The Full Bar - all my pages

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Iron Hill's "Roll Your Own" Saison-a-thon

To my knowledge, this is a unique idea: Iron Hill West Chester will be hosting a 'season your own saison' contest among their employees. Each group (I assume there's one from each of the eight Iron Hills) gets five gallons of saison to fiddle with: add spices, herbs, fruit, vegetables, brewing bugs, gunpowder, whatever. Then they are all presented on Thursday August 20 at the brewpub, and for five bucks you get to taste each one and vote for your fave. The favorite will be brewed in full-size batches at the brewpubs.

Maybe not as much fun as brewing it yourself, but a lot easier. A lot being done with saison-style beers lately, and that's a good thing.

3 comments:

Jeff Alworth said...

Is this the year for saisons, or what? They're everywhere!

Bill said...

Saisons are the new IPAs amongst the knowledgeable lemmings on the boards.

Carey said...

I am personally finding the steady emergence of certain popular beer styles interesting and a bit curious. It's a good thing I like most beer. Black Wits, Black IPAs, Saisons, ... maybe Funky IPAs brewed with some Brett will take off next. I have wondered if it is simply habituation on the part of all the craft beer drinkers, numbers that have grown so much these past few years, causing these rapid emergence of styles, or something more complicated. It will be interesting in a few years, after more experience accumulates in the historical reconrd, to look back on these fads. Maybe there is some long-tooth from Portland that saw this in the 80's and is just laughing at the kids rediscovering the wheel.

I have been personally happy that, despite Iron Hill's business success which has naturally led to some,...., standardization, they have still been churning out some good beers and good beer ideas. Good ideas.