[pete b]

The beer world loves its stories. Perhaps in the future they will tell of how IPL was invented by folks from Illinois who needed to travel west with their light lagers and added extra hops as a preservative for the long journey across the plains on I-70 to Denver. Then some beer history expert can point out that the I in IPL doesn't stand for Illinois, it stands for Indiana

"IPL is proof that God hates Illinois and wants them to be unhappy" -President Trump

[unclebrazzie]

Right.

That was an interesting podcast.

Summing things up and sprinkling some of my ideas in and around it all: what we think of as Saison is probably derived from Dupont's interpretation of the idea that seasonal workers need to drink too. Is it a farmhouse ale? No, since Dupont is obviously not a farmhouse brewery. Is it a farmhouse-style ale, even if perhaps not a historic one? Hard to say but probably not, given the evidence.

So yes, everything we know about saison is wrong but at the same time, Randy confirms everything I consider to be definitive about saison: it was never a style as such, and apart from its utilitarian origins, there's not a lot you can pin on it. For ease of reference, I consider saison to be "something that'll make people treat it like a saison", but I'll call it farmhouse ale(°) unless I'm feeling fanciful.

°) farmhouse-style ale to be more correct, but who is ever truly correct about farmhouse ales anyway?

[klickitat jim]

Fortunately I call mine Farm Fresh...

[S. cerevisiae]

One thing that caught my ear that I'm sure Mark (S. Cerevisiae) and perhaps quite a few others would very much disagree with... Mosher was talking about brewing lagers and how it's not possible to do in caves in mountains because the temperature of the earth is too warm there. They quoted 56 F.

The parent strains from which all modern larger strains are derived were selected at 13C/55F, which is the year-round temperature below the frost line in many places around the globe.  The area were ice was used before introduction of mechanical refrigeration was cold storage.

[S. cerevisiae]

Can we definitively say that beer was never aged in caves anywhere in Europe? Doubtful. There would have been abandoned natural and mining caves available. Were all of these difficult to reach? Probably not. For brewers in rural areas with access to abandoned caves it might have been an easy opportunity to store beer without taking up space in cellars or barns. It would take quite a bit, in my opinion, to exclude the possibility that any region found brewers aging or fermenting lagers in caves.

There are hand-dug caves at Yuengling brewery.

[klickitat jim]

Well, I think this photo proves that they brewed in caves but the cave was not too far from town.

[kgs]

I kept looking for the "like" button on these posts! I enjoyed the podcast and all the discussion that followed. It reminded me why I have stayed with the hobby for seven years across two states, three job changes, elder-parent care, a doctoral program that has kinda harshed my brewing time, and so on. I find brewing fascinating and relaxing (in the way that hobbies that take us away from other parts of our life are relaxing, even during the frustrating moments) but I also really like homebrewers. Glad to be part of a community united under the umbrella, "We may not agree on other things, but we agree malted barley wants to become beer."

[S. cerevisiae]

Yuengling cave video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=popbS7Y-MvQ

[hopfenundmalz]

From a little tour of a Bavarian lager cellar, 4 meters down in rock. Natural temp he said, year round. 3^oC. Bräuerie Eck in Böbrach, Bavaria, at about 1900 ft elevation, near the Czech border.