T'is Always the Saison: Belgian and French Farmhouse Beers

Episode Transcript
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BARRY (00:04):
So I got it right.

BRENNAN (00:05):
There you go.

BARRY (00:05):
All right. Welcome back to Malted North.

JASON (00:10):
*

BARRY (00:11):
Live, live from the lounge at Yoerg Brewing Company
on St. Paul's East Side, theDayton's Bluff neighborhood. As
you can probably tell, we'relaughing because a big truck
decided to go by right as westarted the recording of this
podcast. I'm leaving it in. I'mhere with our usual crew.
*laughter* Brennan McCaig,brewer at Yoerg's Brewing

(00:31):
Company here in St. Paul.*laughter* And Jason Paddett,
professor at St. Thomas. And asI like to say, a brewing
polymath. listen to previousepisodes for longer versions of
that introduction or read theshow notes. I want to just dive
right in because I'm superexcited about tonight's episode.
We are talking about saisons orthe saison style or styles of

(00:56):
beer. We're going to get intothis. There's a million
questions. I can see forwardbrows already on our listeners'
faces. We're going to dive in.You're going to learn everything
about this that you're going toneed to know to explore and this
category of beers. What I dowant to say, stick around as you

(01:16):
may know if you've listened toany of the other episodes of
Malted North, we'd like tofeature a band, a local friends
of Yoerg. Can I sing in Yoerg? Ilove this episode's choice. We
do it at the end of the podcastso stick all the way through to
hear it. It's going to be a liveperformance that I recorded last
week on the East Side at theEagles Club on the East Side. A
few from And a friend of Yoerg'sand a friend of mine going on

(01:39):
years, And we're going to havean interesting tango for you to
hear at the end of the episode.So stay tuned for that. All
Let's dive in. Saison.
We normally start our show, and this is going to be no
exception, with a segment thatwe like to call... We should
have a little jingle for this,but

JASON (01:58):
one.

BARRY (01:58):
we don't have

JASON (01:58):
Yeah, I know.

BARRY (02:00):
Our house band needs to come up with a jingle. We need
our Max Weinberg 7 or something,too.
"What are we drinking"?

BRENNAN (02:07):
What are we drinking?

BARRY (02:08):
What are we drinking? That is the segment. And we're
going to sip some things. I'msorry, folks, you don't get to
join us for this. But we'regoing to tell you about it. And
tonight, it's going to have asaison focus. Rather than just a
random thing that we decided tobring up to the lounge, we're
talking saisons. So I want toturn this over to who should we

(02:29):
start with? Who wants to startwith the what are we drinking?

BRENNAN (02:32):
Sure
, I'll set the table a little bit so saisons are kind
of blue cheese of beer a littlebit, I think. There's just a
wide range of what a saison is,um, what goes into it, I'm
excited to talk about thehistory of them, but they're
kind of a little bit of acatch-all. Um, so tonight I've

(02:52):
got poured on the table here forBarry and Jason a saison that I
made, at my house, homebrewing.And this was a beer that I
entered in the State Fair thisyear, and this is inspired by a
brewery called de Blaugies. Andde Blaugies has a saison called
La Vermontoise, which is a, Idon't know if it's 100% spelt,

(03:15):
but it is a, is a spelt saisonthat is hopped exclusively with
Amarillo, which is a Washingtonhop. So it's kind of
non-traditional in a sense ofwhat a traditional saison is, um,
but it's a really cool beer. Andyou can get it here at, at Yoerg
I was inspired by it one day totry and see if I could do
something similar. So, um, I puttogether a grain bill that had

(03:35):
some spelt, had a little bit ofrye in it, and then hopped it
with a hop called Idaho 7, whichis typically used in more hazy
and more IPA type beers. Um, soI kind of want to see how it
would function in, in thisapplication. And so I, I think
it's a cool little Um, it didnot score particularly well,
because it's a little bitoutside the, what the, uh, beer

(03:59):
judges certification programmight determine is a saison. Um,
but I think it's a very tastylittle number and I, I hope you
guys enjoy it. So, what I think,you know, as you guys try it, I
think you'll get a little bit ofearthy you know, rustic sort of
flavor from the grain. And thenyou're going to get some black
tea, kind of rosin-y sort of, uh,vibes from the hops. And then

(04:21):
the kind of finishes with thistypical sticky DuPont yeast kind
of finish to it. So it, um,enjoy gentlemen.

JASON (04:29):
Cheers.

BARRY (04:30):
Oh, cheers. My microphone was tipped away while I picked
up the glass.
Oh yeah.

JASON (04:36):
That hits the spot.

BARRY (04:37):
Yeah.
I'm going to edit out that partabout it not doing We're going
to pretend the judges love thisbecause what were the judges
thinking?

BRENNAN (04:45):
Um, so it, it, it's a little bit outside the bounds of
what a just by the box saison is.So I think a lot of people, when
they think saison, they thinkDuPont and DuPont can be the
only saison.

BARRY (05:00):
So Brennan, when you, you, you, you've, you've used the
word DuPont a few times. Youused it in your description of
the, say your saison saying ithas a DuPont yeast or that
characteristic in there isDuPont. It's not a kind of yeast.
It's a, it's a beer, isn't it?Isn't

BRENNAN (05:12):
It

BARRY (05:13):
it

BRENNAN (05:13):
is.

BARRY (05:13):
a brand of a brand?

BRENNAN (05:14):
Yep.

BARRY (05:14):
Okay.

BRENNAN (05:14):
It's a brewery. Yep. So, so the DuPont saison is gosh,
one of the oldest andlongstanding saisons in, in the
world. And unfortunately wedon't have it here at York. Um,
but if you can get your hands onit, it is just the, the
benchmark that all other saisonsare sort of measured to. Um, and,
uh, so it, the yeast that I usedin this did have a little bit of

(05:37):
the DuPont strain in it. Um, itwas a kind of a conglomerate of
a couple of yeast,but DuPont is,uh,

BARRY (05:43):
they sell it commercially.

BRENNAN (05:44):
Um, yeah, yeah. A lot of, yeah, you can get it
commercially just like, um, someof the German breweries we
talked about. So you can find,

BARRY (05:49):
yeah, yeah,

JASON (05:50):
exactly. Yeah. The DuPont yeast, basically if you buy a
Belgian saison yeast, it's goingto be the DuPont strain. And
then they also sell a Frenchsaison yeast. And we'll get into
some of the tech, Fermentinglater, but, uh, there's some
interesting differences in thoseyeasts.

BARRY (06:10):
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm liking this. I've had, I've had the,
the DuPont and, uh, I totallyget that reference. I was
thinking it was the stylereference, but it would, it
would make a lot of sense. thatthere's, there's a commonality
there in terms of, a keyingredient which imparts flavor.
So we can talk, talk more aboutthat. So great. I, I've derailed
your, what are we drinking? Um,I've had a few sips of this. I

(06:30):
think it's wonderful.

JASON (06:31):
Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic.

BARRY (06:33):
And we should describe, it's, uh, a pale, uh, golden
color. it's, um, hazy inappearance. I mean, in, or
cloudy, I guess.

BRENNAN (06:41):
Cloudy.

BARRY (06:41):
I don't want to say hazy because people start thinking
hazy IPAs. It's, it's cloudy,which means unfiltered, correct?

BRENNAN (06:46):
Yep. Yeah. So that's probably coming from the spelt.

BARRY (06:49):
Okay,

BRENNAN (06:49):
The

BARRY (06:49):
cool.

BRENNAN (06:49):
spelt is very haze positive.

JASON (06:51):
Exactly. A lot like wheat.

BRENNAN (06:54):
And then Idaho 7 is kind of a unique, newer hop
variety. Would not have beentraditionally used ever in a
saison, but,

JASON (07:02):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (07:03):
I don't know, I was trying something out and.

BARRY (07:04):
Nice. Nice. All right. in the spirit of moving on,

JASON (07:08):
Yeah.

BARRY (07:09):
Jason, you're up.

