The 750 Saison

A gathering of Kolsch just sounds like every Monday to me. I simply can't shake 'em.

I'm very much looking forward to you posting about the beers in your pics (including the Kolsch beers... give me a heads up if you do). Looking at both pics, I've had many of the same ones recently.

 

Holy Mountain - Misere Au Borinage

According to the label, this is a foudre aged grisette with Brett and Lacto.

The mention of Lacto on the label sends out a signal, and the beer is quite sour... easily the tartest "fresh" saison in the thread. There's some small funk. Carbonation is soft and really great. There's a lot of lemon here. It's wheaty. It's hazy. There's a chalkiness that I sometimes get with brett.

Ultimately, it feels like a beer made by and for beer geeks. That's not a knock... it's a very nice beer... but I do think that's a useful description. It's like a Jeff Foxworthy joke: Your beer might be made by and for beer geeks if it says "foudre" on the label.

Holy Mountain took their name from an album by stoner metal group Sleep. I don't know, but I assume that Sleep took that name from the exceptional movie by Alejandro Jodorowsky. It feels as if the brewery stepped right past the middle man and went to Jodorowsky for their branding. The occult vibe and clean designs seem to point to this... and the brewery logo even looks like a design used in the movie.

I literally spilled a little bit of beer from my glass three different times. Was I a clutz that day or were there mystical forces at work? Considering the price of the beer (much higher than I usually spend... I didn't buy this beer the first time I saw it), I was still laughing with each spill anyway.

Now let's get to the grisette tag.

After the industrial revolution took place, the area in Belgium that produced saisons shifted focus from agriculture to mining. This naturally influenced how beer was produced... but beer was still being produced for laborers. Grisette was considered the drink for miners.

Finding info about past beers can be a bit like finding out what you had for breakfast on a specific day five years ago. There might not be records of the info you need, but you can limit your guesses based on the conditions.

Grisettes are generally believed to be similar to saisons. ABV is thought of as lower than the typical saison of the same time (keep in mind that this isn't static for saisons)... but ABV also varied according to strength classification. A "typical" grisette was probably not aged. It was probably hoppy. Industrialization probably led to cleaner fermentation and a more solid set of ingredients. A grisette would incorporate wheat. In other words, they might have been more consistent than the saisons that preceded them. There is no evidence that they were beers that featured acidity.

Most of this info comes from "Farmhouse Ales," "Brewing With Wheat" (which I haven't read), Belgium by Beer, Beer by Belgium (ditto), Le Petit Journal du Brasseur (of course ditto), and the Hors Categorie Brewing blog.

Looking at modern beers that are labeled Grisette, some things jump out. First off, they are often labeled "farmhouse ales," and in reality that might not be the case on the level of the historical model. Many of the "grisettes" that I have consumed fit the ideas above rather well. The sourness of the Holy Mountain beer in this post doesn't fit this historical guesswork. In my experience, most modern grisettes also happen to be very light in color. Historical grisettes might have been a darker amber. Grisettes are generally considered to be a branch off the saison tree and I don't see anything wrong with this way of categorization.

St. Feuillien produces beers under a Grisette brand name... including a witbier and a fruit beer. You can either view this as the Belgian looseness with outside style convention, or their own lack of reverence, or our misreading of history... or a combination of the three.

As far as the name goes, "gris" means gray in French. A "grisette" was a working-class woman... typically one who worked in the garment industry. They got this name from the gray clothing they would wear. The name also took on a sexual meaning... as in a flirtatious woman or a prostitute. As it relates to beer, the idea is that the name might have come to be because the beer was served to the miners by women. The Florida located Green Bench Brewing explains it like this: "The name refers to the gray garments the women wore that delivered the beer to the miners. They were known as, Les Grisettes." By leaving out the broader cultural context of the term, I think this little beer story doesn't paint a big enough picture. If you asked Mark Twain what a Grisette was, he would probably think "prostitute" rather than "beer server." Some breweries are playing with this in their packaging with names like "Delightfully Immoral Grisette." Intentionally or not, it makes you look at the Sly Fox can art a bit differently. When they put "working-class ale" under the image, they are probably referring to the miners, but in the context of the can art, does it have a double-meaning or is it just a coincidence? The alternate theory is that "grisette" refered to the gray color of the rock being mined, but due to the broader cultural significance of the term that I just mentioned, this seems unlikely to me.

Here's a picture of a grisette:



The caption reads:
"The grisette wanted to have dresses and hats. It was sold / She sold."

Are they drinking beer?

 

I'm the wrong guy to ask. I've never examined this for myself. My glassware criteria usually revolves around: "Do I like to hold it, do I like to drink from it?"

 

Boulevard Saison-Brett

This beer is more or less the beloved Tank 7 with the addition of brett. The cork of this bottle shot off like a rocket to crash with the ceiling. This beer just continues to impress me. It's wonderful. There's an earthy funk that is absent from Tank 7. It's incredibly smooth and drinkable. The thing that surprises me about this beer is how restrained and quiet it feels. I like Tank 7 very much, but that beer feels a little too loud to me - especially in the yeast (even though the hops get more attention). Saison-Brett feels nothing like Tank 7. One day, I will have to try them side by side. I'm sure that will be illuminating and might make me take back some of my thoughts here.

 

OK, here's the next group of seven - the American beers with brett on the label.

I ended up eliminating the Holy Mountain beer from any ranking because it just stood out too much in the pack. It's much more sour than anything else here (and the light color was also a giveaway.)

Here's how I ranked them according to personal preference:

6 - Bruery Saison Rue
5 - Anchorage Love Buzz
4 - Jester King Mad Meg
3 - Logsdon Seizoen Bretta
2 - Smuttynose Biere De 'Shire
1 - Boulevard Saison-Brett

Essentially no surprises except for one big one - Smuttynose. Talk about a dark horse. That beer was also the freshest of the lot if anyone wants to put stock in that.

 

Kerkom Reuss

This beer is the result of a lambic blended with a "Belgian pale ale" - perhaps Bink Blond. It isn't considered a saison. It's listed on BeerAdvocate as a gueuze. This seems like an improper tag to me, but I know very little on the subject (and I can appreciate that no category would be perfect here). I've had Bink Blond before. It struck me as nice but possessing a weird plant-like flavor.

In Yvan De Baets essay on saison, he mentioned Reuss as something close to saison but not labeled saison by the brewer. This is also where he included De Ranke XX. I don't know if he intentionally chose one beer on the bitter side and one beer on the sour side. I decided to include both of those beers in this thread.

Kerkom is said to be the oldest continuously operating farmhouse brewery in Belgium.

The label on this green bottle is very handsome. Is there a beer style more associated with green 750ml bottles than saison and lambic?

The cork on this beer came off with a huge pop. Once in the glass, the carbonation races up to the top en masse. Michael Jackson once described lambic as being onion skin colored. I really love the guy's perspective. He makes a description like that lose all pretension because it just feels so honest and unique. Maybe I'm just biased.

There's a lot of acidity in the beer compared to the other beers in the thread. When brewers were tasked with making their beers last through storage, different techniques were used. Lactic acid was relied upon as a preservative. This was probably the case in both lambic and saison. The sourness in this beer is comparable to green apple and lemon, but this is mitigated through the malt and the funk. The ale that is blended with the lambic is supposedly a well-hopped one, but hops are not sticking out in this beer. I feel like they are contributing to the balance, but I don't get much hop flavor. I wonder if the brewers are using any old hops in this beer. The finish is nice and dry. There's an odd note in the beer that I can't quite put my finger on. This certainly isn't a "one note" sour beer.