You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Hillary, I do communications. I'm Greg, I also do communications. I'm Pat, I handle spirits, and I make fun of Jay Boyle. I am the brunt of all his jokes, Jay Boyle, and I'm the Director of Customer Engagement. And I'm Roger, I do beer marketing and education. I'm very excited to talk about this. It's very seasonally appropriate because the word saison is the French word for season, and typically these beers were brewed in the wintertime and spring to be consumed during the spring and the summer. Probably one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood. Saisons, like many other styles, have been resurrected and almost saved by the American market. And once American brewers get a hold of things, they tend to throw out the rule book. Saisons used to be my example of this American brewing hubris where, because some saisons would be brewed with spices and herbs, a brewery would throw the kitchen sink into the beer. So it would be ludicrously spicy and herby. It's kind of like if you're making soup, you don't just dump your entire spice cabinet in it and think that it's going to turn out well. In the growing craft beer movement over the last 20 years, this was the original kind of creative outlet for a lot of American craft brewers. What spices can we put in them? What fruit can we put in them? When we mess with the fermentation temperature, how does that change it? Are we barrel aging them? What kind of barrel are we using? I mean, the possibilities are endless with Saison. Exactly. In a lot of ways, it can be a blank canvas. But to give some background, why don't we roll back a little bit and look at the origins of the style. Farmhouse is a word that you'll hear associated with Saisons quite a bit because traditionally, this was a type of beer that rather than being brewed by professional brewers, it was brewed at farms especially in the south of Belgium in the region known as Wallonia, a French speaking portion of Belgium near the French border. because of that, you'll see some popularity of Saisons in France as well as Belgium. Brewed by farmers, a means of utilizing their harvest. Grain would of course be used for bread, but you'd use some of the access, maybe the grain that was leftover, things that weren't quite as high quality. This was a good way for you to still utilize that, transform it into something that you could keep. Served a lot of functions. By brewing a beer, you had spent grain that you could feed to the livestock, and then the beer itself was a beer that you would store and keep until you needed it next summer and early fall, when you would be hiring on seasonal workers or saisonniers Is the thing they say about alcohol on these true? Lower alcohol, so your employees don't get super hammered and have to nap the afternoon? What we see as saisons now are probably a little higher alcohol than they originally were. You bring up a good point. You don't want all your workers to pass out in the field. You don't. No, I don't either. Typically, in just the theme of the day here is that there are no rules sort of what stays on. So when people brew the style these days, they can really be anywhere between like 3.5% alcohol all the way up to 10. So that pretty much covers the whole gamut. So again, it can be frustrating. Saison is a beer style that's so hard to say that it's your favorite or it's a beer that you enjoy drinking because it's so all over the map. You could have an American interpretation of a Saison that's boozy and sweet and really high alcohol. And then you could try a Belgian example that's very low alcohol, super dry, very effervescent. Really opposite ends of the spectrum. Saison's almost completely fell off the map by the 1970s. There were really only two that remained. And if you mention the word Saison, there's a good chance that you're going to think of Brasserie Dupont. So we're going to go ahead and give this a try. This is by far the most classic example of a Saison that exists on the market today. Guys, when Roger just pulled that cork, this explosion of what it looked like steam springing out of the bottle. So cork and cage, when people talk about the champagne of beers, I would say that before Miller High Life ever existed, blasphemy, Belgium had this well down. Saisons are very effervescent, very champagne-like, sort of like Gooses and Lambics. We talked about those in a previous podcast. By no means as sour as those, but the level of effervescence, the glass that I just poured here, you've got this nice tall thick head of foam here. It's very dense, it's very nice and lasting. It's not dissipating. One of the classic characteristics of these that's displayed, especially in this example here from Saison Dupont, is that these beers are bottle-conditioned. Bottle