JASON (07:10):
All right. So, uh, what I've poured out for the team
here is a little beer called thegoose that laid the golden egg.
And this is actually brewed by afriend of mine, uh, Niles
Ackerley out in California uh,Mad Fritz. And, uh, Niles
actually, his day job,he's avinter. Uh, the brewery's his

(07:32):
side job. Uh, he's about a 200barrel a year brewery and he is
very terroir driven. So he's inSt. Helena, California in Napa.
He really strives to have all ofhis beers represent Napa, Sonoma,
Mendocino, uh, local countiessourcing, uh, all of his
ingredients. He'll even go outand get his water locally and,

(07:56):
uh, bring it back to the breweryto, to use. Um, and this beer is
a really great example of kindof the tradition of farmhouse
beers in that, uh, where Nilesbrew in it is certainly not a
farmhouse. Uh, he's in a little,uh, office park now. but he's
using a very interesting oldtechnique called Solera. Uh, so

(08:19):
what he's doing here is brewinga base beer. And this one's
interesting because after itgoes into the barrel, it gets a
little bit of Brettanomyces. Andthe brett creates kind of that
sour, funky note. Um, but one ofthe interesting things, this one
has been in my stash for quite awhile. So this is bottled in He

(08:40):
usually ages these for anywherefrom three to eight months
before they, uh, even make theirway to the bottle. So this
probably brewed in 2018, 2019.And, uh, the base beer here is
actually, um, a golden ale, andhe's using, uh, Glacier hops. Um,
but with that kind of bretcharacter, he allows that to

(09:01):
work its magic in the barrel forthree to eight months. And then
he'll take a portion of that andblend it in with, uh, new beer.
And, lo and behold, it freshensup that beer that's been aging
in the barrel, sou up. And as aresult, you don't end up with
that tart pucker because thisbeer isn't completely, uh, a

(09:23):
sour mixed culture beer at thispoint.It has some, some fresh
beer, uh,

BARRY (09:27):
Oh, nice.

JASON (09:27):
added in.

BARRY (09:28):
Okay.

JASON (09:29):
Yeah.

BARRY (09:29):
Oh, nice. And this is, uh, this is a more, I would say,
copper, copper, amber color.It's, uh, less cloudy, less hazy
than, than Brennan's, saison.But it's still, it's still got a
cloudy characteristic,

JASON (09:42):
Yeah. Yeah. And part of the color here is definitely
from the barrel. Uh, so it'spicking up some of that French
oak because he ages everythingthat he brews in, in French oak.
Uh, because it's technically thebase is a golden ale, so it'd be
pretty golden in color. Um, and,you know, it's also been in a
bottle for five years. So allthe yeast has had time to settle
out. So this is certainly, uh, auh, clearer. Brennan's beer was

(10:06):
only bottled over the summer.

BARRY (10:07):
right?

JASON (10:08):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (10:08):
You said this was a nine?

JASON (10:11):
So this one tops in at only 8%, but he's made some that,
uh, through that blendingprocess over the years have come
in around 9%. Uh, what also ischaracteristic, uh, or, or is a
specific trait of this beer, isalso the use of rye. So this is
26% malted rye that, uh, Nilemalted himself.

BARRY (10:32):
I, I did, uh, sneak a sip here, and, uh, I totally can
taste that. I can taste the oak,I can taste the rye, and that
brett characteristic. It's notoverpowering, like a kettle sour,
which also uses that, that brett.It just adds that, like you just
mentioned, a slight sour, andjust a pleasant tart
characteristic to it.

JASON (10:51):
Yeah.

BARRY (10:51):
This is, this is, this is lovely, but it definitely has a
heavier more what I wouldprobably, incorrectly say, a
more maltier, uh, mouthfeel to,to the saison that we tasted,
Brennan.

BRENNAN (11:02):
The, the 26% rye is a hefty,

BARRY (11:04):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (11:04):
that's a, that's a big chunk of the grain bill.

JASON (11:06):
it is.

BRENNAN (11:07):
Uh,

JASON (11:07):
It is.

BRENNAN (11:08):
Super noticeable.

JASON (11:09):
Yeah,

BRENNAN (11:09):
It's

JASON (11:09):
yeah.

BRENNAN (11:09):
good.

BARRY (11:10):
Oh, it's delicious.

BRENNAN (11:11):
It almost has, like, a little whiskey on the finish.

BARRY (11:17):
looking at it, and then tasting it, it's like, anybody
that, uh, that is familiar withit. a, a bourbon or a rye
whiskey is going to be familiarwith some of the, the flavors
and tannins in this, and wouldappreciate it, and I'm one of
those people.

JASON (11:31):
Yeah, the

BARRY (11:32):
All

JASON (11:32):
three of
us.

BARRY (11:33):
right. we've gotten to the point of the podcast where
it's my turn for what I'mdrinking and uh, you know, we've,
we've kind of gotten off yourgear for, um, a little bit. I'm
going to continue uh, over thispast in prep for doing tonight's
podcast,We were looking forbreweries in the twin cities
that, uh, make beers, at leastthat they, uh, classify as
farmhouse or saison. And I foundone, or actually uh, turned me

(11:57):
on to a brewery in SouthMinneapolis. I think
specifically they're in LindenHills.

JASON (12:02):
Yeah.

BARRY (12:02):
I'll put the link in, in the notes somewhere about 44th.
It's beautiful. Um, nice,embedded in the neighborhood
corner place. I'm sure it wassomething else before it was a
brewery. It seems like I've evenbeen there before. But anyway,
lovely spot dog friendly, whichis, uh, a weekend requirement
for me, my wife and I like totake our to breweries Anyway,
they have a Cezanne on theirmenu and I tried it and I liked

(12:25):
it a lot. a lot of what we'vejust tasted now, I can report
our presence in the saison thatthey have on their menu. And I
wanted to take some, some, sothat we could taste it here on
the podcast. Unfortunately, orat least I thought at the time,
unfortunately, they do not havetheir straight saison, um,
available, uh, to go. But theydo have a variant of their

(12:46):
saison and I'm going to crackthat open now and see what
people think of it. And itdoesn't have a specific name. it
is what they call their basillemongrass Cezanne. And, uh,
I've got a four pack here. I'mgoing to crack open a can and
we're going to taste it on theair here. So hold on. All right.
So, um, we've got the basilgrass, basil grass. That's what

(13:10):
they should

JASON (13:10):
Basil

BARRY (13:10):
call it.

JASON (13:11):
grass. Yeah.

BRENNAN (13:11):
Basil grass.

BARRY (13:13):
That should be the

JASON (13:13):
Oh,

BARRY (13:13):
name

JASON (13:14):
we

BARRY (13:14):
of

JASON (13:14):
should.

BARRY (13:14):
a nice bluegrass

JASON (13:15):
To

BARRY (13:15):
band.

JASON (13:15):
them, yes.

BARRY (13:16):
the

BRENNAN (13:16):
That should be

JASON (13:17):
It

BARRY (13:17):
name.

JASON (13:17):
should be their

BRENNAN (13:17):
It should

JASON (13:17):
house.

BRENNAN (13:17):
be the name of the podcast. Their

JASON (13:19):
house band and the name of this beer, Basil Grass.

BARRY (13:22):
They do have cute names for a lot of their beers, but
their saison is just saison.

JASON (13:26):
Mm-hmm.

BARRY (13:27):
Their Basil Lemongrass Saison is just Basal Lemongrass
Saison. Simple, short, sweet, tothe point. So let's, um,

BRENNAN (13:34):
Very

BARRY (13:35):
we're smelling

BRENNAN (13:35):
Basil

BARRY (13:35):
it.

BRENNAN (13:36):
and Lemongrass.

BARRY (13:37):
Have you tasted it yet?

BRENNAN (13:38):
No.

BARRY (13:39):
All right. Cheers, l take a sip.

JASON (13:41):
Cheers.

BARRY (13:44):
Ooh. Yeah.

BRENNAN (13:46):
That is distinctly both of those

JASON (13:48):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (13:48):
things.

BARRY (13:49):
Yes.

JASON (13:49):
Oh,

BRENNAN (13:50):
Yeah,

JASON (13:50):
yeah.

BRENNAN (13:50):
that's cool.

JASON (13:51):
It's like a Thai salad.

BARRY (13:54):
But it does have, on the back end, though, you're getting
that hay, you're getting thatSaison

BRENNAN (14:00):
Yeah.

BARRY (14:01):
character. It must be the yeast character that we're
tasting.

BRENNAN (14:04):
Probably, yeah, a little bit. I was going to say,
they nailed the body on this.

JASON (14:09):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (14:09):
Like, this is phenomenal. I would, this is
like a picnic beer to me. Like,you could drink this in the hot
weather. I mean.

JASON (14:15):
Exactly.

BARRY (14:16):
This is refreshing and delicious. And I think you're
right. I can taste basil. I cantaste lemongrass. But it's all
in service of the beer. It's notlike a fruited beer, which is
like just, you know, sipping youknow, juice.

BRENNAN (14:30):
Yeah.

JASON (14:31):
Right.

BRENNAN (14:31):
Neither one of these things has main character energy.

BARRY (14:33):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (14:34):
Like, they're all very harmonious in this.

JASON (14:36):
Right. Right. And you not that I'm encouraging you to do
this, but sip on it all daybecause it's only 4.5%.

BARRY (14:42):
Right. yeah, no, this is, this is super Thank Wooden Ship.
I paid for it with my money, sothey didn't give it to me.
They're not promoting this, I'msuper happy that there's a
brewer making a beer like thisin

BRENNAN (14:55):
Yeah.

