Saison (

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, "season," ) is a

pale ale Pale ale is a golden to amber coloured beer style brewed with pale malt. The term first appeared around 1703 for beers made from malts dried with high-carbon coke, which resulted in a lighter colour than other beers popular at that time. Diff ...

that is highly carbonated, fruity, spicy, and often bottle conditioned. It was historically brewed with low alcohol levels, but modern productions of the style have moderate to high levels of alcohol. Along with several other varieties, it is generally classified as a farmhouse ale.

History

'Bière de saison' is first mentioned in the early 19th century. It was most widely known as a beer from the industrial city of

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

, where it was brewed by professional breweries as a keepable version of the city's spelt beer that had been produced for a few centuries. It was made with malted

spelt Spelt (''Triticum spelta''), also known as dinkel wheat or hulled wheat, is a species of wheat that has been cultivated since approximately 5000 BC. Spelt was an important staple food in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. No ...

, unmalted wheat and only a small amount of barley malt. It was typically brewed in winter and drunk after four to six months. While Liège's saison disappeared after the First World War, it continued to be brewed, generally as a barley-only beer, by professional breweries in the province of Hainaut, who sold it as a 'cuvée réservée' luxury beer, which was 'to be served at room temperature like a good wine' and 'to be poured with care'. In the late 1980s,

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

importer Don Feinberg was urged by beer writer Michael Jackson to import

Brasserie Dupont Dupont Brewery (in French: ''Brasserie Dupont'') is a brewery in Tourpes (Leuze-en-Hainaut), in western Hainaut, Belgium. Founded in 1950, it is on a working farm which dates back to 1759 and has significant brewing history. In the 1990s, a bre ...

's saison to the United States. It was Feinberg who re-styled saison as a 'farmhouse ale':'' 'People asked: is it a wheat beer? Is it a lambic? I told them it was a hoppy farmhouse ale.' '' Saison's reputation was further cemented by Phil Markowski's 2004 book ''Farmhouse ales'' and has since become a popular beer style worldwide. It was however only these developments in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s that cemented saison's reputation as a 'farmhouse ale': in older sources it is never indicated as such and though there has been a limited tradition in Belgium of brewing on farms or brewing for farm workers, it seems to have been conflated with saison only from the 1980s onwards.Roger Pinon, ‘Recettes de bières de ménage en Wallonie et subsidiairement en Picardie’, in: Studium et museum. Mélanges Edouard Remouchamps, volume I, Liège 1996, p. 103-122. Modern saisons are not exclusively brewed seasonally anymore. Generally they are highly carbonated, fruity and spicy — sometimes from the addition of spices.

Composition

The type of

malt Malt is germinated cereal grain that has been dried in a process known as " malting". The grain is made to germinate by soaking in water and is then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air. Malted grain is used to make beer, wh ...

determines the color of the saison, and although most saisons are of a cloudy golden color as result of the grist being mostly pale or pilsner malt, the use of darker malts results in some saisons being reddish-amber. Some recipes also use wheat. Spices such as orange zest,

coriander Coriander (;

, and

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices ...

may be used. Some spice character may come through due to the production of esters during

fermentation Fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substrates through the action of enzymes. In biochemistry, it is narrowly defined as the extraction of energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. In food ...

at warm temperatures. Modern examples brewed in the US tend to copy the yeast used by the

Dupont Brewery Dupont Brewery (in French: ''Brasserie Dupont'') is a brewery in Tourpes (Leuze-en-Hainaut), in western Hainaut, Belgium. Founded in 1950, it is on a working farm which dates back to 1759 and has significant brewing history. In the 1990s, a bre ...

, which ferments better at warmer temperatures like than the standard fermenting temperature used by other Belgian ales.

References

;Bibliography * ''All About Beer'' Magazine, Volume 24 Number 4, September 2003 * ''The Beers of Wallonia'', John Woods and Keith Rigley, Stourside Press (1996), *

External links

A seasonal search for the phantom of brewing
Michael Jackson, BeerHunter.com {{Beer Styles Beer styles Beer in Belgium