Served at cellar temperature from a 750ml bottle, split across two wine glasses. Cloudy gold, enormously foamy, the head still there when the glass is half empty.
Brasserie Dunham have built this on pils / wheat with Styrian Golding in the kettle. 4.0%, 20 IBU: unremarkable numbers on paper, and the beer is better for it.
The palate is where it earns the score. The Styrian Golding bitterness arrives early and holds through a finish dry enough to pull you straight back to the glass. Nothing sags in the middle, which is the failure mode for most saisons.
The whole point of a beer at 4.0% is the second and third glass, and this survives both. There is no cloying edge, no fatigue in the finish, and the hop character stays legible right through. That is harder to achieve than a big beer, and it gets a fraction of the credit.
Getting flavour into a beer this light is the hardest trick in brewing, and there is nowhere to hide when it fails. This does not fail.
Against the rest of the saison shelf this holds its own comfortably. It is not the beer that will convert anybody to the style, but it is the one you reach for once the converting is done, and at $4.80 / 473ml it is honestly priced.
Bought at Dépanneurs (in stock at the time of writing). One of the few beers improved by a slightly warm pour.
Pair it with something salty and eat while you drink. It rewards the company.