conditioning is something that I think we've unfortunately really moved away from. Well, I mean, it's time-consuming and expensive, to be fair. Yeah. And this is America. And people are afraid of the chunks of yeast floating around in your beer, like I have right here in front of me. You should have just poured all foam like me, then you wouldn't have chunks of yeast. There's a bizarre emphasis right now on drinking hyper fresh beer, almost to the point of silliness. We need to drink a beer the day it's canned. This is kind of the antithesis of that, in that bottle-conditioned beers are living beer. They're a beer that's bottled with active yeast in the bottle, which is why a lot of them are packaged in these thicker glass 750 ml, the kind of bottle you'd see a sparkling wine in. The cork in the cage isn't just for pomp and circumstance, it's a pressure release valve, so should something go awry and it really is too over carbonated, you'd see the top blow off, hopefully, before the bottle would explode. But when you bottle condition, the breweries typically take the beer and then put it into a warm room and let it condition in the brewery for a period of weeks, depending on the beer style, it could even be months before it's even shipped to market. And then by the time it sees the states, it's had even further time to evolve and develop in the bottle. because of this, there's lots of benefits. The yeast have a scavenging ability to prevent if there is any oxygen in there. It's going to evolve and protect itself from oxidation a bit. Probably the most important thing, though, is that the level of carbonation can be high, but it also is very fine carbonation. It's well integrated and it's very small bubbles. They're very mousse-like, very champagne-like. Yeah, just like in a Method Champagne Wax. Exactly. So go ahead and give this a try, guys. Cheers. As always, smell the bouquet first on beer. Smell with your mouth open. You look ridiculous, but it's a whole different experience. Roger, it's probably worth pointing out. This used to ship in green glass, but it's in a brown bottle right now. If they're much distressed and people were really begging them, don't put this beer in green glass, I think they still do put it in both green and brown. We have thankfully been seeing mostly brown glass now. The photosensitive reaction that produces a skunked beer is because of clear green glass. So it's very nice to see this in brown glass now, so you're not drinking. Yeah, they probably still use green glass over in Europe where you pay deposits on the bottles and they reuse all the bottles, stuff like that. But no, Saison Dupont also, we're drinking it out of the 750s. It is also available in four packs of 11.2 ounce bottles, which is nice. So if you don't feel the need to sit down with a whole bomber and drink it at one time, the smaller bottle is an option. But the beautiful thing about a traditional Belgian Saison that's nice and dry like this one, is that these are some of the most complex yet also refreshing and drinkable beers that you'll ever try. So are most people buying these bigger bottles to drink it all and once sitting by themselves or to share it? I think both. I think it's probably more of a sharing thing when they're in the big bottle. They're particularly well suited for restaurants and bars that, you know, this is a great dinner beer. Michael Jackson, the famous beer writer, not the king of pop, was kind of the entire reason that we know this beer and that it's so popular. He loved this beer. He fell in love with it. The brewery that makes it, Brasserie Dupont, was actually known for a different beer for Moinet, which is a Belgian golden ale. And when he tried this beer, he said, this is the beer that I think is, you know, your most amazing beer and it's woefully under appreciated. And it was something like 2% of what they brewed. It was totally inconsequential to them. But they're very proud of it nonetheless. And it had a great heritage with the farm community and whatnot with the past. So he fell in love with it. He championed it. And one of the things that he loved about it was, you know, how well it paired with this myriad of foods. And kind of the gentleman that's most famous, we had the pleasure of having him on a podcast, Garrett Oliver, for food and beer pairings. I always liked his analogy for Saison's is that if you're kind of overwhelmed with the idea of food and beer pairing, you're not quite sure if what you picked was the right thing. He would call Saison's the Swiss army knife of beer pairings. They really almost pair with anything out there. They're so estery and peppery. There's so many nuanced flavors in there. They're bitter-bacious. They're nice and dry, but not too bitter. They really work with almost everything. This is a cheese