Saison Through History...

Reads 2003 • Replies 15 • Started Tuesday, October 10, 2017 9:05:05 AM CT

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Message ebone1988 beers 2504 º places 24 º 12:13 Thu 10/12/2017 Originally posted by SilkTork A saison is whatever you want it to be. Whatever you focus on as being, for you, something you identify with a beer named saison, is what it'll be. If what you want is high temperature esters, that's what you'll be looking for. If they're not there, or not enough there, you'll be disappointed. Is that a fault of the brewer, the saison description on the beer, or your own expectations? Expecting too much of a beer descriptor can lead to brewers simply copying each other for fear of diverting too far from people's expectations and disappointing them. I'd rather follow a brewer than a style descriptor. I have found that if there's a brewer I like (or dislike) then my experience with that brewer will tend to follow a more narrow path than with following a beer style descriptor. What I mean is, if I like Brewer A's saison, then I am likely to enjoy Brewer A's porter. But it doesn't follow that I would like Brewer B's saison. Good point. I blindly buy anything with the SARA name on it if I can.
Message joet P admin beers 2900 º places 125 º 17:24 Fri 10/13/2017 Originally posted by ebone1988 Originally posted by SilkTork A saison is whatever you want it to be. Whatever you focus on as being, for you, something you identify with a beer named saison, is what it'll be. If what you want is high temperature esters, that's what you'll be looking for. If they're not there, or not enough there, you'll be disappointed. Is that a fault of the brewer, the saison description on the beer, or your own expectations? Expecting too much of a beer descriptor can lead to brewers simply copying each other for fear of diverting too far from people's expectations and disappointing them. I'd rather follow a brewer than a style descriptor. I have found that if there's a brewer I like (or dislike) then my experience with that brewer will tend to follow a more narrow path than with following a beer style descriptor. What I mean is, if I like Brewer A's saison, then I am likely to enjoy Brewer A's porter. But it doesn't follow that I would like Brewer B's saison. Good point. I blindly buy anything with the SARA name on it if I can.
Message nuplastikk P beers 9851 º places 73 º 20:37 Sat 10/14/2017 Drinking a Du Bocq Saison now. Not that impressive at all, but certainly different than either end of the US Saison spectrum.

Message radarsock beers 1226 º places 112 º 16:24 Mon 10/16/2017 Originally posted by joet Goonies is certainly hot garbage and thanks for making this thread. It's been hard for me to be okay with this New American Saison... You make a good case for saison being about grain but the classics for me were about elements of grain that were not simply malt sugar, caramels, Maillard characteristics. There was this softness, this rural charm, a balance between malt and warm/hot fermented yeast contributions, at that more earthy quality of subtle dirty funk. Saison has been so abused as to become not only meaningless but has made me question my touchstones. Dupont is nothing like it was 15 years ago for instance. Or is it? I am so looking forward to getting those flavors back. Those running next to dried grasses in dry soil and over crunching Fall leaves aromas. The subtle phenol that is a two-day old cut under a Band-aid sprayed with Bactine when it happened and not like drinking cough medicine. It's a tiny slice of baked unspiced apple made even more subtle by being washed with water. It's wood. It's earth. It's warm wind. It's stillness. Saison for me too is about more than subtlety but also moderation. A worker's beer. A thirst quencher. A beer you can enjoy by the liter. A beer that's unafraid to be at more revealing temperatures and lesser acidities. Ha - thank god someone actually agrees with me here about Goonies. Aside from being kinda sexist, it's also... like... really dumb. I won't talk about that any longer, don't worry. Right. As was mentioned already, the grain was whatever had been available to the farmers in their immediate surroundings: for instance, wheat in that region was planted generally in early October (or even late sometimes September) and usually harvested usually from May to July (depending on the soil, area, humidity, etc). Sometimes, these farms didn't have the ability to grow wheat or, rather, not as much as their buckwheat or oat crops so they'd opt for other grains if that's what they grew just to have something to tide them over. In the US, we're all honestly a little too obsessed with wheat saisons; they taste great but that only goes hand in hand how historically the wheat saisons were produced the most because that particular grain had been grown in abundance - and with the different varieties meant you could have a spring wheat or winter wheat sasion and not have to wait an entire new season just for preferred suds. I'm thinking that fermenting wild critters happened more than probably by accident in Belgium, but I'm assuming hadn't become a cult classic trend until it had been Americanized. As far as I know, lambics and saisons have always had very similar grain bills but completely different fermentation techniques. And Belgium has bred a many different wild culture for brewing purposes for a while, but perhaps hadn't actually sold their strains to commercial brewing stores until recently. I don't think that most of the strains that Belgian farmers used had brett, though they certainly retained a unique "wildness" to them despite not being terribly tart or acidic. I was told that a few fermented saisons with bread yeasts - no idea if that's actually true or not, but I do not doubt it if it is. I only meant that Dupont from what I read brewed the same beer (With a few additions/differences) as its first few batches in the late 1800s. On their original farm, I believe that they made bread out of the spent grain and used the bread's yeast to also ferment some of the beer. Let's get back to simplicity and wonderfulness.
Message spacecoyote 10:04 Tue 10/17/2017 Harkening back to "the good old days of simplicity" is a sentiment mired in defeat. My opinion, which is, as always, free of charge, at no cost to you, is that the meaning of the word of which this conversation is bogged down in carries more weight to the neophytes than it does to its originators. To put it more plainly, It's not Saison, it's "saison". Start there, and see where it goes. Now kölsch on the other hand, that's a better one to argue in defense of origin and interpretation.