By Greg B.  I’m still expanding my palate and experience with beers and this generally means scouring the shelves for random European beers (not that American beers are bad, I think they’re among the most creative beers in existence as a general category!).  And in doing so, I found a bottle of Brasserie de Blaugies Saison d’Epeautre.  The bottle looked innocent enough, it was a saison style beer and that was enough reason for me to buy it but the ‘brewed with spelt’ caught my attention as well.  Spelt is a more ‘rustic’ variety of wheat and I was intrigued to see how some of those wheaty flavors would perform in a saison style beer.

This beer is 6% abv and the back label proclaims it is brewed in a garage in Belgium…. which might just be about the most badass thing I’ve heard in a while, if it’s true.  Just think, some guys in a garage made a beer (fine, the yeast/bacteria in this saison made it, but the brewers prepared it!) and then it found it’s way on a shelf in Baltimore to me.  This is both awesome and inspiring for homebrews like myself.  The beer pours a medium hazy gold color, with very lofty white peaks leaving excellent lacing as it recedes.  The aroma is fantastic, it’s like an outdoor adventure in a field of flowers and grasses, yet there is also a ton of barnyard, horseblanket and wheat malts in there.  To taste, there is a very tart, lemony refreshing flavor, and the carbonation in this beer is serious.  By itself it’s refreshing, but with food it really cleans the palate.  There are tons of Belgian yeast and some citrus also on the finish, which is pretty dry.  The bottle comes with a lot of sediment, so pour carefully (unless you like the lees, I don’t mind it, but I leave it not for the tasting beer pour but for later).  I give this beer a 4.0/5, it’s a fantastic mix of many aromas and flavors, but nothing is out of order.

I actually drank this beer with a dinner of grilled asparagus, sea scallops and veal chops and loved it.  I was lucky to have this beer in my cellar, so when I came home from the store I couldn’t resist trying it with dinner.  All the foods were essentially grilled with salt, black pepper, olive oil except the scallops which were just lightly salted before grilling and served with a butter/marjoram sauce.  I’m also fairly certain this beer performed great with each of these foods independently and took this meal from an easy going summer dinner to a great relaxing weekend culinary tour.  With the asparagus, the beers more wild, field and barnyard aromas matched the simple flavors, the sea scallops in butter sauce were refreshed by the dry acidity and intense carbonation of the beer, and the light citrus brought out the flavor of the scallops.  With the veal, the beer again cleansed the palate of juices and fats while some of the slightly sweeter malts in the beer matched the sweet flavors in the meat.  I got lucky with such a great pairing in a beer, but this beer, being so fantastic on it’s own is just fine to drink without food if you want!

Enjoy this beer with: seafood, shellfish, oily/buttery foods, chicken and lighter meats, like veal