beer. This is a fish beer. This goes great with a salad, with a vinaigrette. The possibilities are endless with this beer. Yeah. You want to talk about it. At first, when I smelled it, I thought I picked up some of that skunky quality that I associate with it, but it might just be the style of the beer. It seems to have blown off, and then I picked it up again at the very finish. It's a very yeasty beer. Yeasty beer, and then a little bit of grain forward, a little bit of peachy fruit. I think part of what people perceive in this and some other Belgian style ales is the skunkiness is really the hop selection. These beers are brewed with traditional European hops, which for the most part, I would put in the spectrum of grassy and herbaceous. They're very different from the newer hops that people are talking about now in IPAs that are crazy fruit forward. You're not going to have any tropical fruit flavors. Juice life, bro. Juice life. Yeah. This is the old school hop, the hops that's going to remind you of walking through your garden as opposed to a juice bar. You're going to get a little bit of that earthiness and an herb garden from these hops. They're definitely not piney or citrusy. There's a little bit of citrus, but not like the grapefruit peel. It's so common in so many American varieties. There are a handful of American breweries that have built their bent around Belgian style beers. We still see a few small nano artisan American producers that tend to do a corking cage. Sometimes they'll even do it in a 375 as opposed to a 750. But it's like Pat said earlier, bottle conditioning and especially corking cage is more money, more work. It's a whole different investment. So you need to know that you have an audience there that's willing to understand the difference and willing to pay a premium. Now, but on the opposite end of that spectrum, Saison is an easier style of beer to brew because the yeast is so forgiving. It's easier to brew, but it's harder to master, I would say. But Saison yeast famously ferments at very high temperatures, and that's why they were able to make it into the spring and enjoy it in the summer when it was still a fresh beer. Saison yeast is just durable and hardy, and if a start-up craft brewer or something could even have non-temperature controlled fermentation and make Saisons. A little more science has been employed into looking into Saison yeast because it's so voracious and it can operate at these bizarrely high temperatures and some Saison yeasts are now labeled as diastatic yeast. Diastatic yeast is a type of yeast, but it's not a Britannomyces. Correct. And that's why when they test for Britannomyces, it comes up negative for Britannomyces and they're like, what the f***, why is our beer still blowing up? A really nice Saison is refreshingly dry, super crisp, super well attenuated. So attenuated is not necessarily a word you hear every day, but it's a good beer vocab word to learn. It refers to the level of fermentation that's been completed in the beer in regard to residual sugar that's left in the beer. So whereas, let's say, a pastry stout, that would be one of the most popular styles right now, is thick and rich and super sweet, that is not a well attenuated beer. That would be one end of the spectrum. And then something like the Saison we just drank would be a nice, really bone dry example. So Roger, that was one of the iconic benchmark examples of the style. Absolutely. Where are we going to go from there? We are going to try another one from the same brewery. Why is that so loud? Really? Oh, my God. Keep that in because the pressure in this is some of the highest pressure in any beer that's bottled. So this is the Saison Dupont Cuvee Dry Hopping Edition, where each year they change up the hops. So this one is Styrian Eureka Variety. Jay, have you ever had Saison Dupont before? You had to have it some time ago. Actually, Jay worked for Binny's way back in the day when our beer selection was probably the size of our current Amaro selection or something, right? As far as imported craft beer, stuff like this. But this has always been a mainstay that Saison Dupont. That's right. I mean, if you're going to look for a Cadillac producer and this is it. Roger, when I'm in the aisles talking to some of our beer customers, what should I be looking for when they're describing the types of products that they want to enjoy? The neat thing about Saison is that this beer appeals to maybe the widest audience of any beer I can style, I can think of. In fact, Men's Journal declared this the finest- haunted academic publication. Yes. It's funny but it's relevant. Men's Journal said this was the greatest beer in the world. So we saw quite a few people coming in when they published that, asking about it, and I think part of the reason that