A Midwest-West Coast Collaboration

The notion of collaboration is no longer novel. Yet rarely do you see two breweries of the stature of Deschutes (5th largest) and Boulevard (10th largest) come together to craft a recipe. Or even more pointedly, two brewers of the stature of Larry Sidor and Steven Pauwels. They're still in the process of fine-tuning the result of their brainstorm, a beast they're calling a "white IPA." More on that in a moment.

One of the most frustrating things about good-beer fandom is how regional American brewing remains. The first problem is access: most craft beer distributed only locally or regionally. Because of this, the second problem is that we don't see how other regions brew differently. And this is where the collaboration really gets its fizz.

The two regions have different agricultural influences, different histories, different people, and different tastes. The Northwest, of course, is the land of the hop. Our beer is hoppy and that's how the beer drinkers want it. The Midwest, by contrast, is a malty place. Anyone who has directed the nose of their Ford along the blue highways of America's breadbasket understands how important grain is to the psychology of the region. As proof, Boulevard's best-seller (from a vast line that includes lots of exotica) is a wheat beer.

The idea of fusing the sense of these two places guided Pauwels and Sidor as they thought about what style of beer to brew. The concept they came up with was a beer with wheat and hops, where both elements were both distinct and at the same time harmonious. A wheat IPA wouldn't do that, so they came up with this white IPA thing--with lemongrass and white sage. (They also liked the idea of riffing on the black IPA trend.) When Pauwels and Sidor were in town, I failed to get a quote, but trust John Foyston, the old pro, to bust out his pen:

"We liked the beer but we both agreed there was a hole in the middle," said Sidor at the Deschutes Portland Pub event yesterday. "So we started experimenting with a bridge between the citrus of the hops and the herbal flavors of lemongrass and other spices and a hint of sage worked best."

The final version still isn't ready, but last week, we got to try an early batch. For Deschutes, this is a rush job--fewer than ten test batches til go time (Hop in the Dark took two dozen). It'll be interesting to see how the thing pans out. This version was strong on the sage, which gave strong aromatics but a strangely cooling sensation on the tongue, and weak on the hops. The wheat was a lovely, soft bready touch. It tasted more to me like a farmhouse ale than a wit-IPA cross, but we'll see what the final version looks like.

Both breweries will brew the final recipe separately. There will be subtle differences: they each source their malt from different companies, and of course, both systems are different. Look for them in the "summer"--which appears to have no intention of visiting us anytime soon.

Update: The New School has more on the beer, including a nice video. And from that video, I learned that Deschutes' code name (31-25) was a Packer's Super Bowl reference. Is there nothing Deschutes can do wrong?

Three Tasty Saisons

Note: this post had more garbled English than usual. I've tried to clean it up.

On Saturday, the Cascade Barrel House hosted a saison tasting, with a dozen and a half examples to demonstrate the breadth of the style. As a tuning fork, they had Saison Dupont on tap. Not that this is the only way saisons can be made or should--but as a matter of perfect pitch, you can't do any better. I tasted most of what was on offer, and was pleased with most. Three, however, really stood out and deserve special mention.

1. Boulevard Tank 7
Saisons are a state of mind as much as a style, and Boulevard does a magnificent job of capturing their essence without being slavish to a Belgian norm. Perhaps as a nod to the region, Boulevard's version uses corn and wheat in the grist, and the result is a soft, lightly sweet malt base as comforting and familiar as a bowl of porridge. The aroma is pure saison, though, with a musty, slightly cellarlike quality the yeast gives. The yeast also provides some interesting pepper notes, and while the grains are suggestive of sweetness, the beer is really quite dry and finishes with a crisp snap. An impressive beer that I would rank with Ommegang Hennepin as the best American examples I've tried.

2. Cascade Fume
I'm a fan of smoked beers, but Iwould have skipped Fume without a second thought except that people kept raving about it. The idea of smoked malt and saison yeast struck me as being roughly as compatible as anchovies and ice cream. Fortunately, others' minds were more open than mine. What I discovered was a very lightly smoked malt in an otherwise typical Dupont-style saison. But where Cascade's Saison de la Maison was wet and a mite sweet in the middle for my palate, the smoked malt dried out Fume. It added an austerity and richness, and when you swallowed, it clipped all sense of sweetness and evaporated instantly, like a wisp of smoke. Of all the attempts to find new ground beyond Dupont, this is the most interesting and palatable I've enjoyed.

