Best American-Brewed Saisons?

https://www.beeradvocate.com/ratebeer/?path=/beer/bfm-8730225-saison/178022/

 

That's a different beer rating website. Ya know something, I checked it out here and was not blown away by the reviews.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/2958/

It looks untested to me. I'm not saying it doesn't have potential but you guys are basically asking me to turncoat on the good ol home brewed American Saisons. California, Colorado, Oregon and Vermont...I'll call those the Saison States.

 

Sigh, this thread.

"Show me a European saison on the level of Hill-Farmstead"
"OK, how about BFM XV - 4.2 with 427 reviews - compared to, say, Nordic Saison - 4.21 with 392 reviews. That's on the same level, right?"
"Sounds too untested."

It's clearly on the same level. The BFM brewer trained as a oenologist, they're known for being going beyond stylistic quidelines / incorporating innovative ingredients, they make the second highest rated Biere de Garde on this site (right behind Hill Farmstead), and they've been around since 1997 ... quite a bit longer than all the American breweries doing saisons. A beer any saison lover should really want to try.

Why ask for info if you're just going to reject it out of hand? The BFM XV saison is spitting distance rating wise to Nordic, E., Handfarm, Hibernal Dichotomous, Oak Aged Bretta, Surette, and many of the American favorites people mention. BFM is a favorite brewery of Jester King; they always have BFM bottles on their menu. In fact, all the American brewers making the beers you think are awesome are "turncoats".

It's OK to just say, eh, I'm not interested in branching out; I like what I have. But why say American Saisons crush European Saisons, clearly if they were good I'd try them ... and then admit you haven't tried most of the highly rated ones, don't know anything about them, and think drinking them would be Un-American? They're untested, they're not fresh, you can't pronounce the names, Swiss people are socialists, Belgian's smell funny ...

My last "beating a dead horse" post!

 

I have had that beer, I cannot say that I was crazy about it. BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien beers on the other hand are wonderful. A lot of their beers in the past had clear issues, I am not sure about the current situation, in recent times I haven’t tried any non-sour / non-wild style beers from them.

USA saisons are vastly different from what people make in Belgium. Saison is only made by a handful brewers. I would say that people in the USA have a far too romanticized view of what saisons are in Belgium. This romantic view has led to incredible beers. The kind of beers that USA brewers make in the saison category in the USA don’t exist in Belgium.

My favourite USA saisons:

Upright Flora Rustica (Barrel Aged)
Perennial Saison de Lis
Hill Farmstead / Blaugies Le Sarrasin
Grassroots Convivial Suarez
Stillwater Stateside Saison
Almost anything Jester King

 

An oenologist? This is Beeradvocate, not Wineadvocate, but sometimes I think it is Whineadvocate when you guys are digging into my posts. Guys, I might have asked for the evidence but that doesn't mean I'm going to blindly accept it. I've had my share of European brews. I'll tell you this, freshness is everything. Some guys on here don't realize they are drinking skunky European beer, they just think it's part of the flavor. But let me tell you something, I check everything. I have ways to estimate how much a beer was handled or if it was improperly stored. That's not to the fault of the brewer, but just the nature of a global market. You bring a beer from Europe to America, you better find a way to keep it as fresh tasting as the home brews.

Not only do European Saisons lack freshness, they also lack ingenuity. They tend to stick to tradition and not tweak the flavors when as times change. Shaun Hill at Hill Farmstead is an innovator. I can't say the same for the Euro brews, who promote that the recipe is the same for 100s of years. How do you know Jester King doesn't leave them on the menu so they can outdo them? If BFM was selling more than their own beers they wouldn't be making money...that's how economics works.

 

I'd say the Brett version is preferable in my book. But they recently released a Brett Triple IPA Aged in Rum Barrels that I would honestly put under the (rather heavy) Saison category, and as strange as it sounds, it was excellent.

Anchorage Love Buzz Saison is a comparable beer to this one, and is probably my favorite brett beer. Also a nice one on the heavier side.

Bruery Saison de Lente and Boulevard Tank 7 are easily my favorites in the style, though. And they're pretty easy to find.

 

Yeah, maybe if you actually tried the beer as opposed to just read the reviews your take might be interesting.

Reviews are unreliable. Hannepin is more highly rated than the BFM, and that's, well, just silly.

