The first time Michael Crane, a homebrewer who since helped found Crane Brewing in Kansas City, collected yeast in the wild, he started by setting a large bucket under a friend’s pear tree. The culture he discovered fermented beer that tasted like a saison. When Christian DeBenedetti went looking for a wild strain that might become the house yeast for Wolves and People Farmhouse Brewery in Oregon, he started with what he found on a plum from perhaps the oldest tree on the farm where the brewery is located. The yeast turned out to be well suited for producing saisons.
Across the country, Jasper Akerboom harvested wild yeast from five sites in Virginia and one in New York. Akerboom oversees quality control at Lost Rhino Brewing and is a partner in Bright Yeast Labs. He estimates that he has isolated about 100 strains and that they all share what he describes as “outspoken character,” what others might call “saison-like.” “I have not found anything that is really mild,” he says. Instead, the strains tend to be “wild,” estery, and often need to ferment at higher temperatures. Most of them do not flocculate very well.
Notice something similar? American brewers interested in making beers that fit under the rather broad umbrella of saison don’t necessarily need to look toward Wallonia. The answer may be in their own backyards. But just to be clear, this is not to suggest that somebody will discover the long-lost twin for Saison Dupont yeast floating in the northern Montana air any time soon. Nor does it imply wrangling a strain suitable to brew with is as easy as finding one that will ferment wort.