3. Breakside Amarillo Saison
With apologies to Rod Serling, there should be a warning label on Breakside's beer reading: "You unlock this beer with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of aroma, a dimension of flavor, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just crossed over into the twilight zone of beer." I overheard people denouncing this beer; I watched people dump it; others just expressed shock and confusion. I loved it. Admittedly, when I took the first sip into my mouth, my eyes bugged out and rolled around in surprise. This beer is off the grid.

We often talk about hops as tasting like grapefruit, but this is an evocation. Flavors can only be described by other flavors; we triangulate from there. But Breakside's saison?--it really does taste like grapefruit. The hops provide one element, but it's the aromatic, oily part, not the juice. Add a dose of brettanomyces and you get the sour and bitter--the fruit itself. It was an amazingly resinous beer, and long, long after I quit drinking it, it was still managing to throw my palate off. Still, the intensity, once I submitted to it, was beguiling. By the time I finished my taster, I wasn't even thinking of it as all that intense. It was, but my palate had re-calibrated. I don't doubt that only a few, proud drinkers would find this beer worthy of praise, but I am among their company, and it is indeed worth praising. Approach cautiously, but prepare for a new dimension...

The New Saisons

"The most endangered species among Belgian beers are the Saisons. "

That was Michael Jackson, writing a bit more than a decade ago. But, like the bald eagle, the rehabilitation has worked--it's time to take saisons off the endangered list. With a number approaching double digits released and available in Portland in the past year, you can't even call them rare anymore. We had three at the Oregon Brewer's Fest. Standing Stone had their version in town a few weeks past. Alex Ganum founded a brewery that was inspired by them. And then with almost no fanfare, Full Sail recently released Saison a Pleine Voile (don't say Full Sail Saison a Pleine Voile, or you'll be repeating yourself). Every time I go into Belmont Station it seems there's another US brewery with a new version. Oh, and for good measure, the venerable ur-saison maker Dupont released their newest product to the US market, Avril. The season of saisons? More like the year.

History of the Style
In a certain sense, none of these nouveau saisons can be considered authentic, because what defined them was a rustic style of production. Thus their commonly used alternative designation, "farmhouse ales." Jackson describes them as part of Europe's "industrial archaeology," dating back to a time when farms were only beginning to mechanize.

This led to idiosyncratic, site-specific characteristics, like Lefebvre, where the fired kettle is subject to winds. "If the fire was high [due to wind], the hot spots on the surface of kettle would caramelize the beer to a greater degree." In other breweries, beer was exposed to wild microorganisms, giving them a funky zing. Pipaix, one of the oldest producers, still uses a steam system (they call it brasserie à vapeur) and equipment dating to mid-century.

You get the picture--these were very small, ramshackle breweries (one has a sense many weren't really commercial concerns) that produced beer as unique and specific as the farm on which they were located.

A wonderfully romantic history, but not so useful in identifying style. With a scattered collection of unique beers, was there a style? Marc Rosier, brewer at Dupont, described saisons this way: "It must be a good, honest beer. It should have character. It is essential that it have soul." Whew--glad we cleared that up.

The lore surrounding the style always starts with the name, which is French for "season." According to legend, these beers were brewed during the cooler months and laid down to get them through summer--hence "season." I find this unpersuasive, for two reasons. First, we know that saisons were brewed at all strengths: "children's" (I kid you not), "family," "double," and "regal." Dupont's new Avril is in the small example, but is clearly related to the family--the baby, I guess you'd call her. It is a beer to be drunk when brewed; at 3.5%, it wouldn't last a month--hardly something to be laid away for the hot months.

