A Salute to Saisons (2020-2021)

I can’t think of a more beautiful place than Midcoast Maine.

 

Missed the Saturday opportunity to post.
Today I enjoyed this delightful offering from Wunderkammer.
Mixed culture, barrel conditioned made with Yarrow in the boil..
A real taste adventure.
Cheers

 

It was really nice. Not as intense as the last blend. Almost like if they blended life on Mars, native/wild, and catalyst. Lighter smoke, but super complex.

 

To what previous blend do you refer? The most recent Liquid Swords?

 

No, they released a Goods blend in 2015 that was aged with cedar spirals. It was very polarizing with the smoke and cedar. People seemed to either love it or hate it. I thought it was really good though.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/26439/193881/

 

I remember that beer. They were doing bottle pours of it at the 2016 GFTW event but I didn’t have it. I never even knew what it was, until now. Sounds...different.

 

Made it to reup with the local nano growler club and he didn't disappoint. Cracked the kiwi lambic tonight and its excellent. I grabbed a couple bottles of his pear grissette as well. I'll probably save one for next weekend

 

Oddly enough I haven't been drinking on Saturday nights recently but I do visit Amory's Tomb Saturdays for to go pick up of Saisons Its a double edged sword, I get home late on Saturdays because I have to drive my son for soccer training but the soccer training is a few minutes away from Amory's Tomb.

 

Love love love Robert! A superbly crafted saison that can go toe to toe with any Belgian saison, which says a lot. That ability to interpret other country's styles well, plus craft some beautiful beers of our own, is why Michael Jackson used to like to shock audiences by telling them that the best beer country in the world is...wait for it...the US!

Haven't had the pleasure of sipping a Jeannamie. Will keep an eye out for that.

 

Or perhaps not someone you'd enjoy sipping a beer with.

 

Sounds like my paternal grandmother.

 

The person I met in that beer would not be my first choice of a drinking companion. But I imagine they are someone who can be a wonderful delight if they deem you worthy of developing a relationship with

 

Well I certainly hope to be Jannemie-worthy.

 

Cooking dinner, with continental assistance.
Notes of honey, light roast malt, earthy hops
Cheers

 

That reminds me, does anyone who lives in NJ or eastern PA know anywhere that carries de Blaugies? I have never even seen any of their beers in any stores, but would love to try them.

 

Maybe you’ll have luck if you ask a store that normally carries a variety of stuff from the Shelton Brothers (the importer).

 

Not going to make it until Saturday. Pretty box just arrived. Recommendations for tonight? Was thinking about Disquietude...

 

Went with my initial feeling:



Whoa, little more pucker than anticipated. Lots of peach, hay, damp earth and wood. Firmly dry and inviting. Minor effervescence then settles still. I like it.

 

I didn't want to start a new thread in general because this is specific to our favorite style as they mostly come in 375ml or 750ml bottles.

With this new COVID paradigm of getting alcohol delivered, I have used a couple services, and have taken note of some truly innovative packaging. Sure the ridged recyclable sets used for shipping wine are great, but are you really buying 6 or 12 bottles from one shop? What happens if you want to reuse the packaging for a trade with cans or 375ml, outta luck. On a less recyclable front, I've been buying Mezcal from Astor wine for a while now and their shipping protocol is amazing (everything is even placed in plastic bags) but its in rigid Styrofoam.

Top prize goes to https://domestiquewine.com/ a Natural Wine shop in DC with a very well tailored beer list. They not only invested in cold chain shipping to get through the summer months, but they use handy dandy solutions from https://spiritedshipper.com/shop/ out of NY. The flexibility aspect is astonishing, and I foresee using the entire setup for a while. Just like how the 2oz boston rounds were passed through r/scotchswap, this should become commonplace for beer traders.

 

I decided to do a blind saison tasting this week. I started with these:



That's a 750 coded L19188A with a 05/14/2019 date, a 750 coded L20117A with a 04/06/2020 date, and a small bottle with a L19048A code (and no date). In an attempt to figure out the Dupont code, the small bottle is clearly from 2019, but I can't figure out how to translate the other numbers to a date. The last three numbers are not the day of the year, nor the week of the year, but they seem to resemble that somewhat. Any help would be appreciated.

In doing this exercise, I was hoping to see if I could get any insight into that diacetyl-like quality that I get in Dupont, and to see if the small bottle impacts the flavor - be it from the secondary fermentation differences or TCA. I tried a blind tasting with different ages of Saison Dupont once before, and I found that I preferred the youngest beer in that case.

Here was my reaction to the three bottles above: The small bottle did not have the impressive head of the 750s. I couldn't tell you if this was a result of any secondary fermentation differences, inherent carbonation differences, differences in permeability of crown vs cork, or differences in the bottle age. It had a small amount of that diacetyl-like character. Disclaimer: I have never seen anybody get diacteyl from a Dupont beer. I'm not claiming that it had diacetyl, but that it had a character that I would associate with diacteyl - right or wrong.

Oddly enough, the older 750 had the least carbonation in the body by far. It was heavy, limp and sat on the palate. Maybe this was due to cork permeability or maybe it was a coincidence. It had some of that diacetyl-like character, but less than the small bottle.

The small bottle had the most hop bite and the most of that diacetyl-like character. Based on the bottle code, it might have been the oldest of the bunch. The newest 750 was my favorite. It did not suffer from any strange conditions.

I do not think I could identify TCA in a beer, but I was curious if that diacetyl-like flavor I was getting was actually TCA. Based on this tasting (and past experiences with Saison Dupont), the issue that I get with them is not related to being corked. The differences that I experienced between these three beers were not major, but they were there for me. This experience reinforced my previous notions about buying Saison Dupont with regards to age.

I only used half of those two 750s in my blind tasting, so I decided to use the remainder of those bottles in a second blind tasting along with some other beers. I just noticed that Allagash retired their saison as a year-rounder. 4 packs of Allagash saison might be no more. Consider that for a moment. Under the circumstances, I thought I'd take my 3 favorite 12oz saisons and try them blind alongside the remainders of the Duponts. I happened to have a relatively new 3 Monts beer as well... so let's throw that in too for science.



There were no surprises in this one. The newest Dupont beer was my ultimate favorite. Blackberry was my favorite of the American beers (as it's been in the past). I didn't even include the 3 Monts beer when determining my favorites. It stood out way too much. It was too sweet and full compared to the others. It just wasn't in the same realm despite any style categorizations that include it tangentially alongside saisons.

@TongoRad