they gave it that award was that if you look at this in color, in head, it's something that people can wrap their mind around when they just think of beer in general. If they're familiar with the most common beer types that exist, it'd be things like lagers. It looks kind of like a lager. It's a little hazy, doesn't have that clarity of something that, you know, would be like a more macro-type lager. But from what you've tasted so far, it's dry, it's not too hoppy, so it's not crazy bitter, especially when IPAs used to be bitter. It wasn't overly malty. It's not particularly sweet. It's very refreshing. Yet because of that yeast that we've been talking about, this kind of magical shrouded in a bit of mystery, what exactly are these yeasts here that throw such crazy esters and phenolics? That's what's giving it a lot of that complexity that you were talking about earlier. You can tell this, especially aromatically, it's a very complex beer. Well, getting back to who's drinking it too, this has always been described as a beer for wine drinkers too. because it's on the drier side, because it has some fruit, it has some spice, it's got a yeast character that a champagne drinker would love. People who are looking for a refreshing beer but are still looking for complexity are often drawn to Saison, at least classically. Now we have things like Brut IPA and stuff too. But if you're getting a little worn out on those crazy fruity American hops, like come back to Saison because there's a lot of excellent complexity within the subtlety of the flavor that's perfect for warm weather. I think Roger hit it on the head. The customer who is drinking a lager and is used to those kinds of flavors, this is like that only amplified. It picks up a lot of those complexities that ales kind of bypass, and they're more, I don't know, I think they're more like a blunt force of flavor, whereas a lager like all these other notes that it picks up. A term that's used a lot to describe Saisons, especially the traditional Dupont varieties, is elegant. So that would speak to what Pat was saying with wines. The most classic description is that this is a beer for wine people, but I don't like that in a lot of ways because I think it's a little antiquated. It implies that wine drinkers are superior, and that's the old cliche that I can't stand. This is a very elegant, very complex beer that yes will appeal to wine drinkers, but we've come a long way with beer. There are a lot of complex beers out there, and I think they'll really appreciate this. There's a good chance that a lot of listeners have had a Saison that they've not enjoyed. I've had more Saisons that I hated than Saisons that I love. I tend to like the more traditional interpretation of Saisons as opposed to the American ones. There are many more examples of American Saisons than traditional Belgian ones. I've had so many sweet, boozy, soapy, overly spiced, overly done Saisons. I've also had some phenomenal Saisons made by American producers. So it is, I would argue, the most rewarding and frustrating beer style that exists. Roger, can I counter what you just said a little bit? Sure. It's a canvas and you can do a lot with it. I've had some exciting ones. I've also had some light struck, tastes like a Heineken that got left out on the porch, funky, gross old world ones. Well, the other thing that we should mention here. Which one do you think people are more likely to have experienced and not liked? Yeah. I said most people have probably had Saisons that they didn't enjoy with the caveat being that Saison Dupont's the canonical example. There's a good chance they at least had Saison Dupont and hopefully enjoyed that. One of the other things that's interesting about this is that Saison Dupont says Belgian Farmhouse Ale underneath the label here. In the United States, when you see the word farmhouse, it almost always connotates wild fermentation, wild yeast. We've had Saisons that are funk bombs. There's ones that are super Brett forward. They might have used Brett exclusively as the yeast strain. That can take it down a completely different direction. BJCP guidelines say Brett is not a traditional characteristic of this style, but there's tons of really funky Saison. Those guys are sticks in the mud. What I want to talk about is the second Saison you passed around, is a different Saison Dupont. This beer is rock in my world right now. This is so much better than the regular Saison Dupont, which I would never ever thought I would say. I would say the Dupont special holiday one that they do, a Vec Le Bon Vos, I think is definitely the gold standard of Saison. But I haven't had this one in a couple of years, and this one is blowing my mind right now, Roger. Say what this is again. Saison Dupont Dry Hopping Edition. This lit me up too. This