BFM Saint Bon-Chien Listings

Should we continue to separate the yearly listings or combine new beers under one listing like Anchor OSA?

Just throwing it out there.

The really early versions were different, but I haven’t been keeping up with the series. Is it the same beer with similar treatments each year now?

I have a friend who visited BFM last Fall and spent some time with Jerome (owner), Bertrand (brewer), and Matt (intern). He was lucky enough to be visiting on a day when they were taking barrel samples and making selections for the next Bon Chien "annual" blend.

BFM has all sorts of barrel experiments going on (as is evidenced by all the single-barrel treatments that have been released over the past few years). I can say with a good amount of certainty that the Bon Chien "annual" blend is comprised of different types of spirit and wine barrels, and significantly different ratios of those barrels, every year.

Further supporting this, Jerome visited Redlight Redlight here in Orlando a couple of years back. I remember conversations with Brent (owner of Redlight) in which he talked about how Jerome favors certain years of the Bon Chien blend due, at least in part, to barrel selection and blend ratios.

I hope that helps.

aren’t the Anchor beers also slight recipe tweaks in the spices every year?

Originally posted by beastiefan2k
aren’t the Anchor beers also slight recipe tweaks in the spices every year?

I believe so. The label says that "each batch is different," and I’m almost certain that pertains to the spices used.

I believe in the case of Bon Chien, we’re talking about potentially significant barrel differences.

These numbers mean nothing, just using them for example purposes....but the blends could look like this:

200X: 30% cabernet, 24% rum, 46% bourbon
200Y: 22% san giovese, 27% grappa, 19% bourbon, 32% spirit la-gnole
200Z: 41% pinot noir, 59% bourbon

Each blend is (in my mind) significantly different, as opposed to say the Bruery Papier series, which is aged in the same type of barrels and blended via solera method.

I completely agree with you, they are different but so are the Anchor beers. But for the sake of simplicity we merge ratings for recipe tweaks if they are small and consistently changing. After 8 batches of differently blended beer, maybe we can now reconsider whether we should continue the system or think about it in another way.

Now this is a question and I was hoping that the RB community would give their 2 cents. But it seems that no one really cares, so might as well leave it the way it is.

There are other examples that I can think of (Upright Late Harvest, Hill Farmstead E., Beatification Batch 001 vs PH-001, on and on....) that present this same quandary (i.e. slight recipe tweaks). Hell, just about EVERY beer has gone through slight recipe tweaks, I would imagine. I think we have to look a little deeper than that, though.

At some point, a RB decision was made that brewer’s intent and marketing practice factored into the determination of whether or not to separate entries. I believe the Eclipse stouts and GI Rare ultimately being separated because of marketing intent and spirit barrel brand sets a precedent here.

The question then becomes, at least for Bon-Chien and Our Special Ale, whether or not the vintage date on the bottle, coupled with the knowledge that there are definite recipe tweaks, constitutes the right sort of "marketing intent" to separate out the entries. Is a vintage date on a label really any different than a different color of wax on a bottle of Eclipse when it comes to marketing intent? And with respect to that, if The Bruery re-names its Papier series every year, at least in part for marketing purposes, and blends it using the Solera method, why does that not constitute enough "marketing intent" to warrant separate listings?

Anyway....I am indifferent to how either the Bon-Chien blends or OSA are listed...I’m just being argumentative. I’m actually all for removing marketing intent from the equation and going back to the old system. Was never a fan of BCS Rare or the Eclispes (within the same spirit barrel type) being split out, as I think it does a disservice to the beer consumer by driving up hype, and accordingly, pricing.

Originally posted by Beerlando
Anyway....I am indifferent to how either the Bon-Chien blends or OSA are listed...I’m just being argumentative. I’m actually all for removing marketing intent from the equation and going back to the old system. Was never a fan of BCS Rare or the Eclispes (within the same spirit barrel type) being split out, as I think it does a disservice to the beer consumer by driving up hype, and accordingly, pricing.

I think it is a good argument and I think separate listing similarly increase demand for this beer (no where near GI Rare levels). In the end, I like the beer but I want less people out there to like it.

The "tweaks" to Fullers Vintage and OSA make little or no difference to the beer itself...