Last week’s journey through time to the 1850s left me somewhat antebellum-lagged, and so this week a recuperative rerun seems merited.
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Why Saison Dupont remains the Belgian-style country ale yardstick
My grandparents inhabited farmhouses, primarily because they owned farms and lived right where they worked. There is no evidence to indicate any of them homebrewed or drank beer in appreciable quantity, although a few bottles of bourbon, kept stashed strictly for “medicinal” purposes, is a virtual certainty.
Lately “farmhouse” has come into fashion as a beer style descriptor, and fevered scrutiny has greeted this usage, to the degree that many beer aficionados spend less time drinking “farmhouse” brews than arguing about terminology and posting brewfies to Instagram.
Some enthusiasts believe farmhouse brewing can occur only when organic retro-engineered barley, hand-harvested hops and wild yeasts are deployed for a brew day in an actual house on a real farm, although in a pinch, the barn also might do. (Mercifully, the outhouse has yet to be mentioned as an attribute of authenticity.)
(Originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of Food & Dining)