BARRY (14:55):
the Twin Cities.

BRENNAN (14:55):
Shout out, Wooden

BARRY (14:56):
Ye,

BRENNAN (14:56):
Ship.

BARRY (14:57):
absolutely.

BRENNAN (14:57):
Come on the podcast.

BARRY (14:58):
Yeah, no, absolutely.

BRENNAN (15:00):
I kind of dig their operation. I get it. Like you
said, it's a really cool littlejoint.

BARRY (15:04):
You've been there. Yeah.

BRENNAN (15:05):
Oh yeah. They just make good beer. And I think
they've, they've kind of bustedinto the THC world a little bit
too.

BARRY (15:12):
Oh, that's right. They,

BRENNAN (15:12):
some.

BARRY (15:12):
they do have

BRENNAN (15:13):
But it's just, it's like, it's right in the
neighborhood. And

JASON (15:16):
exactly.

BRENNAN (15:16):
Just a neat little spot.

JASON (15:17):
Yeah.

BARRY (15:17):
Go there. Highly recommended. All right.

BRENNAN (15:20):
So what did we just do?

JASON (15:22):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (15:23):
We all drank a Saison and all three were wildly
different.

BARRY (15:27):
Yes. Thank you, Brennan, for that transition. Let's talk
Saison. You've already alludedto this earlier that it is sort
of a catch all universaldescription, for something that
we're now going to talk aboutand see what is the style? Can
it be called a style or is itstyles plural? why do we talk
about it? Why is it a category?Let's go. Who wants to start?

JASON (15:50):
I'll, I'll kick it off.

BARRY (15:51):
Hey, t, Jason.

JASON (15:52):
Yeah, so, farmhouse beers, you know, you could always have
that question, like, what is it,Does it really mean it was
brewed in a farmhouse? Well, inthe old days, absolutely. Today,
eh, you know, it's become astyle. And in the United States,
we tend to think of beer interms of style. Our judging

(16:14):
system is very much set up forparticular styles, whereas in
other parts of the world, itreally just describes the place
or brewing techniques and notnecessarily a standard type of
beer. So, historically,farmhouse beers have come to be
known as something from, uh,Belgium and France, but they're

(16:36):
definitely brewed in other partsof the world. You can find
Germany, England, Scandinavia,the United States, all places
that had farms, all places thathad small breweries, uh, often
they were very terroir driven,the ingredients that were being
grown locally, in fact maybeeven on your farm, uh, and you
can still find breweriesoperating today all around the

(17:01):
world but, you know, we tend tothink of Germany as kind of like
mega breweries now. Even inBavaria, there's still lots of
farmhouse breweries. Sure,they're making lagers now, but
not the kind of mass-producedHelles and, uh, Pilsners that
you might see from the big sixin Munich. More like Keller
beers and land beer, which is avery interesting, uh, Very

(17:25):
different depending on whichfarmhouse you go to, how it's
actually going to be brewed, butprobably still a lager, uh, but
lots of variation in terms of,uh, ingredients.And , you know,
let's not kid ourselves. Thesemodern breweries do capitalize
to some extent on, uh, nostalgia,uh, look no further than
Ommegang in the U. S. First timeI

BARRY (17:45):
Right,

JASON (17:45):
ever

BARRY (17:45):
right.

JASON (17:46):
drove up there in 1998, you come upon this beautiful
farmhouse about five milesoutside of Cooperstown, New York,
and you go inside the breweryand you're like, oh, this is a
modern brewery. They'reoperating with very modern
equipment here. It has the lookand feel and they're certainly
doing what, you know, farmhousebreweries have been doing for

(18:07):
generations, but they've alsoadapted to modern techniques. So,
uh, I think one of theinteresting things is with, uh,
kind of the Scandinaviantradition in brewing.

BARRY (18:19):
Wow.

BRENNAN (18:20):
Yeah, so, the Scandinavian, particularly
Norway, has a yeast that, thatthey use, which is called the
kvike. Kveik yeast, and it isone of the most versatile yeasts
that a home brewer and reallyany brewer can get because it is,
the bulldozer of yeast. It is,it does not care about its

(18:40):
environment one

JASON (18:40):
is

BRENNAN (18:40):
bit. It to ferment any kind of sugar that you put in
its way. and it really, it didthat because it, over time, like
if farmers are making beer,they're just going to stick it
in a farmhouse. They're going topitch the magic yeast ring in
and just walk away. you know,the, the magic yeast ring, like
it was, it was funny becauselike you see there, there, this

(19:00):
kind of spiky looking cottonring that are called the, the
gjærstokk or the, jästkubbwhich were basically infected,
know, equipment that was wherethe yeast lived. They didn't
really, at the time, didn't knowwhat yeast was. They just knew
that chucked this sheep's bonering of, you know, sheep
vertebrae that was in the lastbatch of beer. If you pitch it
in the next one, it's going tomake more beer.

JASON (19:23):
till Carlsberg isolated, uh, lager

BRENNAN (19:25):
the

JASON (19:25):
yeast in 19th century. We didn't know what this really was.
We knew that somehow itfermented, but we didn't know
what exactly was doing it.

BRENNAN (19:35):
Yeah. It's really cool. And, and there's a really,
there's a fun history in, inScandinavia of all of these
different kviek strains. Sothere's multiple different
strains of farmhouse yeast fromNorway. get Voss, you can get
Hornindal, you can get Lutra.Those are all different
commercially available yeastthat all do very different
things. Um, and so for ahomebrewer who's looking to, to

(19:56):
um, a lager, but doesn't havethe ability to, to control the
temperature. Cause as we know,like most lagers need to be
fermented around 55 to 52degrees, uh, Fahrenheit.

BARRY (20:07):
Now we do.

BRENNAN (20:09):
Now we do. could just go get Lutra and you can ferment
that bad boy up to 98

BARRY (20:14):
What?

BRENNAN (20:14):
degrees Fahrenheit.

BARRY (20:15):
You

BRENNAN (20:15):
You just pitch it.

BARRY (20:15):
You can double the.

BRENNAN (20:16):
And it is gonna come out clean, it is gonna come out,
I mean, some of the purists cansay that, "Oh yeah, we can
detect that it's a kveikstrain", and I beg to differ.
I've had a number of these, I'veused them, it is clean, it is,
it's gonna make a great beer.I've had, fest beers that are
fermented with Lutra, and youcouldn't tell the difference.

JASON (20:37):
Exactly, I've used Lutra for both a pseudo-logger, and
for a Citra IPA, and they bothturned out pretty darn close to

BRENNAN (20:47):
Yeah,

JASON (20:47):
style.

BRENNAN (20:48):
it's really cool, and it's the directory of Norwegian
yeast is funny. I found on onepoint that it was like some guy
tried to go catalog all of them,and so he was traveling to these
different farmhouses to see ifthey made beer, and to see if
they made beer, where did theyget their yeast? And some of it
was fun, because it would belike, "Oh yeah, they shared that
it's a yeast from so and sogeneration, generation,

(21:09):
generation". And at one point,our yeast went bad, so we went
and talked to Ivar down the way,and he gave us some of their
yeast. And then there were somethat was like, "Sven closed the
door on our face and didn't wantto talk to us".

BARRY (21:22):
Right!

BRENNAN (21:22):
So, it's kinda cool, but it really was a yeast that
was evolved out of just havingto do its work no matter the
circumstance.

BARRY (21:31):
Yeah, yeah.

BRENNAN (21:31):
And it was a farmhouse yeast that they were like,
"We're gonna make this beer, itis just beer. It is not, we're
not winning competitions, butthis is going to ferment, it's
going to make beer and it'sgoing to taste okay".

JASON (21:42):
I mean you generally think of any of the low
countries, right? Places whereyou didn't necessarily have
great areas to have vineyards.You

BARRY (21:51):
yeah.

JASON (21:51):
were going to brew beer,

BARRY (21:52):
Yeah,

JASON (21:52):
you know?

BARRY (21:52):
there you go.

JASON (21:53):
If you had a farming culture, those farmers were
going to make beer.

BARRY (21:57):
And if in this case they discovered something that was
extremely tolerant to a range oftemperatures for fermentation,
then like, well, heck yeah.

JASON (22:08):
You've got it.

BRENNAN (22:10):
you can harvest it.

BARRY (22:12):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (22:12):
It is

BARRY (22:12):
Oh,

BRENNAN (22:12):
so hardy that, I mean,

BARRY (22:13):
okay.

BRENNAN (22:13):
they literally, yeah, it's a cool yeast. It's a lot of
fun. And, you know, and it justkind of makes sense that, you
know, it's just another farmtool. Like

BARRY (22:21):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (22:21):
you pulled that ring out of the fermenter and you
just hung it on the wall, let itdry, and you just used it the
next time.

