love Buzz Saison ($15.25 for 25 oz at New Beer, NY, NY) - Anchorage, AK
- Goose Island Sofie ($12 for a 4-pack of 12 oz bottles at New Beer, NY, NY) - Chicago, IL
- Saison Dupont Vielle Provision ($11 for 25 oz at Whole Foods, NY, NY) - Tourpes, Belgium
- Brooklyn Brewery Sorachi Ace ($11 for 25 oz at Whole Foods, NY, NY) - Brooklyn, NY
We started with the Saison Dupont, seeing as how it is the progenitor for almost all other modern examples of the style. Upon popping the cork, I was hit with a strong whiff of an odor that I had become familiar with in college dorms: marijuana. True, hops and cannibis are both part of the Cannabacae family, so it's not too surprising, but wow - it smelled of pot, clear as day. I realize this isn't exactly a very professional note to include regarding the beer, but it's a point that if unmentioned would impoverish the communication of my experience with the beer. There was also a whiff of biscuit, and that tell-tale copper-y aroma that oft appears in Belgian beers. By color, it was much lighter than the other Saisons. Upon drinking, it revealed itself as almost entirely a light Belgian ale - straight up the middle with a very conservative hewing to the stereotypical hallmarks of that style. Given that a Saison is just a fancy way of gussying up certain kinds of Belgian ales, this is perhaps not too insightful of a point, but I had expected more in the way of the yeasty and straw-y flavors that I had been told would appear. The close was round on the tongue, and left a bit of lactic tartness behind. I felt mildly heretical for not feel rapturous, as this beer had been talked about in reverent tones in every conversation that had featured it. The proof, though, is in the figurative pudding, and I didn't find much. Overall, not very impressed, resulting in a 3.25/5 score.
We continued onwards with the Brooklyn Brewery Sorachi Ace. This one poured an orange-y gold color, with a thin white ring of foam. Lemon and biscuit featured faintly on the nose. Several sips and swallows featured a Belgian taste with some insinuations of lychee and other tropical fruit. I would have loved for more of the lemon-y flavor to come out in drinking, as Sorachi hops are supposed to be almost comically lemon-y in taste. However, I didn't find an enormous amount of depth to this beer as a whole, resulting in a 3.5/5 score.
Next was an old favorite of mine - Goose Island Sofie. This, as you may remember, was the good beer that turned me on to good beer. My predisposition, then, was liable to be skewed positively in favor of Sofie, much as you'd expect. However, I took the opportunity to appraise Sofie more critically this time around, rather than solely experientially, as I had done during my first tasting. It poured beautifully into a wine chalice, pale straw in color, with fine beads of strong carbonation throughout. It just looked *elegant* there. The nose had a touch of vinuous-ness and yeast. Sofie drank like a champagne, almost, pleasantly light in the mouth, with a faint kiss of that "Belgian" flavor grounded in a nice array of lemon and tropical fruit aromas. The wonderful mouthfeel led into a dry finish. It's always a happy event when something you loved once still holds up to scrutiny years later, and that was definitely the case with Sofie, resulting in a 4.25/5 score.
The final pour was Anchorage's Love Buzz. Having been the only non-Hill Farmstead brew to crack the top 5 in the Saison category in RateBeer's 2013 Best of Style rankings, Love Buzz inspired nothing but hope. I twisted open the cage, popped the cork, and held the bottle below my nose to inhale.
Wow.
Enormous pine and lychee on the nose, very assertive. I poured it out into a snifter, where it displayed an amber, reddish cast. Deeper smells pointed to a slight pineapple note around the substantial, commanding and intertwined presence of the pine and lychee aromas. The first sip offered up a funk-y wine tinge with a hint of yeast. Green grapes and lychee followed on the swallow. The close was a pleasant lactic tartness with a wash of all the preceding aromas cycling through like an olfactory greatest hits album. Calling this beer a Saison is like calling "Tomorrow Never Knows" a rock-song: it may be a technically defensible position, but it short-changes the almost unfathomable diversity of facets that the subject exhibits. Love Buzz is a smorgasbord of characteristics from many styles all occupying one space in beautiful harmony. It is amazing, and one of the finest beers I've ever tasted. Overall, it earns a 4.5/5, putting it squarely in my top 7 beers of all time (only 3 Floyds Zombie Dust, Pliny the Elder, New Glarus Raspberry Tart, 3 Floyds Rye da Tiger, Alchemist Heady Topper, and Founders Imperial Stout outrank it as of March 7, 2013).
Love Buzz was so good for so many reasons. The label description on the bottle describes the techniques underlying its creation, a listing process that helps in understanding its incredible depth of character:
- "Ale brewed with Hobbs Family rose hips, peppercorns and fresh orange peels. Dry hopped in the barrel with Citra hops. Triple fermented - first in the tank with a Belgian yeast, second in French oak Pinot Noir barrels with brett[anomyces], and finally in the bottle with a third yeast for natural carbonation."
That's a nigh-unto-ungodly litany of wicked good steps, each one of which would make a beer special. Put together, it's magic, and just one sip makes you feel all love-buzzed.
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At the close of this lovely Saison session, we were all a little bit tipsy, but quite happy to have enjoyed a few hours together with such wonderful conversation and beer. Next time you've got some winter-y blues that need banishing, try one of these Saisons. In distribution terms, Love Buzz will be the hardest to find, but I thoroughly you encourage you to look. It's magic.
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