Your intrepid liquor reporter was browsing the shelves at my friendly neighbourhood booze merchant, when I came across a six-pack of Saison from California’s Stone Brewing.
The Saison beer style comes to us from the French-speaking Wallonia region of Belgium, known as the wellspring of all beer styles weird and wacky, of which the Saison is no exception.
While your jet-setting author has indeed been on a beer pilgrimage to Belgium, I never it made it far enough down the list of Belgium’s 500 different beer styles to sample the Saison style while I was there.
Luckily, I now had the opportunity, so that six-pack of Saison quickly made its way to my beer fridge.
The name Saison comes from the French word for season, as the beer was originally brewed for the migratory seasonal farm workers that worked the harvests in Belgium.
Unlike commercial beers made for consumption by the general public, Saison was traditionally brewed onsite by the farm owner, and served directly to the seasonal farm workers as part of their wages.
Hundreds of years ago, Saison only weighed in around 3% ABV , as each farm worker was served up to five litres each day! If we fast-forward to the modern day, Saison has evolved into a more common 5-8% ABV for the average consumer.
With the growing popularity of craft beer, the nearly-forgotten Saison style experienced a massive resurgence in popularity over the past 5 years, and can now be found not only in Belgium, but around the world.
Since the beer was traditionally made by small-scale farmers (or more likely, the farmer’s wife), the Saison beer style is all over the map, with great variations from farm to farm. This makes the flavours a bit hard to describe, as there was tremendous diversity within the same style of beer.
As a general rule, Saison beers tend to be pale in colour, usually with a bit of haze due to the being brewed in the open on a working farm, and not being filtered before serving.
The flavours often include a slight sourness, due to the spontaneous fermentations of wild yeasts common on working farms. Tangy overtones are common, usually by adding uncommon grains like spelt to the barley malt, and the farmer’s wife would often toss in a bit of honey and assorted spices to keep the farmhands happy, giving the beer a sharp and spicy aftertaste.
Closer to home, Calgary’s own Wild Rose Brewery puts out a seasonal Saison every so often, which I’ve enjoyed on tap a few times. This one is hard to find, but you might get lucky if you visit their tap room on the old Currie Barracks in Calgary.
Looking west, Phillips Brewing on Vancouver Island just released their Barnstormer Saison IPA last month, which is an interesting hybrid of the Saison and IPA beer styles. While the hop bitterness of an IPA is definitely there, it is pushed to the background by the ester-filled Saison yeasts, with peppery spice overtones and an earthy finish.
Faithful readers may recall the many times your humble narrator has waxed poetic about Phillips Brewing, and I continue to be delighted that they finally started distributing in Alberta a few years back, so I no longer have to cross the border to BC to enjoy their sudsy goodness.
Getting back to what set me down the Saison trail in the first place, we have none other than Stone Brewing out of California. Stone Brewing has long been a favourite of beer nerds, so I was giddy with delight when they finally started distribution in Alberta just under a year ago.
Stone Brewing has always had frighteningly flavourful beers, and their Saison was no exception. The fruity esters from the yeast gave off aromas of cloves, and possibly even cinnamon or cardamom. There were citrusy flavours balanced by banana, and the entire brew was highly carbonated, carrying all the spicy aromas and flavours to my palate. Perhaps not a beer for those raised on a steady diet of Coors Lite, but highly serviceable for the beer cognoscenti.
If you’d like to begin your own journey of discovery, one of the most popular Saison brews in Belgium is the Saison Dupont, which won the Best Beer In The World back in 2005, and is widely available here in Canada.
Saison Dupont, which won the Best Beer In The World back in 2005, and is widely available here in Canada.