JASON (22:27):
Yeah. And

BRENNAN (22:28):
you know, most of those beers are meant for the farm,
right? They're being drank byfarmers you know, in the Saison
world. It was also, know, in theHainaut region where it's also
mine workers. So, it was reallya beer that, was kind of like,
so the 4.5% that you have thereon the Wooden Ship beer isn't
out of question. So, mostSaisons in the past,

(22:49):
traditionally, are going to below alcohol.

BARRY (22:51):
That's what I thought,

BRENNAN (22:51):
Yep. Because they're meant for like working outside
and, you

BARRY (22:54):
right.

BRENNAN (22:54):
know, I

BARRY (22:55):
It's not

BRENNAN (22:55):
don't know

BARRY (22:55):
just brewed

BRENNAN (22:55):
about you,

BARRY (22:56):
on the

BRENNAN (22:56):
b.

BARRY (22:56):
farm. It's brewed for

BRENNAN (22:59):
All those times that I go out there and I'm bailing hay,
you know, I don't want to drinka 9% beer. Um. But the other
piece about it,too , is at thetime, you know, we've touched on
this in previous episodes, thatthe attenuation of the yeast
there, so basically how muchsugar that it is fermenting and
taking out of your beer wasnowhere near the quality we have
now. So the product that youwere drinking was generally

(23:22):
sweeter, and not to the point ofprobably being sickly, but just
not as clean and as refined asget to enjoy today. They likely
would have even been a littlebit sour, based on, you know,
kind of the conditions, and sothe beer that Jason brought
today that was blended in theSolera method would have been
something that they would havedone to kind of harsh that, or

(23:43):
to mellow that harshness,

JASON (23:45):
exactly,

BRENNAN (23:45):
you know, to really say, this is tart, let's mix some
younger beer that is less lacticand less sour, and try to mellow
this out a little would havebeen kind of the operation of
the day. So it was fun to youknow, a newer of that beer. The
other piece you know, kind ofsome of this farmhouse stuff is
that they didn't haverefrigeration. Like, so

(24:07):
farmhouse beers were fermentedin the farmhouse, s they were
just kind of put in the magicbarrel, and they tossed the
magic ring in, and a couplemonths later, a couple weeks
later, they had beer. And so,essentially, they brewed kind of
through the spring until it gottoo warm. Now, in Norway, it's
hard to imagine the fjords beingtoo

JASON (24:26):
Too

BRENNAN (24:26):
warm.

JASON (24:27):
warm.

BRENNAN (24:27):
But they had a yeast that could handle anything.

JASON (24:30):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (24:31):
You know, uh, hell be the day that it is 100 degrees
in Norway. you know, and thatkind of fits a little bit with,
with German tradition too, wasthat, you know, you brewed
seasonally. So you wanted tohave beer ready for different
seasons, and they're all verydifferent products, and, these
farmhouses kind of did the samething that these Bavarian
brewers did, which is theyshared yeast, right? So if your

(24:51):
yeast went bad, you just govisit your neighbor and get some
of theirs. So

BARRY (24:56):
Right, right.

BRENNAN (24:56):
borrow some yeast and propagate it with yours and see
if you can turn out a newproduct, and sometimes you just
wound up with a new yeast,

JASON (25:03):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (25:03):
you know? Um, so it's kind of cool. It's hard to trace
the lineages of some of them,but if you're comfortable with
not knowing exactly what you'regoing to get from a yeast,
they're fun to experiment with.And it's, they, they make great
beer.

BARRY (25:15):
Oh, great.

JASON (25:16):
Yeah. mean, the important point to remember is this was
not a commercial operation,right? You were producing this
beer to be provisions, more orless, for the people who are
seasonal farm workers, uh, thatout there doing that labor in
the fields for you, uh, and notnecessarily like selling it

(25:38):
commercially as we would thinkabout going to York's today or
to any of our craft brewerieshere in Minnesota. So, you know,
this, this whole notion of beerbeing a very repeatable, uh,
product that would be the sameevery time.

BARRY (25:54):
Right, right, right.

JASON (25:55):
Is just a very, modern notion with the inventions of
refrigeration.

BARRY (26:01):
and, and, you know, while it's comforting, it's also
boring.

JASON (26:03):
Yeah.

BARRY (26:06):
farmhouse, thank you for, for bringing us right, right to
the farmhouse for this, becauseI've always thought was just
more like an ambiance thatpeople thought about. You know,
I never really thought about theactual farms. maybe we covered
this and this is just an aside.But you know, they're brewing it
for specific purposes forspecific people. Are farmers

(26:27):
brewing the beer?

BRENNAN (26:28):
you know, it, it depends. So there's a lot of, in,
tradition. So the grisette,which we'll talk about a little
bit later is a more of a kind ofa French saison. It translates
to little gray. And so it was inthe [Hauts de France] region,
which is all minor, you know,mining area. Grisette was the
young women who would bring thisbeer to the miners. And so it

(26:49):
kind of took that name and was,you know, at the time brewing
was, was the, a woman's job wasthey brewed the beer and they, t
brought it to the miners

BARRY (26:57):
part of history we've seemed to have forgotten.

BRENNAN (27:00):
Yes, for

JASON (27:00):
Absolutely.

BRENNAN (27:00):
sure. so yeah, so I, I mean, I don't know if the
farmers were always the onesmaking the beer, but somebody on
the farm was, could have been, chave been the farmer's wife.

BARRY (27:09):
So, this might be a classic case we've talked, I
think, in the past about, like,Trappist beer or monk beers,
where the monastery was brewingbeer internally. For the people
in the monastery, for the monks,then it became either known or
available more widely, and Ithink became kind of a profit

(27:29):
center for those, and kind ofstarted distributing that way.
And so styles were createdprimarily in a utilitarian way
for the people that were brewingthe beer or for the people that
were drinking the beer, andthose became emulated to the
point where now we have styleslike a triple, um, came from the

(27:51):
Trappist, legacy. And so that'swhat we're talking about here,
too, right?

JASON (27:55):
More or less, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's, it's very
interesting that with the adventof lager beers, a lot of what
the farmhouse beers representedfell out of fashion,

BARRY (28:08):
Right.

JASON (28:08):
and the knowledge also disappeared. and the few
families that kept the traditiongoing, even, they, over time,
struggled to maintain theiryeast cultures. They often
gravitated towards lagercultures, uh, as well, in order
to produce their beers. So if itwasn't for a chance encounters,

(28:31):
um, uh, I'll say Michael Jacksonand not the singer,

BARRY (28:34):
beer writer.

JASON (28:34):
but the

BARRY (28:35):
The beer writer,

JASON (28:35):
The

BARRY (28:35):
yeah.

JASON (28:36):
British beer writer. So if it wasn't for a chance
encounter with him coming acrossSaison DuPont in the 70s, this
product was literally 10% ofwhat DuPont was brewing at

BARRY (28:47):
Really.

JASON (28:47):
that point. And now it's about 70% of their overall
portfolio. Uh, if he had notevangelized essentially Saison
DuPont, we might not have seenthe kind of resurrection of
Saison as a, as a masscommercial style. But to claim
that today's Saison DuPont is adirect descendant of what these

(29:10):
farmers were brewing is a bit ofa stretch.

BARRY (29:13):
Right. So,

JASON (29:13):
Yeah.

BARRY (29:14):
I don't know if I'm jumping ahead. a listener to
this podcast, never heard of aSaison before, never heard of a
farmhouse, or heard of it,afraid of it, or not afraid of
it. But, you know, I know what Ilike. I'm going to drink this,
I'm going to drink that. Is thisan acquired taste? who, who
would like a farmhouse beer? Imean, I was going to say who

(29:35):
should try think, I all three ofus would agree 100%, especially
when you have access to thingslike this. Everybody should try
at some point, try these thingsto understand, um, whether they
like it or not. But,

JASON (29:46):
Yeah.

BARRY (29:46):
Can you follow where I'm going
here?

JASON (29:48):
Why don't we break this down by style a little bit?
Because

BARRY (29:50):
Thank

JASON (29:50):
I think

BARRY (29:50):
you.

JASON (29:51):
that might help our listeners to think about which
styles are similar to beers thatthey might be familiar with. So,
I, Brendan and I talked aboutthis a little bit ahead of time.
He's going to talk about saisonand Grisette. And I'm going to
talk about, I have a parallelstyle called, uh, biere de garde,

BARRY (30:09):
Oh,

JASON (30:09):
which is more French in

BARRY (30:11):
yeah.

JASON (30:11):
its origins.

