Saisons of all possible descriptions all did admirably in the tasting-clean, funky, tart and everywhere inbetween. In the end, we believe in judging the beers as labeled, because it forces the breweries to live by their own marketing choices-no entering beers by saying “Well, it’s labeled as _, but really it’s _.” When we blind taste American wild ales/sours in July, beers labeled as “saison/farmhouse ale” will be ineligible, which further incentivized breweries to enter them now, rather than later. As long as the beer in question is marketed as “saison” or “farmhouse ale,” then it’s A-OK by us for inclusion. But as in previous Paste tastings, we’d prefer to be inclusive rather than exclusive.
In the end, a puckeringly tart, wine barrel-aged saison has little in common with a classic Franco-Belgian example of the style, such as Saison Dupont.
Yes, we realize the inherent level of absurdity and difficulty in comparing them to one another. And that’s not even mentioning the barrels into which you might place your saison: Spirit barrels, wine barrels, neutral oak and more. An all brettanomyces saison will likely make funkiness its calling card, while a mixed culture beer with lactobacillus or pediococcus will undoubtedly bring a cleaner, brighter tang of tartness. Or it may be wild-but even here, we’re just stepping off another cliff into a sea of further subgenres. It may be fruited, or spiced, or even dark in color. It may be charged with noble or American hops to the point that it rivals the hop expressiveness of IPA. If there’s enough wheat in the grist, it may blur the lines between “farmhouse ale” and hefeweizen. You may be presented with a beer heavy on Belgian yeast esters, redolent in clove and spice. Seeing it on a beer label, all by itself, tells you almost nothing about what to expect. Just the word “saison” is weighty with possibility. Like champagne is to wine, saison is to beer-you can pair it with anything, and a variant exists for any situation. It’s the most versatile, eclectic and adaptable of all beer styles. But over the course of nine days tasting farmhouse ales, many of us came to a new conclusion. The almost expected answer, at least at this point in the American craft beer experiment, would be IPA-or perhaps pale ale for the drinker favoring approachability rather than all-out hop decadence. In the course of conducting this tasting, the regular crew of Paste blind tasters hit upon an essay prompt of a question: If you could only drink one beer style ever again, what would it be?
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#LES 4 SAISONS EN FRANCAIS SERIES#
This list is part of a Paste series of bottom shelf liquor and craft beer style tastings.
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