The Importance of Local Ingredients and Building a Malt Base

If Averie Swanson had her way, saison would outsell IPA among craft beer aficionados. The longtime saison brewer hopes to move beyond stereotypes and romanticized history and show (through beautifully designed and constructed beers) that saison provides a broad palette for brewers to explore flavor. With her Keeping Together brand, now based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she hopes to write a new chapter for saison brewed in the United States.

In this episode, she tackles both the theoretical and the practical, discussing:

• building characterful grain bases for saison with everything from smoked malt to oats
• designing within constraints
• downplaying Brettanomyces in mixed culture fermentation
• isolating Saccharomyces and rebuilding a culture around it
• testing how new ingredients work in saison
• using acidity as an element of structure

And more.

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