Sensational Saisons: Great Lakes Grassroots Ale and Great Divide Saison Farmhouse Ale

Someone brews a beer for every season and any reason, but not suits me better than saison, the traditional harvest-time beers matured for the winter in France and Belgium.

While Ommegang’s Hennepin ranks as my favorite beer (period), I always yearn the sample other brewers’ takes, since the style comes with plenty of wiggle room for the brewer.In some ways, the style represents a coming-of-age ale for many microbreweries, because saison is largely what the brewer makes of it.

For this impromptu sample conducted in Columbus, I picked Great Lakes Brewery’s Grassroots Ale (when in Ohio, no other beer will suffice) and Great Divide Brewing Company’s Saison Farmhouse Ale, representing Cleveland and Denver, respectively. In fact, I read about Grassroots prior to my last Columbus trip. Knowing that one of my favorite breweries had ventured into saison territory had my mouth watering.

With Grassroots, everything starts and finishes with lemon – but what a bouquet it presents, because this ale was brewed in tribute to local growers. Lemon balm and lemon basil lead the herbal lineup that finds space for subtle chamomile and the essential saison spice, coriander.

Great Divide’s Saison finishes with a drier, grain tone emerging directly from a smoother shot of lemon. Many saisons veer toward softer citrus like orange but this one goes the lemon route as well. It’s so perplexing that people pick those god-awful lemon wine coolers, hard lemonades and water-down vodka beverages

While not typically a fan of beer brewed with rice – plenty of macrobrewers cut their malted barley with corn and rice – but with this ale, it has a soothing effect. Add in the four yeast strains present here, and this ale never becomes a mere sum of its parts.

Like its name’s origins, most saisons are fleeting and mercurial. Wait too long to drink it, and the yeasts begin to churn out a B-vitamin funk that gives the ale an unflattering asparagus-esque bouquet.

The great element of this style is alcoholic disparity. Saison can go as low as 4.5 percent of Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Biere, or up into double digits, where some of Saison DuPont’s stronger strains reside. This pair lands on the lighter side, with Grassroots at 6.2 percent and Great Divide at 7.3 percent.

No matter the alcoholic level, the great trait of Saison is their sheer drinkability. On a hot summer evening, few beers this complex drink down so smoothly. Imagine something heavy and dark

Either of those two regional saisons would go perfectly with that setting. The beauty is that they fall into the same category, but share little outside of brewing style. They each take those lemon and herb characters but run in different directions with them.

I give the nod to Grassroots Ale, since its local ingredient jump out from the beer, while it isn’t strong enough to lead to intoxication after one or two.