Your Top 10 Saisons

“ …Sofie, which is great fresh and ages extremely well.”

I have only had fresh Sophie (mostly draft but a few bottle). Could you please expand on the topic of “ages extremely well”. Does the Brett character become evident with aging? How long do you need to age it?

Cheers!

 

Good post. Agree with all of it.

 

From the beer description on this site: "Saison Athene is a bottle conditioned Saison brewed with chamomile, fresh rosemary and black pepper. A dose of wild yeast at bottling adds to the complexity."

Personally, I thought the chamomile was pretty noticeable, and while I like the black pepper I thought it came off a bit strong; I actually really enjoy rosemary, generally speaking—thought it was a great part of the Saison du BUFF beers.

 

The posts here lean heavily toward the American saisons. That said, I'll list a few myself (some of which have already been mentioned), after the European ones.

Fantôme
Saison d'Erpe-Mere
La Moneuse
L'Amalthee
DuPont
Fantôme Pissenlit
Saison De Pipaix
Avril
HF Vera Mae (second dandelion saison on this list; and all the HF beers I've had are good)
Pretty Things Field Mouse's Farewell (which is a lot like Boulevard's Tank 7, which is also great; both are reminiscent of the Saison du Swamp)

I'd list more, but you said top ten. Cheers!

Edit: I prefer DuPont in the brown bottles, which I've only ever seen at Total Wine in Orlando; so you may be able to find those.

 

Oh yeah, they're around. They don't seem to get as wide distribution, for whatever reason. But the 250ml (?) four-packs are always brown glass bottles.

 

Probably 33cl. When I was in Orlando earlier this year, I got those and the St. Bernardus Prior 6, which my wife loves - that one only comes in gift packs up here, for some reason.

 

Ah, okay. For some reason I was thinking DuPont comes in 750ml C&C, 375ml C&C, and 250ml pry-off but you're probably right.

 

Just this past weekend, we had bottles of 2009, 2010, and 2012 Sofie. The 2009 had gotten to be a bit past its prime, IMO, but the 2010 was fantastic. It was incredible dry and highly carbonated, with a nice light tartness. Funk was very minimal, tending more toward citrus flavors. All in all, I prefer the beer between about 6 months and 2 years, though that's not to say it isn't quite good at other times.

 

The Sofie mini-vertical was awesome, but I happened to think that the 2012 was the best of the 3. The beer definitely changes over time though, and the older ones definitely had some interesting flavors going on. I think I liked the '09 more than anyone else.

 

Top 5:

100's:
Fantome Saison
Ommegang Hennepin
Brooklyn Sorachi Ace
Dupont Foret

98:
Lost Abbey Carnevale - This was a huge surprise for me this year. The brett really made this outstanding

Below that we have: Bruery Saison De Lente, Saison Rue, Goose Island Sofie(love this shit with 1-2 years on it, I have a 2009 right now, I'd like to see how its doing), Saison Dupont, and Saison Brett 2009.

I still have a ton of promising ones to try in my cellar too: Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux, Lost Abbey Red Barn, CCB Guava Grove, Allagash Interlude 2008, De Glazen Toren D'erpe Mere, Fantome Strange Ghost, Logsdon Seizoen Bretta, FFF Zes Zes Zes, Jester King Noble King.

I have some work to do

 

I've never had HF (someday, I hope), but I have been lucky enough to enjoy many of Funkwerks' saisons. I'd rank them up there as some of the best American saisons I've tried. +1 as well to Logsdon, Upright and Boulevard Saison-Brett.

 

I'm pretty sure I could live off Hill Farmstead, Tired Hands, Logsdon,Crooked Stave, and Upright. There are some really awesome saisons out there, but these guys are consistantly doing it!

 

From the top of my head... this is difficult!
Fantome Saison
Fantome Strange Ghost
Logsdon Seizoen Bretta
McKenzie Saison Vautour du bois
Hill Farmstead Arthur
Hill Farmstead Art
Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux
Flossmoor Wallonian Saison
Anchorage Love Buzz
Southhampton Saison Deluxe

Honorable mention: Boulevard Saison-Brett, Hill Farmstead Vera Mae

 

Guava Grove was awesome, I thought. It's been a while since I've had it, and judging by my experience with it and when I had it there's a chance that it was actually one of the "infected" batches that gave it a little bit of a tart, funky twang. Which, if that's the case, was a great complement to the guava character.

 

Saison is probably my favorite style of beer overall. Easy to drink while still being complex, allowing you to enjoy it for thirst quenching or for flavor pondering. There's a lot of diversity in the style.

There's also a lot of shitty saisons made stateside. It's like the recipe for a crap American saison is pilsner malt plus a bunch of unnecessary adjuncts/specialty grains plus the Dupont strain fermented way to low. If you use Dupont's yeast, it has to be fermented very hot or it tastes bad.

Lots of good saisons here. I'll also show some love for Funkwerks. Funkwerks Saison isn't exotic, it's perfectly balanced. It seems boring to some but there's a lot subtlety going on. I prefer Casper, the lower ABV version. I also like the White a lot (although not a saison). I'm not a huge fan of the Rakau hops in Tropic King but I liked Exotic King. I liked Fruition although a lot of people didn't. Lots of good lesser-distributed beers in the taproom. Great group of employees, I always have the best time there.

Crooked Stave used to operate out of their brewhouse as well, so you could get both brewer's beers in the taproom. I don't think the two compete in the same space. Chad is doing mad scientist stuff with brett, Funkwerks is making (mostly) clean saisons.

 

Anchorage Love Buzz! Done with Pinot Noir barrels. Anchorage needs more credit for what they are doing right now.

 

No worries, man! I got to try and review each of the Saison du BUFFs this year and thought DFH had a slight edge over Victory and both of those were somewhat better than Stone. None of them were perfect, but they were all interesting and I liked the experimentation of the series.

Saison Athene, while good enough that I could definitely appreciate its attributes, I just found to be way too heavy on the pepper and I can't stand a lot of chamomile. Ah, well.