I like to think that saison can be that beer for champagne drinkers. It is an approachable beer because it’s so varied stylistically. Defined as a harvest-driven beer brewed with whatever is locally available, no two saisons are the same. And there’s a breed of them that is dry and crisp, light in body, spicy to taste, and often barrel-aged. Champagne drinkers seeking a convert beer—or craft beer fans seeking to convert their champagne-drinking friends—should experiment with the following saisons.
Saison Dupont
Often noted as a benchmark for the saison beer style, Saison Dupont has been brewed at Belgium’s La Brasserie Dupont since 1844. This orange-hued, effervescent beer is simple in structure, brewed with clean pilsner malt. The beer, which undergoes refermentation in the bottle, finishes dry, much like a dry champagne does, with a prominent hop-forwardness.
Funkwerks Inc. Saison
Funkwerks Saison, a popular beer out of Fort Collins, Colorado, is modeled after Saison Dupont. This tawny, orange saison pours with a rocky white head. The beer’s aroma is reminiscent of passion fruit, tangerine, and black pepper. Its flavors suggest orange, lemon verbena, ginger, and pepper, and it finishes with a dry, lingering bitterness from dry hopping. The Funkwerks Saison’s fruit notes and estery aromas will satisfy the palate of any champagne drinker.
Boulevard Brewing Tank 7
The Tank 7 is even more hop-foward than the Funkwerks Saison, yet still balanced with a floral citrusy aroma and subtle malt sweetness. The beer begins with a surge of fruity aromatics and grapefruit-hoppy notes before the flavor of this complex straw-colored ale tapers off to a peppery, dry finish.
Upright Brewing Four
Upright Brewing’s Four, a wheat beer from Portland, Oregon, is light in body and nuanced with floral and herbal aromas and flavors. Its dry, slightly tart finish is similar to that of a bubbly brut champagne.
Saison as a style doesn’t always fall into this dry, spicy, effervescent flavor profile, but these beers in particular are perfect substitutes for champagne. For those who appreciate the subtlety of bubbly—the light body, the slight spice or hop nuance, the earthiness of the flavor—Saison Dupont, Funkwerks Saison, Boulevard Tank 7, and Upright Four might soon occupy permanent space in the liquor cabinet.