BRENNAN (30:12):
Yeah. So, I mean, so saison and Grisette, you know,
we talked a little bit aboutkind of the, the reason for them.
Um, but the name kind of is, iswhat it is. Saison translates to
season. And so

JASON (30:24):
exactly

BRENNAN (30:24):
it was

JASON (30:24):
French. Saison, saison.

BRENNAN (30:26):
And it was, so it was brewed for the saison, which
were the seasonal field workers,right? So they had to have
something for them to drink.Let's just call it what it is.
It's saison. Um, and a lot ofthem had, you know, very unique,
you know, yeast and other grainsthat were available to the farm
at that time. So a lot of themore rustic examples would,

(30:48):
would have used wheat and oatsand spelt, you know, kind of
what they had with their nativeyeast. And they would have had
their own version of a saison.and, you know, some of the
examples, you know, we talked alittle bit about Saison DuPont,
and kind of it being, you know,the importance that it has. You
know, the yeast for that one is,is believed to be kind of a red
wine yeast. Um, and it can also,similar to the Norwegian strain,

(31:11):
handle a very high range offermentation temperatures,

BARRY (31:14):
Oh,

BRENNAN (31:14):
which

BARRY (31:14):
great.

BRENNAN (31:14):
is, which is kind of unique.

JASON (31:15):
yeah, it's a really weird beer because it's fermented in
kind of tall, uh, rectangularfermenters. And this has no
scientific basis at all. It'sjust what fit in their brewery.

BRENNAN (31:29):
True to the farmhouse So

BARRY (31:30):
the beer fits the equipment Right Manures

BRENNAN (31:31):
We just make it, make it work, make it work, but you
know, there's some other stylesthat, you know, a lot of these,
we at, at York, outside ofDuPont, which is like, de
Blaugies, we have quite a few oftheir offerings, like La Moneuse,
Darbyste, Vermontoise, we talkedabout, uhm, Saison D'Epeautre,
uhm, we also have some of themore weirder examples, so if you

(31:53):
really want to get your freak on,uhm, you can go ahead and get
anything that Fantôme.

BARRY (31:57):
I was gonna, I was wondering if we're going there,
Fantôme.

JASON (32:00):
Oh, yeah.

BRENNAN (32:00):
Dany Prignon and Fantôme makes some pretty wild

BARRY (32:05):
And Tom, Tom is, uh, Thomas Keim, we've talked about
him a lot, the owner at Yoerg,is going to be bringing in some
of the less wild versions ofFantome, which I understand
exist, but we've had some oftheir, with white chocolate,

BRENNAN (32:18):
yeah.

BARRY (32:18):
we've had some pretty bizarre,

BRENNAN (32:19):
The

BARRY (32:20):
with

BRENNAN (32:20):
green

BARRY (32:20):
pepper.

BRENNAN (32:20):
one?

BARRY (32:21):
Oh, the, the Mountain Dew, uh, that, the, the Mountain Dew
colored, which we would open andthe entire bar would go, what
just happened here, you cansmell it? Entire bar?

JASON (32:31):
Exactly.

BARRY (32:32):
Uh, anyway, but

JASON (32:32):
could

BARRY (32:33):
yeah.

JASON (32:33):
also have a, uh, advertisement for Dany. Dany
been trying to sell the breweryfor years,

BARRY (32:38):
Oh.

JASON (32:38):
so if you're interested in buying a saison brewery

BRENNAN (32:41):
for

JASON (32:41):
sale.

BRENNAN (32:41):
There

BARRY (32:41):
go. Wow.

BRENNAN (32:42):
you

BARRY (32:42):
Where is, where is it?

JASON (32:43):
In, uh, Soy, Belgium.

BARRY (32:46):
Okay.

BRENNAN (32:46):
I don't have enough money.

BARRY (32:47):
Ha ha.

BRENNAN (32:48):
Well, we also have, like, Pipaix, which is, is
unique, it's kind of a steambeer style.

BARRY (32:53):
P-P-P-A-I-P-A-I-X? P-P-A-I-P-A-I-X?

JASON (32:55):
Yes.

BARRY (32:55):
P-P-A-I-X? Yep.

BRENNAN (32:56):
P-P-A-I-X. Uh, it also has some very distinct anise to
it, so they're all, like, superunique, which is kind of why I
said they're a little bit of theblue cheese, so, like, somebody
who likes one of these may notlike another one.

JASON (33:08):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (33:09):
but I think that if you are a fan of anything from
Belgium, so if you are a fan ofany Belgian beer, it's worth any
of these saisons, because youwill find that there's a lot of
Belgian characteristics to these.

BARRY (33:22):
I would agree, I would agree with that, and, and I,
that's exactly what I waslooking for, A lot of people
might discover Belgian beersthrough something like New
Belgium,

JASON (33:29):
mm-hmm,

BARRY (33:29):
um, and sort of an American style of Belgian beers.
that isn't how I discovered it,but once I discovered that, at
first, I was like, wait a minute,I don't like this. Then all of a
sudden, it's like, wait a minute,I do. And it's a whole new world
of beers opened up. So, I, I, Ilike the way that you described
that. If you've had Belgian,Belgian beers, if, if you knew
that they were Belgian beers andyou like them,

JASON (33:49):
yeah.

BARRY (33:50):
then I think, yes,if you try this, you're going to
recognize, and begin, and if youappreciate it, you can begin to
go further.

JASON (33:56):
Exactly. I think if you if you palate that you you for
sure, dry

BARRY (34:04):
this-

JASON (34:05):
beer,

BARRY (34:05):
Yes.

JASON (34:05):
you know,

BARRY (34:06):
Champagne-y.

JASON (34:06):
Yeah,

BARRY (34:07):
Yeah.

JASON (34:07):
champagne-y, so a vinous,

BARRY (34:09):
Yeah.

JASON (34:09):
right,

BARRY (34:09):
Yeah.

JASON (34:10):
character in your beer, then saison is gonna be right up
your alley. Most of the yeasts,you know, we keep throwing
around this word attenuation,Brennan described it before, but
when you're fermenting, you havean initial gravity, you have a
final gravity, and the closeryou are to one as your final
gravity, the less sugar you have,and the drier the character, the

(34:31):
more of that sect champagne typeof character that you're going
to have. Uh, in your beer, andsaison yeasts tend to really
ferment the daylights out of thesugar. You end up with an
extremely dry product with themodern yeast, that DuPont yeast
is just a, if you can get it togo all the way through, it often

(34:53):
stalls out. You need to throwsome French Cezanne yeast in to
kind of kick it back into gear,but if you can get it to go to
terminal gravity, wow, that isjust a workhorse that gets you
very close to one as yourterminal gravity.

BARRY (35:06):
Nice. uh, thanks Brendan bringing us through, those
styles DuPont up throughFantôme. Jason, what do you got?

JASON (35:14):
Yeah, so on the biere de garde side, this is certainly
more on the, the France side ofthe border. The region of
Flanders was one kingdom at onepoint. So both the Belgian and
French sides were part of thesame kingdom at, at one point.
And that's why there's somesimilarity, uh, between these
beers. These beers. The Northernpart of Flanders now Dutch

(35:37):
speaking, uh, across border, youfarmhouses on both sides. So
they were really sharing thetradition on, and the beer de
gard is essentially like theFrench version of, what would be
a farmhouse beer, except thedifference. The difference here
is you're a little bit closer tothe sea. And you have, uh, a

(35:58):
maltier, richer beer as kind ofyour general examples of Bière
de Garde. So, they were in thepast, certainly, um, lower in
alcohol than they are today. Andagain, the provision for farm
workers, the name tells youeverything you need to So,
Bière de Garde essentiallymeans beer for storing. So you

(36:19):
would make this at, uh, the timeof the year when you could
easily ferment, but then youwould store it until the next
season, bring it out, and itwould be your provision for your
workers for, for the next

BARRY (36:31):
Okay,

JASON (36:31):
season,

BARRY (36:31):
all right.

JASON (36:32):
right? It's very much like, uh, lager in German means
to store "garde" in French alsomeans to store.

BARRY (36:38):
never made that connection with the word lager.
I

JASON (36:40):
Yeah.

BARRY (36:40):
never really

JASON (36:40):
I

BARRY (36:40):
thought about what that meant.

JASON (36:41):
Yeah.

BARRY (36:41):
Yeah.

JASON (36:42):
Yeah. So, uh, to some extent, modern Bière de Garde,
it's a question, is it amarketing gimmick or is it an
actual style? So in France today,uh, so Bière de Garde kind of
came back into fashion in theseventies, French brewers who
wanted to differentiatethemselves from the lager
brewers. So if you know, uh,France, you know, Kronenbourg in

(37:03):
the, uh, Strasbourg

BARRY (37:04):
Right.