was the 2018 or the 2019? This is actually the 2017. Holy ****, this beer has so much hop aroma left. It tastes so fresh. It's a little bit of amplified fruit too. There's a lot of banana ester, but the peach and the stone fruit quality is just big. What do different tops make? Wow, this beer is awesome. What do we sell this beer for? Off the top of your head? $10.99. Something very affordable and very reasonable. Roger, what can a consumer look at on the label that would give him some indications of what to expect when he opens it up? So looking for bottle conditioning is a good marker. So all the beers that we're trying today, we had two from Dupont. We're going to try two excellent American examples. They're all bottle conditioned. Sometimes people think that bottle conditioning requires the cork and the cage. You can bottle condition in the normal kind of traditional looking glass bottles, or these are a little thicker glass. But bottle conditioning, like I said before, that's going to improve the shelf life, the ageability, it also is going to affect that carbonation level, and the feel of it, the mouthfeel. You should also look for ABV, so we're going to try Tank 7, which would be one of, definitely one of the more Americanized examples of the style. It's pushing the upper limits ABV wise, so this one's 8.5. You don't really perceive it. It's a very dangerous beer, but it is much stronger. Whereas like this Allagash Saison, we're going to try, it's also going to be, this one's a little lower alcohol, it's 6.1. So those are always good cursors. I would also look and see if it says it adds spices or herbs. Sometimes people write that on the label. It's also worth maybe asking one of our consultants, or if they divulge it on the bottle or the packaging, if it uses wild yeast. So you'd be looking for things like pertanomyosis. That would probably be the only thing they would write on there. Yeah, I mean, and also fruit too. I mean, like we had mentioned earlier with American craft producers, so many of them add, you know, fruited Saison is a huge thing now. And you look at producers like Casey out in Colorado, or, you know, all these guys making some of these more sought after, really hyped up small batch stuff, they're using a lot of different fruits. Again, because the Saison yeast is so versatile. Yeah, that's a good point. So the next one we're trying is from Allagash in Maine. They have a great reputation of making Belgian-inspired beers. Most of their beers, even if they're not exactly Belgian, they try to utilize Belgian-style yeast. They're famous for their Belgian white beer. It's kind of considered the canonical example, like the one if you're going to have a Belgian white and you want to know what that should taste like, Allagash white. They make some excellent saisons, and they finally said, you know, we don't really have like an everyday saison. So, they made one that they just called simply Allagash Saison. So, we're having Allagash Saison. Yep. And it's worth pointing out too that those two Belgian from Saison Dupont examples, they both poured basically clear, and Roger poured first, and his was like yellow clear. I poured from the middle of the bottle, and I had a little bit of yeast and funky stuff floating through. This one from Allagash is like cream corn color. It's translucent at best. Is that stylistically like what they're shooting for? But there's way less like floaties, way many fewer floaties. With these beers, because they were farmhouse style, I mean, you're not a modern brewery by any sense of the word traditionally. So again, it's up to the brewery to filter or brew with whatever kind of grains they desire. It's not uncommon for these beers to be brewed with things like wheat, oats, spelt. If you do a wheat or oats famously, that's what's in a lot of the real hazy IPAs and whatnot. Vice beers, you think of those with wheat. Is there any of that? This had initially some grainy note that I couldn't really put my finger on. It's a good question. I believe so, yes. It's not particularly spicy, but it's got a bit of a creaminess to it, so I could see that. Yeah, you get creaminess and more higher toned citric fruit. Yeah. That could just be the hops too though. I mean, if they're using American hops, you're going to get probably a little more of that classic citrus character, that grapefruity thing. I think one of the very classic characteristics of a good saison is that it's very peppery. Again, I think you should rely on a good yeast strain to deliver that. You don't really need to put peppercorns or grains of paradise or something in there, but some breweries have. I think this Allagash, if you give it a smell, definitely has a pronounced peppery character to it. Roger, who are some of the new producers of saison that you really