Birds Fly South Saison Is Dead

Birds Fly South cofounder Shawn Johnson says this recipe is a recent riff on their base saison recipe, Ism.

“Ism is a play on our church of saison as we call it, like Buddhism, Catholicism, etcetera,” he says. “We preach Saison!”

This particular version is dry hopped with Mosaic. “‘Saison is dead’ is a joke inside the brewery, as a lot of new, quirky styles emerge and take front row in American craft beer,” Johnson says. To save saison, they use boutique hops, often combined with a grist and hopping regimen more akin to a hazy IPA. “Saison is Dead is a marriage of the two directions.”

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)

Brewhouse efficiency: 72%

OG: 1.050

FG: 1.004

IBUS: 32

ABV: 6%

MALT/GRAIN BILL

7.7 lb (3.5 kg) Riverbend Pilsner 1 lb (454 g) flaked barley

1 lb (454 g) wheat malt

10 oz (283 g) sucrose (at dry hop)

HOPS SCHEDULE

0.25 oz (7 g) Perle at 90 minutes

[7 IBUS]

1.5 oz (43 g) Mosaic at whirlpool

[25 IBUS]

2.5 oz (71 g) Mosaic at dry hop

YEAST

White Labs WLP670 American Farmhouse Blend, Omega OYL217 C2C American Farmhouse, or a blend of favored saison and Brettanomyces strains

DIRECTIONS

Mill the grains and mash at 149°F (65°C) for 60 minutes. Run off into the kettle, sparging and topping up as necessary to get about 6.5 gallons (25 liters) of wort. Boil for 90 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule. After the boil, stir to create a vortex, add whirlpool hops, and allow 30 minutes to steep and settle. Chill wort to about 75°F (24°C), aerate, and pitch the yeast blend. Allow the fermentation temperature to free rise as warm as it likes. When the beer is about 75 percent fermented (around 1.015–1.016), add the dry hops and sugar. Once fermentation is complete and gravity is stable, package and carbonate to about 3 volumes.

BREWER’S NOTES

Water: Adjust for a 1:1 sulfate-tochloride ratio.

Hops: If you control for bitterness, you can experiment with any hops you want. We have done everything from Cascade to Styrian Wolf, Galaxy, Vic Secret, Comet, Bella, Strata, and more.

Yeast: Our house blend consistently takes beers down to 1.002; your mileage at home may vary, but then again, that’s the fun.

Fermentation: Another route you can take is to pitch a Belgian saison yeast on Day 1 and allow it to free rise. When the gravity hits about 1.015, add Brett and sugar. (If you rack to a different fermentor, be sure to purge with CO2 and minimize oxygen pickup.) Ferment for 2 more weeks, adding dry hops after 1 week.

Dry hopping: If your fermentor can’t handle an aggressive secondary fermentation, consider adding sugar first and then dry hops at terminal gravity.

Drinking: We like this beer fresh, but we have found that after 6 months in package, the hops mellow and allow that Brett-tastic profile to shine through. put them out to the public because we’ve discovered those beers can be very, very green and aggressive at times,” he says.

“If a beer’s already been in [the tank] two weeks, four extra days isn’t going to break the bank to make sure it’s exactly what we want to present. Our beers have become more well-rounded. Let it all get happy.”

The Johnsons’ trip to Europe two summers ago let them taste firsthand the benefits of slower fermentation—not only for lager styles such as pilsner, maibock, and rauchbier, but also for top-fermented ones such as grodziskie. (All of those styles, incidentally, were on draft in the brewery’s taproom at one point in June.) Aspects of traditional lager brewing also have informed the brewery’s IPAS and even its funkier offerings.

Exhibit A of that knowledge exchange might be the base beer that Birds Fly South uses to co-ferment with wine grapes for a series of mixed-fermentation farmhouse beers. For that base, Shawn brews a cold-fermented lager, then runs it through various foeders containing Brettanomyces cultures; this tends to create a very dry “lager” with noticeable tartness. He’s also tried the reverse: Warm fermenting with a Brett culture, then cold-pitching a lager yeast in secondary. It’s part of an ongoing quest to understand exactly how Brett interacts with other yeasts and processes.

Shawn’s advice to other brewers is to lock in on the variable or variables they’re most passionate about, whether it’s yeast or water or grains. Trying to focus on everything at once often leads to frustration.

“You’re going to make some really, really good beer if you can nail a couple things every time,” he says. “But you’ve really got to be patient.”

Hybrid Strain

Shawn doesn’t hesitate when asked what he’s recently obsessed with: It’s wine. On a trip to Jester King Brewery in Austin last fall, he was captivated by that brewery’s wines, its co-fermentations of beer and wine, and its beers produced using wine grapes, vineyard yeast, and even grape vines. Birds Fly South had “messed with some of that” a few years ago, as Shawn puts it, but at the time, he wasn’t wowed by the results.

What he tasted at Jester King and elsewhere on that trip inspired him to give it another go. The Johnsons returned from Texas, and Shawn immediately began cofermenting a wild lager base with a pét-nat– style syrah. (Pét-nat is a category of sparkling wine produced by bottling wine that hasn’t finished fermenting, resulting in carbon dioxide being reabsorbed into the wine after.) This summer, he brewed a rosé version.

These are complex, deeply geeky beers that might seem to require a grasp of fermentation and even agriculture to fully appreciate. But the Johnsons say this doesn’t give drinkers enough credit—and it also discounts how good the taproom staff is at making these beers inviting and accessible.

These are complex, deeply geeky beers that might seem to require a grasp of fermentation and even agriculture to fully appreciate. But the Johnsons say that these beers are more approachable than the process suggests. Lindsay says that Rustic Sunday—a mixed-fermentation beer brewed with rye and Hallertau Blanc hops, then rested in sauvignon blanc puncheons—is always a hit with white-wine drinkers who visit the taproom. Likewise, Brand New Eyes—an open-fermented and blended ale aged in red-wine puncheons—is a favorite of red-wine drinkers.

At a glance, the co-fermented and solera-style beers aged in wine puncheons appear out of tune with Birds Fly South’s recent focus on more approachable styles. Again, the Johnsons say this doesn’t give drinkers enough credit—and it also discounts how good the taproom staff is at making these beers inviting and accessible.

“Our product should be approachable at all times,” Shawn says. “If we have to tell our people what our beer is in more than five words, then we’re trying too hard.”

So, how does one describe a solera-method, foeder-aged, mixed-culture saison co-fermented with wine grapes in a way that any drinker can understand—in five words or less? “A wine-forward hybrid beer,” Shawn says, without hesitation. That’s how Birds Fly South approaches its delicate balance of producing exceptionally interesting beers that push the boundaries of fermentation—while still offering beers for people who may not know what “IPA” stands for. It’s a balance that the Johnsons hope will send Birds Fly South’s flavorful beers far beyond their nest.