JASON (37:05):
area. Like this is one of the major breweries, they brew
lagers. Uh, if you wanted todifferentiate yourself with a
special beer, then historicallyyou would brew something more
akin to these amber beers thatwould have been like, uh, the
Bière de Garde. Now they wouldhave been much lower alcohol
than they are today. Todaythey're generally in that six to
seven ish range. Um, but youryeast choice is really

(37:27):
interesting. Often the modernones are brewed with a lager
yeast in the past. You would nothave had the temperature control.
So I would have been with an aleyeast. So some really nice
examples, but they're hard tofind in the U S of, uh, uh,
Bière de Garde include, uh,Jenlain. I actually brought one
of these back from, uh, the tripthat I took to visit some

(37:49):
friends in Strasbourg back atthe beginning of the year,
shared it with, uh, Tom andBrennan that evening. And, uh,
it's a very really nice beerthat has a surprisingly dry
finish given how sweet it was,but it uses, uh, Alsatian hops
and they have, uh, they're,they're known for their very
spicy character. So it balancesout that sweetness with a dry

(38:13):
finish and a nice kind of spicyfloral, uh, hoppy note to it.

BARRY (38:18):
I will point out that, um, I live two blocks away.

JASON (38:22):
I know.

BARRY (38:22):
Jason.

JASON (38:23):
Sorry. Sorry,

BARRY (38:24):
I

JASON (38:24):
Barry.

BARRY (38:24):
do not remember this particular tasting and I

JASON (38:26):
Yeah.

BARRY (38:26):
was not invited.

JASON (38:27):
I think it was a day Brennan was brewing that I'm.

BARRY (38:29):
Okay. All right. All right. I forgive you.

JASON (38:31):
Sorry. Sorry. Something

BRENNAN (38:32):
to do during the day.

JASON (38:33):
Yeah. Uh, year and years ago, I had a Castellan in
Strasbourg, which is akin toJenlain. Uh, they're both from
the same region. Uh, either, uh,I'm trying to remember whether
it's Pas de Calais or Nord inFrance. I'm pretty sure these
are both Pas de Calais, thatthey're in the part that's a

(38:54):
little bit closer to Belgium andnot quite as close to the sea of

BARRY (38:58):
Okay.

JASON (38:58):
France. Uh, but it's, it's very similar. It's, it's
malty. It's, it's amber in color.Uh, recently here at, uh,
Yoerg's we've had Kerel, uh, andactually, uh, and not Carole,

BARRY (39:10):
The

JASON (39:11):
the, uh,

BARRY (39:11):
purse.

JASON (39:11):
co-owner, but, uh, Kerel, K-E-R-E-L.

BARRY (39:15):
Yes, Kerel. Yes, I always pronounce it that way.

JASON (39:17):
Yep. And, uh,

BARRY (39:19):
That's

JASON (39:19):
they...

BARRY (39:19):
right, I forgot

JASON (39:20):
Yeah,

BARRY (39:20):
about...

JASON (39:20):
they make a really excellent Bière de Garde. I
think right now we have thesaison.

BARRY (39:24):
Right, the saison,

JASON (39:25):
Yeah.

BARRY (39:25):
yeah.

JASON (39:25):
Uh, but they make an excellent Bière de Garde that's
in the amber style. And a U. S.example that, uh, I, I think you
can actually... can, you canfind this at a, uh, local
grocery store. Is, uh, uh,Domaine DuPage made by Two

BARRY (39:40):
it.

JASON (39:41):
Brothers Brewing

BARRY (39:41):
Yes.

JASON (39:41):
in Illinois.

BARRY (39:42):
Yep. Yep. also, if you go further west, there's, uh, an
American... Well, it's not Vierede Gard, but Tank 7 is the one
that you see.

JASON (39:50):
Yeah, Boulevard. That's, uh, that's a excellent farmhouse
saison. Yeah. Yeah.

BARRY (39:55):
So I know I'm straying from the Viere de Gard,

JASON (39:57):
Yeah.

BARRY (39:58):
uh, sitting, uh, uh, kind uh, tower-like in the middle of
the table that we are sitting at,where we have all of our taster
glasses and my recordingequipment, is a bottle Bière de
Garde that we have had at Yoerg.I think I have the last
remaining but we are going to begetting it. Tom has assured me
that we will get this in thefuture. Something that we

(40:18):
started a couple months Yeah. Um,we have a, a, a Bière de Garde,
uh, from Moisson.

JASON (40:24):
Yeah.

BARRY (40:25):
Uh, and I'd have to look at the bottle. Brennan has it
right now because he's popped itopen because we're going to try
it here. It's a beer that I'vefallen in love with.

JASON (40:33):
Yeah.

BARRY (40:33):
And, I know that the two of you can talk more like
there's these three right here,right, that are, that are empty.

JASON (40:38):
Yeah . No, this is from the south of France. So this is
really interesting. This is amodern craft brewery in the
south of France that's reallyadopted this style. And it's not
surprising, right? I mean, thesouth of France, if you've ever
been there is fertile wheatfields all over the place. So
this is not surprising thatyou'd see this type of a

(40:59):
beautiful farmhouse beer. Andthey classify this as more in
the Bière de Garde

BARRY (41:03):
Right.

JASON (41:04):
style, but it's more of the blonde Bière de Garde.

BARRY (41:06):
Right. You were, you were mentioning, you, you were
talking Amber and I was having acognitive dissonance because
this particular beer. And now,especially as Brennan has poured
it is a much uh, to color andcloudiness to, uh, to um, DuPont.

BRENNAN (41:22):
Well, do you know why, Barry?

BARRY (41:23):
In Vermontoise version. I do not. Please tell me.

BRENNAN (41:26):
Because I believe, if I remember correctly, this is also
made for spelt.

JASON (41:32):
Yes.

BARRY (41:33):
There you go. I should have picked up on that right
away.

BRENNAN (41:35):
Strong blonde ale. Strong.

BARRY (41:38):
is interesting because when I think a strong blonde, I
think like a triple this, thisis not, this is, this has the,
those characteristics we've

JASON (41:45):
Right.

BARRY (41:46):
been

JASON (41:46):
Wh

BARRY (41:46):
talking about, the cloudiness. I would, would not
be surprised if this is speltbecause I can, I can taste being
a baker. I mean, uh, I canunderstand some of those
differences between grains andthis is definitely in the, in

BRENNAN (42:00):
I think

BARRY (42:00):
that dirt.

BRENNAN (42:00):
they, I think they find this as well a little bit
because it definitely has alittle less haze than mine did.

BARRY (42:06):
I was going to say, you mean, you know, I clarified

BRENNAN (42:08):
Yeah.

BARRY (42:08):
it?

BRENNAN (42:08):
Yep. Yep. I don't know what, m they use isinglass or
it's not quite that

JASON (42:14):
So if we could read French, we should just look for
épeautre that's spelt.

BARRY (42:17):
I'm going to look, I'm going to look it up here. Let's
see.

JASON (42:19):
How Yes. So Brennan just confirmed for me because he's
the only one who's young enoughwho can read this bottle without

BARRY (42:27):
that,

JASON (42:29):
uh, th use épeautre, which is spelt in French.

BRENNAN (42:33):
Let's see something about, uh, Houblons Le Vieux.

JASON (42:37):
That's,

BARRY (42:38):
Houblons

JASON (42:38):
uh,

BARRY (42:38):
is hops.

JASON (42:39):
That's hops.

BRENNAN (42:40):
Ah, here's the other thing that I was thinking of,
too. So this, so it's a spelt,it's spelt, but it also used
Barbe Rouge, which Barbe Rougeis a really, really cool French
hop.

JASON (42:51):
Exactly, this is Alsatian.

BRENNAN (42:52):
Yeah, so this is a, this is a neat, a neat hop. Now
I might remember this. Jason, wehad this one time.

JASON (42:58):
We have, we have. So Barbe Rouge from Alsace,
Alsatian hops have always beenconsidered kind of like the
luxury hops of France, and itmakes sense. So Alsace is on the
border with Germany, so this is,also the Rhine is right there.
This is some of the best grapegrowing region in the world, so
you have absolutely fantastic

(43:21):
climate there for all of theseagricultural products. So you
have great hops, great grapes,you know, it's just really
fantastic agricultural region.

BRENNAN (43:30):
Yeah, so this is kind of a cool, you know, berry as
you, as you drink it. The, thespelt is going to be earthy and
very kind of rustic, but thenthe Barbe Rouge is going to have
almost like a triple berry kindof

JASON (43:42):
thing

BRENNAN (43:43):
going on in the, the taste and the aroma. It's
actually a hop I've been meaningto play around with at home, but
I haven't quite gotten around toit yet,

JASON (43:50):
exactly, exactly.