like? Yeah, that's a hard one for him. There's definitely some good stuff that is available. It depends on our store. Maybe call first, see if they have it in stock. We have Ale Apothecary now, which are expensive, but I've heard that brewery referred to as the kings of American saison. We get Logs and Farmhouse Ales out of Oregon. The Blackberry Farm stuff out of there in Tennessee or something. Those are outstanding and those are a little come and go. These are all beers that are usually around 18 bucks a bottle or something, but they are phenomenal. Logs and Saison is an excellent one. They have a breaded version of that. So with Britannomyasis, that's particularly nice. What did you guys think of the Allagash? I like the Allagash. It is no dry hopped Dupont. I will never again call anything fair. Unless it is dry hopped Saison Dupont. Yeah, it just seems like the bland version. It's definitely like the American version of Saison. Yeah, I never want to speak badly about my beloved Allagash, but this is a very good American Saison, but it's not as good as this Dupont. Roger, what's next on the Hit Parade? This is Boulevard Tank 7. Boulevard's brewmaster, Stephen Powell, is from Belgium. So he is going to give it his best when he does a traditional example of something, and their Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale is definitely one of the most recognized examples of the Saison variety in the US. So this was there before the Duval influence, right? Correct. A major Belgian producer bought Boulevard, but they've been making this style, so what did that just make them an attractive target in the first place? Yeah, it's pretty funny. It was, I've said it once, I'll say it again, America saves all these styles that Europe is apparently too stupid to appreciate. Yeah, take that Europe. He has that trash. American drinkers and Europe. Yeah, nobody's safe. I love the soft, ripe fruit on this. It smells like tropical fruit and also creamed corn. But it smells like, I get stone fruit that's gotten a little too soft to not be able to eat without getting juice all over your hands, but it still tastes really good. I think that's spot on. There's a peach quality to this. It's really cool. Especially because again, everything we've tasted today is just yeast, grain, hops. Love me some Allagash, but this puts Allagash on its ass. This beer is awesome. The other thing that's great about this beer, it's seen a couple of different format changes over the years, and they just went for it and put it in a six pack now. You're getting an 8.5 percent exceptionally well made. Party time. Yeah. For like 13 bucks. That is a pretty amazing value. Do you think there's a difference between a Saison in a can and a Saison in a bottle? Do you think it matters? That's a good question. I don't know the exact ratings, but I would say that typically, if you're going to deal with these extreme volumes of CO2 pressure, it's some of the highest of any style on the market. It definitely, its home is in a bottle like this. I mean, you can't bottle condition in a can. I mean, well, a couple of people can condition supposedly, don't they? Yeah. But it's not with the kind of level. Yeah. I mean, I was in a brewery in Belgium maybe like five or six years ago, and we got to see their bottle conditioning warehouse. It is like three times as big as any cold storage I've seen in an American brewery, and it just sits there at like 72 degrees or something, and the bottle sit there for two, three months or something. This is at Van Steenberg. They make like Gouldendrock and things like that. Roger, I noticed there's more mouth feel to this style. Would that be related to the alcohol? Yeah, for sure. Also, the grain bill. I believe this is made with a little bit of corn. There's an idea that since you're calling this a farmhouse ale, it would be made with whatever grains the farmers grew. And I think as an homage to being part of the Midwest, they kind of wanted to put a little corn in there, since it's such a staple grain of the heartland. So I think you're getting a little bit of that sweetness from maybe there. But yeah, mouth feel wise, it's a little bit of a bigger beer. Roger, I think I'm sold on Cezannes. It's a really cool style. And I'm hoping that people, if you haven't tried it, obviously I want you to. But especially for people that have tried it and thought it wasn't for me, they were too spicy, too soapy, too sweet, too funky, because kind of their strong suit can also be their downfall. I think it's tough looking at the shelf. You see these bottles, they're not as impactful as hundreds of the other beers on the shelves. They look boring. There's no can of an otter. I don't know if you've noticed that. No, there's no superhero. I was about to make that real dirty and there's just no