About this episode

Mike Schallau discusses his approach to brewing saisons for modern drinkers, emphasizing accessibility and contemporary techniques.

“There can be a stand-offishness of, ‘These are complex flavors, you may not be ready for this,’” says Mike Schallau of Chicago’s Is/Was . “And I’m like, ‘Why?’ You can make those things, but if that’s everything you make, that’s why you don’t get to make that much saison, I guess. I want people to drink the beers, and I want them to drink a good amount of them.” In a post-pandemic era when craft beer is contracting, it’s counterintuitive to bet big on saison—but Schallau’s strategy is to make these beers with today’s drinkers in mind. To that end, while he pays respect to tradition with yeast, grain, and hops, he uses modern techniques, contemporary approaches to water chemistry, and more, to make saisons that even a hazy IPA drinker can love. In this episode, he shares his approaches to: refined, minimal fermentation choices achieving the best expression from Omega’s OYL-042 saison strain building “rusticity” through grain choice fermentation with no head pressure avoiding wheat in saison to control phenolics using large amounts of low-alpha hops pushing chloride over sulfate for a rounder flavor adding sugar during fermentation And more. G&D Chillers G&D’s new Elite…

People in this episode

Guest: Mike Schallau

Topics covered

• saison brewing
• craft beer
• modern techniques
• fermentation
• water chemistry

Keywords

• saison
• craft beer
• fermentation
• hops
• water chemistry
• brewing techniques

Sponsors

G&D Chillers

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Is/Was, Omega

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