 

You're right! Adrienne Ballou, head of the barrel program at Jester King, studied viticulture. So though she may actually think that BFM swill tastes good, it's actually an elaborate troll by jester king. "Let's sell trash beers so ours taste better! Let's hire someone with a background in wine to prove that winemakers have no business in the beer industry!" Cory King's initial desire to be a winemaker was, naturally, his downfall.

It's so obvious now that you pointed it out I'm embarrassed I previously tried to keep an open mind about European upstarts. I even took American brewers enthusiasm for European beers at face value! What a fool. I'm not even gonna drink wine barrel aged beers anymore. That taint is a slippery slope away from beer.

 

You sure read more than you drink, buddy.

 

There's no question that Cooked Stave goes best with the BBQ corn nuts. Crooked Stave has great flavor. It is a top of the line saison in my opinion. I still taste that great flavor long after I slam the bottle down to the floor.

 

I'm honestly taken aback at how good Smartmouth Saison is. Most American breweries try make a tribute to Saison DuPont with their saison. Smartmouth does it better than most.

 

I've never had anything by Allagash Brewing Co. or Maine Brewing Co. but I understand that they both make excellent Saisons.

 

i feel like the american saisons everybody is talking about are very different from classic european saisons. they should really be called something else.

to me classic saisons tend to be dry and have this lemony, peppery note and are more spicy than fruity. a lot of the american saisons everybody has mentioned are sweeter, fruitier, much much more sour, and richer with less of that spicy character. a lot of them also use brett and add bacteria which is rarer in europe. i think BJCP asks saisons with brett in it to be classified as a wild ale. classic to me is like HF/Blaugies vermontoise, hennepin (from the states) or saison dupont, fantome saison (belgium).

you really can't ask what european saison is better than love buzz saison, crooked staves stuff, the logsdon stuff and then bring up ratings when they're generally very different in style.

if we're talking classic saisons recent favorites have been the les caves saison and upright ones. a little grainier and creamier than traditional, but still with that rich lemon pepper type taste.

anyways, this talk of "best saisons" or "european saisons that are better than american ones" seems pretty silly to me even if somewhat entertaining.

 

Oh yeah!! Crooked Stave makes man beer, and in Texas that's what we need with our corn nuts. I'm the type of guy who is happy with an 8 dollar bottle of St. Bretta by Crooked Stave or a 1 dollar twenty five cent bottle of good ol Shiner Bock. Thats because I know that the corn nuts are gonna go down nice and smooth as long as I got the beer department covered. Saisons and BBQ corn nuts are like a match made in heaven.

 

My favs are the Saison Bretts by Logsdon and Boulevard. Okay Saison Rue can join also.

 

Jester King's El Cedro. Hands down. That woody / smokey note and a good dose of hoppy bitterness is a perfect foil for the salty / sweet. I suppose one could argue for their Salt Lick beer, but El Cedro is far superior.

 

Brasserie St. James. Reno, NV kills that style.

 

The question is what is a classic saison? Is it Saison Dupont or the beers from the first half of 20th century which no one is really sure how they tasted like? Different people define it differently. Saison Dupont tastes completely different from every other saison in the 1970s from what I have heard.

I once had a bottle from an extinct sasion brewery from the 1970s that tasted unlike any other saison I have ever tried. According to the guy who brought it, it held up well, was that a traditional saison?

I have never heard of a non-USA brewer following BJCP guidelines. They are an attempt at classification post-fact, using it as a rule book to understand European tradition makes no sense in my opinion.

I however do agree that 2 different styles of saisons have come to exist. 1) Beers that are like what Dupont makes & 2) All the fruit, brett, barrel,… USA style stuff.

 

tank 7! cheers!

 

“The question is what is a classic saison?”

That is indeed a good question. It is also a question that lacks an unambiguous answer.

The word “classic” is similar to the word “traditional”. BAs will utilize the word “traditional” to describe a certain beer style with no specific mention of a time period or location. For example, what is a “traditional” Marzen/Oktoberfest beer? Is it the beer that was brewed in 1810 for the first celebration on the Theresienwiese? Is it the amber colored beers that were served at the Oktoberfest celebrations of a few decades ago? Is it the pale colored beer that is served at the contemporary Oktoberfest celebrations?

Cheers!