BARRY (43:51):
Uh, traditional blonde, beer to guard, pure French
artisan and independent malts,French hops, Barbe Rouge and
Triskel, house yeast mix withlager, kveik, K-V-.

BRENNAN (44:05):
There it is, kveik.

BARRY (44:06):
Kveik.

BRENNAN (44:06):
Norway.

BARRY (44:07):
Kveik and saison strains. Long lagering in Wienkkelwagen,
Wurard, 100% voyage, Bettelünn,

BRENNAN (44:17):
Yeah, basically they just said you should drink it.

BARRY (44:20):
Yes. So this, I believe this includes everything that
we've talked about in thisentire podcast. It's in this.

BRENNAN (44:26):
It kind of does.

BARRY (44:28):
Kveik. Kveik.

BRENNAN (44:29):
Spelt.

BARRY (44:30):
Spelt and

JASON (44:32):
saison yeast.

BRENNAN (44:33):
Saison. Cool hops that aren't traditionally used. This
was,

BARRY (44:37):
This is just delicious.

BRENNAN (44:39):
That's
one of those, that's interesting, you know, sidebar
we didn't mean to get into, butis the temperature of things in
which you

BARRY (44:45):
Oh,

BRENNAN (44:45):
drink it.

BARRY (44:45):
thank you for

BRENNAN (44:46):
Most

BARRY (44:46):
bringing that.

BRENNAN (44:47):
Americans want their beer as cold as you can

BARRY (44:49):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (44:49):
get it.

BARRY (44:50):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (44:50):
Um, for certain styles. Yeah, absolutely. Give me a
Miller Lite. I want that thingas close to freezing. Yeah.

JASON (44:57):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (44:57):
Because I'm trying to drink it fast,

BARRY (44:59):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (45:00):
you know? Whereas like some of these beers have so many
little nuances that like youdon't really pick up on until
they're 50 to 54 degrees, um,especially beers that have some
hops and some, some depth tothem.

BARRY (45:14):
Yeah.

BRENNAN (45:14):
you really got to give it a chance to warm up. And some
of them are cool too. Likethat's another reason why I
think, you know, buying a, youknow, Jason and I like to buy a
seven 50 and split it

BARRY (45:23):
Right.

BRENNAN (45:23):
because

BARRY (45:24):
Yes.

BRENNAN (45:24):
over time it warms up and then your experience of that
beer changes over time. And

JASON (45:28):
does.

BRENNAN (45:29):
certainly this, this beer is one of those.

BARRY (45:31):
Beers like this particular one get more complex
over time and taste differentand are, are great all the way

BRENNAN (45:38):
it's

BARRY (45:38):
through.

BRENNAN (45:38):
because they didn't, they were designed when
refrigeration wasn't a thing,

BARRY (45:41):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (45:42):
you know?

BARRY (45:42):
You wouldn't be, you would never be getting a beer
like super high refrigeratedcold.

JASON (45:48):
Right.

BARRY (45:49):
You'd

JASON (45:49):
Right.

BARRY (45:49):
be getting it, you know, maybe, know, above room
temperature, cold to roomtemperature to outdoor
temperature.

JASON (45:56):
Right. I mean, the definition of room temperature
has changed

BARRY (46:00):
Who's

JASON (46:00):
in my-

BARRY (46:01):
room and where? Exactly.

JASON (46:02):
Modern situations where we have, uh, you know, air
conditioning and we also haveheating, right? So, uh, this is
the same argument made about redwine that, uh, really does apply
to a lot of the farmhouse beerswhen we're talking about room
temperature. If you're thinkingabout room temperature in the
north of France-

BARRY (46:23):
Right.

JASON (46:23):
...time. Room temperature there is, like, 55,

BARRY (46:26):
Right.

JASON (46:27):
right? So,

BRENNAN (46:28):
It's beautiful.

JASON (46:29):
yeah,

BARRY (46:29):
I

JASON (46:29):
right?

BARRY (46:29):
know.

JASON (46:30):
Fantastic. So, so this is not surprising that, uh, beers
that are emulating styles fromthat era, or beers that would
have been brewed in that era,their optimum taste profile,
their optimum aroma profile aregoing to be occurring somewhere
in that, uh, mid 40s to lower50s range. Yeah. ... only one

(46:51):
range. Yeah.

BARRY (46:52):
Al right. So, we've been talking about Moisson Dorée
from La Mapolon, um, a Bière deGarde, I'll put a link in the,
in the show notes, and hopefullyby the time this drops or soon
thereafter, this is a beer thatwill again be available, for
purchase that you are going tohighly recommend you do. And if

(47:13):
you do buy it and do not likeit... Cork it. Tell Tom to put
it back in the fridge. I'll buyit from you. I will f-

BRENNAN (47:20):
Walk it to two blocks, the beer

BARRY (47:22):
Paul and, uh, I will, uh, I will compensate you, uh,

BRENNAN (47:26):
with a

BARRY (47:26):
for

BRENNAN (47:26):
pizza.

BARRY (47:26):
them. I will have a pizza waiting for you at the time. All
sidetracked completely. I'msorry about that, but we had
this bottle. I wanted to open it.I've been wanting to drink it
for months. So, um, we're therewith that. Jason, we're, we, uh,
sidebarred into Bière de Gardeas...

JASON (47:42):
Yeah.

BARRY (47:43):
As, as a style, but more particularly geographically, why
something's called a Bière deGarde? Where are um, in your
journey through, through thestyle?

JASON (47:52):
Yeah
. So, you at, at the end of the Bière de Garde today has
taken on many guises, right? Itis stylistically difficult to
define because it really becamea beer that the craft brewers in
France, you know, kind of goingthrough the same type of, uh,

(48:14):
process of differentiatingthemselves from the big guys
back in the seventies wanting tomake something special. Um, you
know, more or less callingeverything, uh, Bière de Garde,
but traditionally you did haveseasonal beers as well in France.
So, one of the interestingthings is you had something
called, uh, a bière de Mars andvery much like a German Märzen.

(48:36):
The difference is, is that, uh,where Märzens were made to be
drank in the fall, the bière deMars were made to be drank in
the spring. So, this was a beerwhere you would use the newest
harvest of your hops and yourgrains in the fall To make
essentially your best beer ofthe year. And then you would
guard it, you would provision itover winter, and then break it

(49:00):
out in the spring.

BARRY (49:01):
Mm-hmm.

JASON (49:02):
Similarly, you had bière de Noël, right?

BARRY (49:05):
Oh,

JASON (49:05):
So

BARRY (49:05):
yeah,

JASON (49:06):
beers for Christmas,

BARRY (49:07):
yeah

JASON (49:07):
uh, in Belgium, we've had some really excellent examples
here over the years, but they'vegenerally been more in the, uh,
so this is also interesting. TheBelgian style of Christmas beers
is really inspired by Scotchales, Scottish beers. They are
some whoppers. These can beeight to 12% and, uh, the bière

(49:32):
de Noël would not have been, uh,in that tradition in the past.
These really didn't startoccurring until the early part
of the 20th century. So thebière de Noël as a Christmas
beer in France in that eracertainly would have been more
like today's 6.5% Amber Bièrede Gardes. So a really versatile

(49:52):
style. And I, I think just areminder to everyone that, the U.
S. is very much driven bystylistic guidelines for tasting
and in Germany, France, Belgium,England to a lesser extent,
beers were more about, uh, thename of a region. The, the words

(50:16):
in the language that actuallyhad a, a meaning like alt just
means old as opposed to a style.

BARRY (50:22):
Right, a style.

JASON (50:23):
Right, in German, uh, same with Biere de Garde. Biere
de Garde just meant beers thatwere going to be stored, and not
necessarily a style, and at theend of the day, if you like it,
drink it.

BARRY (50:37):
Well, and, and, it just leads me to, okay, you're, we,
at the people that are sittingin this, in this room, in Yoerg,
in St. Paul, Minnesota, we livein the U. S., we brew in the U.
S., we drink in the U. S., whatare we talking about in terms of
Farmhouse Ales, bière de garde,how are we brewing these here,

(50:57):
we've talked a little bit aboutthis, I think what we're trying
to do, is to bring an element ofthis terroir-based style into
something that we can enjoy asAmerican beer drinkers in the
pubs of America. how are webrewing these, Brennan, you've
brewed one.

JASON (51:14):
yeah, yeah, Brennan and I have both brewed

BARRY (51:16):
Yeah,

JASON (51:16):
these.

BARRY (51:16):
I was going to say, Jason, I know you've brewed one as well.

JASON (51:18):
Interesting thing is, the conversations we had about,
about how to do this, and how tobring that terroir to it, so I
really want to kind of letBrennan, like, kind of talk
about the process that

BARRY (51:28):
Yeah,

JASON (51:28):
we

BARRY (51:29):
yeah.

