Return of the yeasty boys

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This was published 12 years ago

Return of the yeasty boys

In a hop-heavy world, brewers are finding inspiration in centuries-old farmhouse styles, writes James Smith.

By Old style

WITH some beers, it's all about the hops. In others, brewers are keen to showcase the malt characters. In the case of saisons - an increasingly popular farmhouse style with origins stretching back centuries to Belgium - the yeast is the key.

Perhaps that's why Costa Nikias, the founder of one of Australia's newest brewing companies, went to such trouble to get hold of a strain with which he was happy.

Brewer Costa Nikias traced his saison beer recipe to a village in northern France.

Brewer Costa Nikias traced his saison beer recipe to a village in northern France.Credit: Simon Schluter

''We wanted to make an authentic saison, so through a friend in the UK we found a beer nerd who pointed us in the direction of this old family recipe in a village in northern France,'' he says. ''We found that the yeast in their beer was the major point of difference between their saison and the next village's.

''They only brewed the beer once every six months and it was becoming a lost art to them; the new generation coming through wasn't that interested. The antique yeast strain was so characteristic from a flavour perspective, so we started trying to work out how we could use it, as it wasn't commercially available.''

He ended up buying the family recipe and arranging for the mother strain to be transported live to Australia - in a sealed container specially designed for the task. Upon arrival, it was discovered to have picked up unwanted bacteria and had to be discarded, but a second delivery turned up clean, allowing Nikias' brewing partner, a microbiologist, to cryogenically freeze it at his university laboratory.

More than two years later, following several small-scale pilot brews using the imported strain and four discarded commercial-length brews by Nikias at the Jamieson Brewery near Lake Eildon, La Sirene Saison was released to a few bottle shops and bars in Melbourne, to much acclaim in beer circles.

''It's not that we're superstar brewers,'' says Nikias, who also works as a brewery consultant. ''We're just letting the particular strain of yeast we use do the talking and giving the beer an uncommonly long maturation period before it's released so that it's more complex and subtle in its delivery.''

What is a saison? It's usually a pale, cloudy beer that was originally brewed for farm workers in Belgium; designed to survive the warm summer months, it was given - in rather large quantities - to the workers at the end of the harvest. One of the more complex beer styles, occasionally brewed with fruits, honey or spices, it's often spicy, citrusy, peppery, with a soft malt character and reasonably high hop bitterness, all underpinned by a hint of tartness or sourness.

Not too long ago, it was seen as an endangered style worldwide, yet as with German hefeweizen in the previous decade, the saison style is undergoing an impressive revival, not least in Australia. Where once you would have to hunt to find a locally brewed version, such as the now-defunct Barking Duck from Matilda Bay, today more breweries are producing them.

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The newly opened Temple in Brunswick East has one in its permanent range, as does Bridge Road in Beechworth, where brewer Ben Kraus has experimented with versions featuring quince and elderflower, along with a roasty black saison and a highly hopped India saison brewed in collaboration with Norwegian brewery Nogne O. There have also been good takes on the style from Mornington Peninsula Brewery and New South Wale's Murray's, whose La Natural was brewed in tribute to Cadel Evans.

''It's an interesting style,'' says Brendan Varis, head brewer at Swan Valley's Feral, one of Australia's top-rated microbreweries. ''They can be bitter or they can be strong, they can have lots of esters and phenolics, they can be malty or earthy or sweet or dry. Whereas with an India pale ale you're showcasing the hops or with a brown ale you're showcasing the malts, a saison is an opportunity to throw lots of beer's components at one beer.''

In the past couple of years, Varis has used the same saison yeast strain to make three beers: a barrel-aged farmhouse ale, a sour ale called ''Funky Junky'', and Golden Ace, one of the more unusual saisons to hit our shelves. Using the highly distinctive and powerful Japanese-developed hop Sorachi Ace, he describes it as a ''new world saison''.

A Tasmanian take on the style has also started to reappear on taps recently. The Saison deMoo was first brewed as an experiment last year by Moo Brew, the brewery that is part of the Moorilla Estate/MONA enterprise in Hobart, and has now become its summer seasonal.

Unlike many craft brewers, Moo's head brewer, Owen Johnston, is not determined to create a different beer every time he steps into the brewery, instead preferring to concentrate on making his core range as well as possible. So why, when he did look to experiment, was it a saison?

''The idea with the seasonal range was to take our existing punters to places they don't usually go,'' he says. ''The saison is a great beer for summer: dry, with a tart finish that's ultimately refreshing.

''I spent a full year drinking saisons, tasting a lot of different brands to get my head around the full spectrum. It's such a varied style with so much to like about its different elements that it all comes down to personal preference.''

Which is where it all started for Nikias. ''Me and my business partner are just farmhouse nuts,'' he says. ''You'll never catch us brewing an IPA; it's all about French and Belgian farmhouse styles.''

In the recent hop-heavy climate, that attitude is as refreshing as the beer with which they've announced themselves to the world.

Pale and interesting

Saison Dupont, 6.5 per cent

The classic saison (and Brendan Varis' desert-island beer). Remarkably well priced for an import, too.

La Sirene Saison, 6.5 per cent

Beautifully packaged and impressing the local beer nerds.

Feral Golden Ace, 5.6 per cent

One of only three Feral beers in a bottle and a quirky little fellow, thanks to the contrast between yeast characters and the idiosyncratic Sorachi Ace hop.

Saison DeMoo, 5.5 per cent

''Nice and tight,'' according to the brewer, it's a saison that won't scare away newcomers to the style.

Bridge Road/Nogne O India Saison, 7.5 per cent

A collision of beer styles, featuring tonnes of fresh Aussie hop varieties on a saison base. It shouldn't work but, good heavens, it does.

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