reason. Yeah, there's no superheroes on it. I mean, there's no clever names on these really. I mean, Tank 7 is the tank that they used to brew this beer. Yeah, it's the one fermenter that they dedicated to this beer. Allagash is literally just called Saison and it's an orange label. Anyway, but Pat brought up a good point. I didn't bring up some of the... I'm sure there's some local examples of Saisons that are nice. I try with some of these to go back in time a little bit and go back to some of the basics. And I think that that unfortunately is something we've moved a little bit away from these days. I'm all for what's new, what's brutal on the block. But I think that sometimes you need to get the basics down before you start going off the rails. All right, folks, so here's what happened. Roger only wanted to pour the classics, but the rest of us mutinied. So Pat ran out and got a couple modern examples that Roger's probably gonna hate, but we'll see, you know, give the old Pepsi Challenge what we think. All right, so at random. And they're warm. And they're warm. Damn it! The bottle erupted. Roger's gonna be mad at me about this for literally nine damn months. Well, that's pretend my sis, I stink like a barnyard now. I'm so right in my crotch too. That's great. Roger's gonna like pass me on the highway, like struggling to change a tire later this evening. And he's just gonna drive by, just be like that. So this is Oxbow Crossfade. It's in a handsome bottle and it poured all over Roger. And it definitely breathed forward. It's hay, barnyard, a little bit of lemon. This tastes like a bathroom that just got cleaned with like bad cleaning supplies. Wow. It does sound kind of cleaning solvent-y. That is the descriptor we use quite a bit when we try beers that has unfortunately like a bathroom smell. because it combines that body odor, waste product and citrus. The part that didn't explode pours a bit like a watery Tropicana pineapple orange combination blend. You can see what they were trying for, and then it just has this poopy undertone. It just undermines the whole thing. Remember how Roger didn't want to point out the flaw in the other one when I had it? This one, he's just all excited to talk about all the things that are wrong with it. Well, to be fair, he's wearing most of it. Yeah. He's got a smiley gethers. Yeah. That literally volcanoed all over me. So I think it- That should open the next one. Yeah, that should open the next one. Get the trash can though. This is a tarp. You think this is my first rodeo? I'm not about to just open a warm American-made Saison right in front of me and not expect this to happen. What do you think I am, Roger? All right. So this is Trinity Brewing Velvet Ear, Dry Hopped Naked Saison. If it's dry hopped, can it still be naked? because the regular one is called Naked Ear. I went out to the store here and I got the dustiest bottle of Saison I could find, which happened to be this Trinity Velvet Ear. There was like three bottles left. I don't know when it was bottled. By the way, a bottle that's dusty because it's been on the shelf a long time isn't always an indictment of the bottle. So it's an indictment of the consumer because we've had some really good beers language. Oh, yeah. But it also doesn't mean, I mean, listen, it's a big retail store with commercial HVAC units. I mean, dust blows around. Right. This smells interesting. This smells nice. Also a little bit not nice. Citrus and spice right here. This isn't too bad. I like the taste. I don't like the nose. Am I blind to the solvent flavor that you're talking about? I mean, this is some classic Brett characteristics again. A lot of black pepper and green, white pepper kind of. More so green and white pepper than black. I wanted to like it just to prove Brophy wrong. This is not bad. I think it's okay. I think I wouldn't be surprised. I like it better than the Allagash. Is that okay to say? Yeah, why not? I like that it's a little lighter on its feet than the Allagash. Yeah, it's okay for this room to not reach a consensus. I think that it's okay. I'm not picking up too much of the solvent chemical. I am picking up a little bit of mushed up peach and a little bit of lemon custard, not with acidity but sweetness and roundness, and then a little bit of pepper. It fits in the category to me. I mean, the Bret's here though. I mean, it's worth mentioning that if you're not acclimated to Bret, this is still going to be barnyard-y to you. I think I would argue that anyone listening to this podcast is probably, and listening to a beer podcast, still listening, is probably acclimated to Bret. I think we should, I think that's fair. Well, Pat, I was going to say this has got that mouthfeel, again, that I think is a little bit more significant. Is that, again, related to the