But the other reason is the yeast. Those who have brewed with the dreaded Dupont strain know that it is very hard to work with, and that it loves the heat. (I have documented my foibles here.) The yeast loves temperatures over 80 degrees--purportedly even as hot as 90 (!). And yet they didn't brew in the summer? Makes no sense. (Alex Ganum, though he uses a different saison strain, has commented that he's got to keep it pretty warm, too.)


The New Saisons
In any case, there appear to be a few hallmarks to the style. Generally robust, they have the fruity-ester character of ales--often tending toward citrus and specifically lemon--but also a long, dry finish due to incredible attenuation. They are likely to have a bit of lactic zestiness, sometimes even a mild brett quality, but aren't funky. Most are pretty-well hopped and have a spicy quality. Even though they're on the biggish side (6-7%), they aren't heavy. Finally, effervescence is key--they should roil with a vigorous bead and sport a pillowy head.

A lot of the saisons I've tried over the years have seemed more like biere de gardes, their cousin from across the French border. That style is heavier and sweeter, lacking the hop character and that lovely dry finish. One shouldn't be a fanatic about style, but those qualities that make a saison so lovely are so rare as to be cherished and savored. I can't really criticize a sweeter saison, but I do like finding ones closer to the original.

Fortunately, the ones I've tasted lately are far closer to my sense of the style, and far more tasty and interesting. I hope to come back again and again to newer version of the style, but here are four recent examples, just to demonstrate the range.

• Saison a Pleine Voile. I believe this beer is part of Full Sail's Brewer's Share program, where assistant brewers get to man the kettle and brew whatever their hearts desire. John Harris mentioned it a couple of months ago, but I don't remember the details. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes when I had this last week at the Pilsner Room, so what follows is impressionistic. It followed the style in the key ways--cloudy golden, a thick, creamy head (though not a huge amount of effervescence), and a rich, spicy-yeasty aroma. Based on the bead, it didn't surprise me to find that it was thicker and creamier than I expected, but it was still quite dry. It was nicely hopped, spicy, yet very approachable. I must go back for a second taste--it was wonderful.

• Boulevard Tank 7. I could find very little information about this beer, which I tried at Belmont Station. Boulevard does a regular saison, and I'm not sure how this one deviated from it. This beer, too hit most of the marks for a "typical" saison. Yeasty nose marked by a fair bit of lemon. An austere, bone dry, alcoholic example. It has insistent hopping, and this combines with that dryness, which seemed the result of brettanomyces--think aged Orval--to produce a rather sharp-elbowed beer. One admires it more than enjoys it. But admire it I did.

• Upright Seven. Although all the Upright beers are sort of farmhousey, this one is what I'd describe as the most like a typical saison. (And I use that word, again, with all due caution.) Upright's yeast is softer than Dupont's, and although the beers finish out very dryly, the fruity esters still dominate. An orangey, lively beer with a dense, creamy head, it also sports pronounced hopping. (Magnums to bitter--as is the case with all the beers but Four--as well as Mount Rainier, Liberty, and Hallertauer.) Yet it does finish crisply. I haven't had it since visiting the brewery, and need to try it again, too.

• Standing Stone Saison. To repeat a review from late May: The head was creamy and sustained and lacing decorated my glass as I drew, with regret, to the end. The aroma hints at the flavor--phenols and spice, and an interesting yeast character. It's a dense beer and not particularly effervescent, yet though it's heavy, it doesn't cloy. The first sweet note gives way to phenols, an almost minty note, and pepper. Given the heavy body, you think it can't finish dryly--with my first sip I feared the Ardennes effect--but it does. There are hops enough to clip any sweetness in the aftertaste, and you're left with a crisp finish.

One other to throw in the mix, though it's not currently available in Oregon, is Goose Island Sofie. Lisa Morrison shared a bottle with me at the Brewers Games. It was vigorously effervescent, light-bodied, and gentle. I recall plenty of hopping and tropical fruit flavors. The specifics have left my mind, but the fondness remains--it was a good one, too, should you find a bottle.

The upshot? The 2009 crop of saisons has been amazing. And I hope we don't stop seeing them anytime soon.

____________
Great Beers of Belgium, 3rd Ed. He may actually have written the words when the first edition of the book came out in '91, but I don't have a copy. Anyway, you get the picture.