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For those wondering what is going on with this Black Saison Business, our Brewing Czar Willis sent out an email to all employees explaining this beer.  We thought everyone else might enjoy a little insight into our process of making our beer and of educating our staff to try and better serve our customers.

Cheers,

Hello, hello everybody. Today we are releasing, Sue, or a beer named Sue, either way, it is a Black Saison, so people finally have a dark beer option. w00t. So you’re probably saying to yourself, self, what the hell is a black saison. First I’ll hit you with the short of it, then I’ll move to the long of it, so then you’ll have the long AND short of it (see what I did there? it looks easy but it’s not.)

-Short:
A porter malt bill with a saison yeast.
Carrboro Coffee Roasters’s PNG and Peruvian blend added (cold pressed 3x so that the bitterness and acidity doesn’t affect body that will come in later)
Saison yeast is a more rustic yeast, which basically means we get more yeast flavors out of it than our “house” strain. Which is relatively clean, and has little flavor contribution

-The Long
-Saison used to mean Spring Seasonal in France. It was a pale ale made with a very interesting yeast. Now adays, it really just refers to the yeast strain, and not the spring seasonal part. Much like the phrase IPA indicates hoppy without necessarily meaning pale or intended for sale in India as it once did. Hence, Black Saison really just means a black ale with a saison yeast. Saison yeasts  will consume more sugar than traditional yeast strains. This is for two reasons, a) they are more active during fermentation and b) they have not been genetically selected for “clean” flavors, and eating incompletely converted sugars stresses the yeast slightly creating those wonderful aromas and flavors. Those aromas and flavors are typically described as “fruity” “peppery” “earthy”. I kept this batch low as far as saison fermentations go, so that makes this one fall more in the earthy and peppery realm than the fruity realm as Maggie’s does.
-So back to the sugars things, Saisons come out very dry compared to their “tradtional” yeast counterparts. So the body on this beer is very low. Think along the lines of a dry irish stout like Guiness. That’s why we made sure to cold press the coffee, so that the acididty and oil did not interfere with what was already a relatively small body. Speaking of the coffee, here’s what Scott from Carrboro Coffee Roasters had to say about the coffee in it.
“I went with a PNG/Peru blend ( equal parts) for the balance of floral, chocolate notes in the nose and lite citrus acidity in Peru, with the spicy, earthy and hints of acidity from the PNG….should be interesting!”

-All in all the beer has aromas of pepper, wet earth, and some floral characteristics. The flavor is chocolate, roasted coffee, some tree nut, and some peppery spice on the finish. The body is very light, so it should be a nice dark beer to have on these hot summer days.

Let me know if you have any questions, and make sure to go through a formal tasting (noting appearance, aroma, flavor and overall impression) before your shift begins.