JASON (51:29):
went through.

BRENNAN (51:30):
Yeah
, the first thing, to me was, was finding the
ingredients, right, was gettingto kind of the base malt, which
to me had to have spelt. Like, Iwanted to get spelt in there, I
wanted to get something rustic,um, something sort of like wheat,
um, and building from there. Andso I chose a very
non-traditional hop variety, u,for different purposes. But the,

(51:52):
the cool thing is that, like, wecan emulate, really, any kind of
condition that we need. justwith all the technology that we
have in our homebrewingequipment and, and all that
stuff, is I can really dial in atemperature range. So I can hold
something at any temperature Iwant. Which, in the olden, you
know, when they were brewingthese on the farmhouse in France,
or in Belgium, they didn't havethat ability. They were kind of

(52:13):
at the, you know.

BARRY (52:14):
The mercy of

JASON (52:15):
The

BARRY (52:15):
the weather.

BRENNAN (52:15):
The

JASON (52:16):
element.

BRENNAN (52:16):
mercy of the, right. We also don't have to worry about
infections. You know, we havemuch better sanitation and much
better cleaning. So, uh, we geta little, maybe a, probably a
little bit more, uh, consistentand repeatable product. Which,
you know, would have been notquite the same. I mean, it's
important to remember, too, thatmost of Europe was bombed flat

(52:36):
in World War II. And so a lot ofwhat we know about some of these
historical styles is gone.

BARRY (52:40):
Right.

BRENNAN (52:41):
And so we are kind of guessing. Which, it's okay.
Because some of those beersprobably

BARRY (52:46):
good.

BRENNAN (52:46):
weren't very Um, so.

BARRY (52:49):
But the great, but the great, I mean, I don't want to
interrupt here. But you talkabout spelt. Where's spelt? Do
we have local sources of speltor malt made from spelt?

BRENNAN (52:57):
Um, I haven't found Minnesotan spelt.

BARRY (53:00):
Okay.

BRENNAN (53:01):
I found some Minnesotan grain, which might be another
episode. Um, but, you know, youknow, spelt you know, readily
available through most, um, homebrewing

BARRY (53:10):
Okay.

BRENNAN (53:10):
places

BARRY (53:10):
Okay.

BRENNAN (53:11):
and, and commercial brewing suppliers. but it's more,
I wanted the rustic earthiness.The kind of the spicy from it
and combining the rye. Rye alsokind of gives it a little bit of
that too. and then the importantpiece is the yeast. And the, the
yeast blend that I used on mysaison, um, was a mix of Dupont,

(53:32):
which is, you know, kind of thetitan of the strain. and I
believe the French, uh, strainas

JASON (53:38):
Ah,

BRENNAN (53:38):
well.

JASON (53:38):
did you use

BRENNAN (53:39):
Uh,

JASON (53:39):
the Saisonstein?

BRENNAN (53:40):
Saisonstein,

JASON (53:40):
Yes.

BRENNAN (53:41):
yeah.

JASON (53:41):
Okay.

BRENNAN (53:41):
So it's, it's a mix of, of, I think what is the Dupont
and the belle strain? So thebelle, like, like B-E-L-L-E, the
bell.

JASON (53:49):
In French, belle.

BRENNAN (53:51):
Yeah. Um, and,

BARRY (53:53):
the

BRENNAN (53:53):
and,

BARRY (53:53):
Disney Belle.

BRENNAN (53:54):
And this is, this is Jason Thomas actually. But the
Dupont strain likes um, stallout at a certain point and it
gets picky about how much sugarit wants to eat. So then you
just kind of either, you get the,the saison stein, which is a, u,
yeast blend, which already hasthat French strain with it, or
you just pitch the French strainon top of Um, and it really

(54:15):
comes out in a, a very saison,Belgian sort of flavor profile.
Um, I bottle conditioned thisone, which is um, traditional to
style. Um.

JASON (54:29):
Absolutely.

BRENNAN (54:29):
You know, so I, every, it's all in bottles. So I didn't
force carb it.

BARRY (54:32):
So me, yeah. So meaning you bottle with, with some of
the elements that, so it'scontinuing to.

BRENNAN (54:38):
Uh, yep. With a, basically a sugar drop. So you
put a sugar drop in there togive it a little bit more to, to,
to eat, to carbonate, but it'ssealed. So all that CO2 goes
back in the solution and givesyou the, the effervescence.
We're all burping like crazy uphere. So,

BARRY (54:51):
uh,

BRENNAN (54:52):
certain saisons.

BARRY (54:53):
A number of times we've turned away from the microphone.

BRENNAN (54:55):
Certain saisons are very effervescent, and,

BARRY (54:57):
Ha, ha.

BRENNAN (54:58):
um, mine is no much. yeah, and then the cool thing
about that is that it, um, notonly works as kind of a
preservative and that it, itscrubs out any residual oxygen,
um, left in solution, uh, but italso makes that beer, you know,
living. So it continues to, toshape itself change profiles
while it's in the bottle, uh,which, which I think is kind of

(55:19):
cool. Another, another reason Idid it too. Exa.

JASON (55:21):
I mean, that's, that's a big part of this, right, is that
a lot of the commercial productyou're getting... ...it's been
centrifuged.There isn't a dropof yeast left.

BARRY (55:31):
Right,

JASON (55:31):
There's not a living product anymore,

BARRY (55:33):
right,

JASON (55:33):
but if you're getting a corked bottle of Belgian French
beer, there's most likely somelive yeast still in that product.

BARRY (55:42):
yeah.

JASON (55:43):
It's bottle conditioned. It is a evolving, living
organism still, and that beer isgoing to change over time.

BARRY (55:51):
For good or for ill.

JASON (55:52):
good or for ill.

BARRY (55:53):
For

JASON (55:53):
Yes, yes, exactly.

BARRY (55:54):
Yep.
are we ready to

JASON (55:58):
I think we are.

BARRY (55:59):
Wow. I have to say I've gone through a journey in my
mind through this episode,especially since we've had so
many tasters here. Uh, yeah.

JASON (56:08):
not supposed to say that, Barry.

BARRY (56:10):
Uh, I know, I know. Um, I'm not, uh,

BRENNAN (56:13):
Just wait till the beard and well.

BARRY (56:15):
I know. I was going to say, look for, I don't know if
it's going to be episode six,episode seven, but look for the
beard and well episode becausewe're going to be talking about
that. But anyway, I've lovedthis journey through, uh,
farmhouse styles. and, and nowthat I say that, I, I feel like
I should be using a differentword, we've talked about, uh, of
some of the saisons and andBière de Garde that, that might

(56:39):
be available. It's your localliquor store. and what is
available at, at Yoerg's. bringsome friends. If you're
interested in this, come, cometry them, uh, go to your local
liquor store, can pick up, uh,some, some tank seven from, from
Boulevard Brewing. and you tryit and that at all interests you,
uh, branch out and come get someof these more traditional
versions of, of, of this style.

JASON (57:00):
exactly. That's your gateway.

BARRY (57:01):
Exactly. It was for, it was for me, for sure. this, so,
um, we love that some peoplehave been listening to this
podcast, I can't, I have tobring that up, several people
today, I, I did a before werecorded this, and several
people came in and asked me whenthe next podcast episode was
going to be, going to drop,which kind of floored me, it was
really nice for that, for thatto happen, so keep your feedback

(57:22):
coming, whether it's, uh,stopping into Yoerg and talking
to us, whether you, uh, email meat the email address that's in
the show notes, however you wantto do a comment on the in Apple
or wherever you get the podcast,bring up suggestions, what would
you like to hear about, you'vekind of gotten a sense, uh, even
if you're just listening to thisone episode, you've gotten a
sense of how we talk about beeron Malted North, what do you

(57:43):
want to hear about? I know thatwe've got some people that are
very interested becoming on, andwe've, uh, we've kind of cajoled
them into becoming on, an I
think in the next few episodes, we're going to bring
on some brewers and beer culturerelated people to, to talk about
what they know about beer, sothat you don't have to listen
just to the three of us, um, asinteresting as we are.

(58:05):
Exactly.

BRENNAN (58:06):
to own

BARRY (58:07):
and as you're listening to us about at the end of this
podcast, you're probably,actually, I know you're
listening to Todd Harper andSeverin Behnen's "Drama in Real
Life". An original tango writtenby Todd Harper, dear friend of
mine going back 30 years. AndSeverin Behnen, the two of them
recorded together 30 years ago,hadn't seen each other in 20

(58:28):
years, got together a week agoas of this recording and played
this tune for the very firsttime together. First time
Severin have ever seen thenotation for this particular
piece. and so a really specialway to end this episode of
Malted North.

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