Why do you drink saisons?

Ha! I may actually be closer to TH than HF. Driving, that is.

 

I know, I'm thinking of getting a 4-pack of Saison Diego . . . but it's $14/ 4-pack around here. I will shell out from time to time but that's a bit steep for me, for something I haven't tried before.

 

I was literally just about to ask what you thought about saisons / what you like about the style. And yeah, that was a great album from Elvrum et al.

 

So many great responses in here. I feel like I'm home.

Saisons are easily my favorite style, I think mostly because of the whole "blank canvas" idea. Styles can obviously have varied interpretations, but saisons seem--to me--to have the most breadth of variation. They somehow manage to be distinct from other styles while also being unique within the subset of Saison.

Some of my favorite saisons are complex, delicate and elegant, dancing across my tastebuds like running through a field of wildflowers on a summer day. While others that I have no less love for are rustic, funky and dank, like hiking through a thick forest after a warm rain.

I also think part of what appeals to me about the style is its historical origin. A beer brewed in small batches and aged, not because it was an interesting/different thing to do, but because it was functionally essential. Aging was vital to bridge the gap between when the beer could be brewed (in the cool months) and when it would be consumed (the warmer months), and the small batches came about because the beer was meant to be consumed by the people with a direct and immediate relationship to the brewer (family, friends, farmhands, etc).

It was almost like craft beer before there was Craft Beer with a capital "C".

 

What's interesting though is that I am not sure if I had "the saison" yet. every saison i had so far tasted very different to each other.

 

i can't speak for everyone, but personally i think saisons are the one style where the balance between tradition and innovation can really be showcased. saisons are a style where brewers can really roll their sleeves up and experiment, but at the same time they're an age-old style steeped in tradition. there's really no other style where traditional and progressive brewing overlap so much.

 

I love progressive rock and I love you for saying that. Cheers!

 

I work on a farm and saisons remind me of chilling in the hay lofts, also it's the balance between herby and spicy flavors I love... A delicate style that can be oh so refreshing! Rite is spring is a delicious one! Cheers!

 

I like variety, and trying a new Saison is like opening a box of chocolates---you never know what you're going to get.

Did someone say Fantome yet?

 

That's perfect, like the supreme court's definition of obscene - you know it when you see it.

 

Not sure if you've gotten all the information you need but here's my input anyway:

It's probably my all time favorite style (desert island beer, if you will) for a number of reasons. The style itself-farmhouse ale-is vast and fluid. I never try to pigeon hole a saison because I think it's a style that each brewery can do its own spin on. Just the name "farmhouse ale" to me evokes a sense of a more simple, rustic time when you worked hard and enjoyed whatever beer nature was providing at the time. It probably changed by season, by batch, or hell, whatever was being served that night.

Typically though, they all tend to be easy drinking and dry. I've been dying for the summer weather to roll in so I can float down my local river and pound cans of 21st Amendment Sneak Attack!

 

Not a bad perspective . . . I would say, though, that maybe three or four saisons stick out to me as tasting / drinking the way I imagine the style "should," roughly speaking of course. Dupont, St. Feuillien Saison, Stillwater Stateside, and Pretty Things Jack D'Or all kind of strike me as benchmarks for the style (half Belgian, half American, of course!:-)

 

As far as I understand, and as the OP has pointed out in this post, original saisons were made to essentially be a substitute for water for farm laborers. The buckets of water these fellas were bringing to the work site were getting contaminated with bacteria. So the brewed a low abv beer that wouldn't be corrupted by bacteria and that the workers could crush large amount of, giving them both essential nutrients and fluids.

What I am seeing now with Saisons is everything is north of 6% abv.

Saison Dupont is 6.5%, Hennepin is 7.7% and your recommendation of Tank 7 is 8.5%! None of those are sessionable in my book.

 

Sure, many of us could drink a lot of it, but at 6.5% that's not exactly the sessionable brew that was originally designed for farm workers busting their asses all day. Nothing against Dupont, is an awesome beer and it helped get me into craft. And drinking lots of it is indeed fun. I'd just like to see more sub 5% saisons. A Saison Dupont that was 4.3% and came in 16 oz cans would be the greatest!

 

It's actually 9.5% ABV so your point is well taken

 

Ah, so something like this? http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/637/42772 (Brasserie Dupont—Avril) :-)

Of course, it doesn't come in cans, but we can dream . . .