alcohol? Well, that's so many different factors, though. That could be alcohol, that could be grain bill, that could be residual sugars affect mouthfeel. Carbonation itself in beer is a huge factor in mouthfeel. You wouldn't think it, but a beer with more carbonation, with finer bubbles like this, tends to have a creamier mouthfeel, even though it's, in theory, more effervescent, right, Roger? Yeah, for sure. So if you were to line this one up with the classics that you wanted to really showcase the style, you think it's at least within the category? Yeah, for sure. This definitely is a nice example of one of the Americanized Saisons now, where they like the idea of having a little bit of wild funkiness to them. There is no doubt in that on a working farm, there's going to be some bread. Bread is on all fruit. It's very prevalent, and if you were going to age something in a wooden barrel, there'd probably be some bread. So if you want to add the complexity of bread, which can help make beers nice and dry, tends to make them a little peppery. It fits very well in with the Saison. It can be nice. And whereas the Allagash is trying to appeal obviously to a broader audience, and it might seem a little more vanilla, this one's a little more complex, more for somebody that's tried a few more beers. Well, I was going to jump in and say, I am not a serious beer drinker, but I think it's opened my eyes to some new styles. And I think we're coming to a time of year where this would be a great beer to pick up and put in the picnic bag and bring it because it would pair with so many different types of foods. Really liked it. Thanks a lot. And definitely make your wine drinking friends try it. This is a great beer to give to people that drink wine and just blanket go, I don't like beer, which is I said before like saying you don't like food. There are a million different kinds of food, just there are cuisines, same thing with beer. There's millions of different kinds of beers, ways to interpret them. Saison is a very unique style. And as we went over, it can be interpreted a lot of different ways. And wine enthusiasts definitely are going to find some things to like here. Folks, that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer your questions for a $20 Binny's gift card. Email us your questions at commentsatbinnys.com or hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, social media of your choice. At Binny's Bev. At Binny's Bev. Our question this week comes from Will. Will was hanging out at Berman Women Nights, stopped by the booth. Thanks for coming by, Will. Yeah, he says, Back in the 90s, when I was getting into beer, small production places were called microbreweries. Currently, they're called craft breweries. Is there a difference between the two or is this marketing? Marketing, boo. Hey. Some of it actually is just bickering about quantifications for what qualifies. So in a lot of ways, craft was a nice way to focus more on the quality of the product and less on how many barrels of beer do you produce per year. So back then, we hadn't started calling it craft yet, and any brewery that wasn't Bud Miller Coors was essentially labeled as a microbrewery. As those beers grew bigger and bigger, Sam Adams is making a couple of million barrels of beer a year, whatever now. New Belgium was pushing a million, Sierra Nevada is over a million. So as these breweries grew bigger and bigger, we adopted the word craft because it's hard to take a multinational organization like Boston Beer Company or something and say like, yeah, this is micro. We're going to call this a microbrewery. It is worth mentioning that people do say the word nano now. That kind of is a hip thing. So if you're a really tiny brewery, especially people don't seem to like the term brewpub anymore, even though a lot of them are basically taprooms that are very brewpub-esque. Nano brewery is popular to say, or like you visit the taproom at this nano brewery. Bring on the Pico brews. I only drink it if it was made in somebody's garage that they sublet. Thanks for the question, Will. I hope that's $20 worth of answer to you. Everybody else can e-mail your questions to us at comments at binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Buff on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Roger, thanks for sharing the Saisons. Yeah. I wish the last one had exploded on you. Also, thanks for wearing the Saisons. Perfect. Thanks as always, Roger. Your Cyclopedia of Knowledge is incredible and we enjoyed tasting these beers. Well, I think Jay and I did. We enjoyed nitpicking them. What color would you like your rocking chair to be, Roger? Give Saisons a try. It's a great beer style. Thanks for listening. I'm Hillary. I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Jay's still here. Keep tasting.