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Saison is a Belgian farmhouse beer style known for its phenolic yeast character, but brewing a great one requires a lot more than the right yeast. Learn how to brew this unique, hard-to-define style, and find clone recipes for some of the best commercial examples. Plus: Fermented foods, Munich helles, low-ABV meads, adjusting pH with sauergut, and more!
Saison is a beer style that is hard to pin down. It can be brewed with different ingredients, vary in color, be sour or not, and there are many yeast strains recommended for the style. Though they have commonalities from complexity, flavors of spice and earth, and finishing extremely dry with lots of carbonation. Drew Beechum explores what makes a saison a saison and, more importantly, how to brew a great one.
We’ve picked six of the top saisons brewed around the world, including ones from Belgium, France, and the U.S., and have gotten the brewers to share their tips and recipes for replicating them.
Beer and other beverages aren’t the only things you can ferment at home. We outline the essential equipment and techniques to help you get started with fermented foods, with recipes for pickles, sauerkraut, and hot sauce.
Not all mead has to be over 12% ABV. Hydromels are more similar to your average beer strength, making them a great mead to have around. They’re also less expensive and quicker to make!
For those seeking a light, easy-drinking, malty yet balanced beer style perfect for the summer, look no further than Munich helles. The recipe can be as basic as a single malt and single hop, or be a bit more complex if you want it to stand out.
A homebrewer shares his invention that allows him to keep brewing all-grain batches while also not missing out on spending time with his family on the weekends. After setting up the AutoBrewer, he’s able to walk away and come back when the brew day is complete to clean up.
Logboat Brewing Co.’s head brewer stresses the importance of cleanliness, proper pitch rate, and temperature control when brewing their mild brown ale that has been a staple at the brewery since opening in 2014.
Malt is covered with Lactobacillus, which means you can use it to make a Lactobacillus starter to adjust your mash or boil pH. This practice of creating sauergut is common in Germany as it adheres to the Reinheitsgebot. But there are other benefits beyond meeting Germany’s Beer Purity Law that homebrewers may want to consider.
Brewing ingredients are more expensive when you brew beer on an island. One way to cut costs is to use ingredients native to the land, including yeast. Learn how a brewery on the French island of La Réunion isolated a strain with great brewing characteristics that has since been brought to market across Europe and beyond.
It really doesn’t get any simpler than this. From start to finish, you can get this mead rolling in 20 minutes, and that includes sanitizing the fermenter!
This recipe is from Danny Stahl, a member of the Maltose Falcons. The resulting mead is approachable and dangerously drinkable.
This mild brown ale became a day-one staple, and one of four beers in the Logboat’s core lineup when it opened in 2014.
One small cabbage and some salt will create a quart of delicious fermented sauerkraut.
Ferment your own hot sauce with a basic recipe using your favorite hot peppers, or a habanero berry sauce with zing.
Founder Daniel Thiriez started his brewery with one thing in mind — to bring farmhouse brewing back to France and French Flanders in particular.
A saison recipe with foraged nettle greens and wild carrot.
Saisonolatry is a traditional saison utilizing two dry yeasts to get a unique flavor.
My recipe is fairly conventional, with just a few tweaks to the malt bill and yeast choice to boost maltiness.
Brasserie de Ranke helped bring back bitterness and hops to Belgian beer.
A seemingly simple saison brewed with elderflowers that is amazing in its depth and complexity.
Fermentory Form falls squarely in the “American Farmhouse” category by barrel aging to give just a bit of wild yeast character and complexity.
An 8.5% ABV saison with coriander, orange peel, and black pepper additions.
By day 3 or 4 the pH should be below the 4.0 safety threshold, and by day 5 with a pH of around 3.3–3.6.
I want to brew an IPA with pronounced floral flavors as I remember them being in the 1980s.
There is a lot to digest with pH. Here is what homebrewers need to know to brew great beer without going overboard with lab work.
Do you really need to flush the fermenter with CO2 before adding wort to dip hops? Why can’t the hops be agitated?
