On tap: Now’s the season for saison

Photo by lindsey gee via Flickr

While it may seem untimely to discuss a beer style associated with finer weather as the summer draws to a close, I’d still like to draw attention to a style of beer that is perfectly suited to quashing summer thirst: saison.

It’s a perfect match for hot weather, and it’s also a taste that beer lovers are seeking out in greater numbers year-round. Happily, the growing popularity of saison is reflected in an ever-widening selection of offerings by Quebec’s craft breweries and brewpubs.

Saison offers drinkability without sacrificing intense flavours and rich complexity. Like German and Belgian wheat beers, also known as blanches here in Quebec, saison derives much of its character from Belgian yeast strains. Where witbiers almost universally offer a soft, even creamy mouth feel coupled with spicy and citrusy aromas and flavours, saison is bit harder to pin down and is arguably a more complex beer style.

Contemporary saison can be a difficult category of beers to describe, but a few broad characteristics apply to most.

First and foremost — and this is what makes the style a great drinker — saisons tend to be dry, sometimes very dry, in a similar way to Brut Champagne. This is mostly because the yeast used to ferment saison, when handled correctly, tends to consume a greater portion of sugars than is typical of most beers, leaving less residual sweetness.

Saisons also often offer a firm, moderate-to-high hop bitterness that offsets what remaining sweetness there is. Many saisons also feature low to moderate acidity that comes across as a pleasant tartness. Finally, it’s traditionally re-fermented in the bottle at a higher level of carbonation than most beers, so it tends to introduce itself to the palette with a pleasant “pop.”

Apart from this perceived dryness, the other main attribute saisons share is an array of yeast-driven flavours, many of which are found in various other Belgian beer styles. These include spicy, fruity and earthy flavours.

These characteristics make saison a great complement to a variety of foods. The dryness, bitterness, tartness and lively carbonation allow the beer to cut through fatty foods like dense meats, or even deep-fried foods. At the same time, the spicy and fruity flavours can match those found in various Asian cuisines that are typically paired with wine.

Where to find good saisons

If you’d like to try saison on tap, I’d suggest visiting Benelux (245 Sherbrooke W.), where at least one fine interpretation of the style is often on offer. Also of note, Réservoir (9 Duluth E.) recently released a bottle-conditioned saison that features Tettnang (Germany) and American Citra hops. The 750-mL bottles hit the mark for lively carbonation, and the mix of old- and new-world hop flavours comes through beautifully.

Bottle options are plentiful in the city’s better craft beer dépanneurs. Brasserie Charlevoix came out with a finely executed traditional saison just in time for June’s Mondiale de la bière. Part of their Dominus Vobiscum series, it’s perhaps as close as you can get to Belgium’s Brasserie Dupont’s Vieille Provision, widely seen as the defining example of the style. The SAQ should be chided for dropping Dupont from their shelves a couple of years ago, but alas, it’s just one of many failures on their part when it comes to beer.

Bilboquet’s Champêtre is a very quenching blond beer with orange highlights that features a cooling lactic tartness. Hopfenstark offers several saisons under the numbered Station series — Station 7 is light, tart and citrusy, while 55 features more hop flavour and bitterness than any of the other beers mentioned here. Brasseurs du Monde’s Tradition could be considered somewhat of an outlier among Quebec’s saisons, with its distinctive caramel flavours and darker colour, yet these are offset by its relatively approachable alcohol content of 5.2 per cent  (the other saisons I’ve mentioned range from 6 to 7 per cent).

Saison’s drinkability makes it an accessible beer style, yet its interpretations remain diverse and complex enough to keep the attention of the most committed beer lovers. ■