St-Feuillien & Green Flash Friendship Brew Tasting

So last Friday I went down to Osaka for a beer tasting I organized to compare the two black saisons which were brewed by St-Feuillien in Belgium & Green Flash in California. I also added St-Feuillien's Saison to act as a kind of baseline of what a saison should be like.

Ajen & I lucked out with the weather being a perfect (though incredibly hot) summer day. Thankfully, Nakanoshima park had a nice breeze going on so we were quickly able to get down to business.

from left to right Saison, St-Feuillien Black Saison & Green Flash Friendship Brew

I started with the regular St-Feuillien Saison which had a sweet golden ale kind of aroma, a clear gold color & a nice farmhouse flavor profile of spice, a hint of hay in the finish and a bit of bitterness in the aftertaste. A really refreshing beer that perfectly matched the hot summer weather. It is a great straight saison and available in Japan at a decent price to boot.

I moved onto the St-Feuillien Black Saison 6.5%, the aroma was fairly mild but had a hint of chocolate. The color was a really dark brown and the flavor was of roast coffee, chocolate with a mildly bitter finish. I didn't get so many saison type characteristics from it, just perhaps a hint of farmhouse flavors at the start which were then lost in the malty sweet body. Very smooth & very nice.

The final beer of this tasting was Green Flash's take on the Black Saison, their Friendship Brew at 5.7%. I heard from Dominique Friart last week that they followed the same recipe but they must have done more than use different equipment! These beers were quite different, I think that the hopping schedule at the least must have been different...

Green Flash's version was a bit darker in color than St-Feuillien's but had tons more aroma! An interesting peppery/spicy aroma wafted out of my glass. The flavor was pretty bitter & much more hop forward with some pine, pepper & spice notes.

We felt that in the St-Feuillien version the malts were the star of the show whereas Green Flash highlighted the hops. We preferred St-Feuillien Black Saison that night though Ajen had liked Green Flash more the first time he'd done this kind of tasting. 

Since they each such different feels we decided to blend them to see what would happen...

...success! Suddenly, the mouthfeel became creamier, the malts melted a bit into the background while the peppery flavor and aroma became more subdued. It seemed better balanced as a blend. Very drinkable. Truly a friendship that works well together!

To recap, all the beers we tried were quite good and well made. St-Feuillien stayed true to their roots with the malts shinning and Green Flash lived up to their reputation with a hoppy beer. I look forward to seeing what they do with their next collaboration an IPA.

Chat with Dominique Friart from St-Feuillien at CBB

Last Saturday, I was lucky enough to have the chance to speak with Dominique Friart the head of the St-Feuillien Brewery. When I first heard from Ai at Craft Beer Base (CBB) that the head of St-Feuillien would be at the bar for a talk I knew I had to try to meet her.

I started the evening with a quick visit to the Belgian Beer Weekend(look for a post about that soon) at the Umeda Sky Building to use up the last of my tokens before popping over to CBB for the St-Feuillien event.

To kick of the event I ordered a St-Feuillien Blond Ale which was a nice beer that poured a wonderful clear gold with a thick white head of foam – tasty!

While I was pouring my beer, the group from St-Feuillien showed up, Mme Friart with her husband and their translator. Everyone wanted to meet the head of such a famous brewery & I just focused on enjoying my beer & chatting in French with her husband who was a really nice guy. He's a journalist for a paper in Belgium and was accompanying her on a trip around Japan visiting Belgian events and places that distribute their beers. He told me I had to visit Belgium during their beer festival which was quite a big event. Someday...

pouring the St-Feuillien Trippel

Awhile later, I was able to grab a little time to chat with Mme Friart one on one and ask her a few questions. I asked her what she thought about the Japanese beer scene and she thought that while it is young she felt it was incredible how much it was growing & developing. She found the pace at which it is improving is impressive.

I then asked which of their beers she felt were the most accessible to people who don't know much about beer and she told me that their grisette (low ABV white & fruit beers) is doing really well in Japan and that the St-Feuillien Blond is also a great beer for people to try first. I started my night with it so I can totally agree with her!

I followed up by asking which of St-Feuillien's beers are more adventurous or interesting and she was very proud of the St-Feuillien Grand Cru as their top tier beer.

I actually tried the Grand Cru later that night and it is truly top of the line stuff. It had a great body, light carbonation and a sweet mildly sour taste. It's a beer with a light citrus & spice flavor and is really easy to drink

 

Since next weekend I am planning a tasting of the St-Feuillien Friendship Brews, I had to ask her about this collaboration between St-Feuillien & Green Flash. This collaboration produced two black saisons, one brewed at Green Flash in California and one at St-Feuillien in Belgium. They used the same recipe on different equipment which is what lead to the slightly different ABVs and taste due to different fermentation conditions. I'm really looking forward to trying them both out along with St-Feuillien's normal Saison as a kind of control.

Dominique Friart said that the collaboration came about when they were visiting the US and their distributor there introduced the two breweries. They got along well so they decided to make a beer together and the rest is history... 

I finished up by asking her if she was open to making a collaboration beer with a Japanese craft brewery and she said she was but that she didn't know any breweries in Japan that well and preferred to do one thing at a time. Then she let me know they had another Green Flash & St-Feuillien beer in the works... ...an IPA!

All in all it was a great night and now I have something nice to look forward to ^_^ Not many Belgian breweries make IPAs so I am quite curious to see what they come up with!

Dominique Friart with Tomoyo Kutsuna from Dotombori Beer