Dr Rudi's New Zealand Saison

NZ Saison or Belgian IPA 6.3%
Bottle conditioned, in 375 ml bottles.
Release date 8 March 2013. Second bottling in 750 ml bottles, release date 15 March 2013.

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Brewed on Tuesday 6 November 2012. Bottled 12.2.2013.

Design

Designed by Angelo Scarnera, an innovative craft brewer from Brew Wharf in Vinopolis, Borough Market, London (that's him on the label). He is also a drum and bass DJ and a former chef. I met Angelo on one of my regular visits to the capital and when he saw me peering like an innocent child through the glass side wall of his microbrewery he beckoned me in. I told him back then of my ambition to open a microbrewery and have visited him several times since. I had told him about my brewing of saisons and he was intrigued. One day in a text message he suggested we do a collaboration, and I readily agreed. He already had the idea to brew a massively hopped Belgian saison with a New Zealand variety called Dr Rudi. This is so named after Dutch scientist Dr Rudy Roborgh who ran the NZ Hop Development Programme in the 1960s and developed the first varieties of triploid hops (without seeds which are the bane of brewers, and wonderful agricultural properties). This one was former called Super Alpha but by today's standards it is not really a super-high alpha acid (bittering potential) variety, so it was renamed in his honour. I grew up the yeast starter (Wyeast Saison WLP 556) and after blagging a bag of malt off the Kernel Brewery (thanks to Evin) we were in business. It was a long brew day with problems with the pump, probably caused by the spices we added, but we got there. The yeast took a good while to munch its way through the fermentables, but it kept on going and fermented right down to a dry 1.005 from 1.051. With so many Dr Rudi hops in the boil and the steep it never did get the dry hopping with Calypso that Angelo originally had in mind. I think it is a great beer and just right for the bottle.

Tasting notes

Moderate carbonation with a good white head that fades quite quickly. Colour is the typical pale orange of a saison. The first taste tells you this is both wild and intensely hopped. A little acetic acid on the nose is quickly overwhelmed by the bitter-sweet orange zest flavour of the late hopping. That yeast, which is usually to the for in a saison is almost kicked to one side but it comes back in the after taste, asserting its dry, lactic tang on the tongue. This is very much a new-wave style of beer absolutely busting with hop flavour, a new twist on a traditional Belgian farmhouse style. So, being pale, strong and massively hopped, is it a Belgian IPA - that is, an IPA brewed with an ascertive Belgian saison yeast? Or is it a South Pacific or New Zealand saison? You decide. In craft brewing it really isn't that important to stick to style. In fact convention is anathoma to craft brewers who are inventing the future of beer. Angelo is right up there with the best of them.

This beer is produced without the use of any finings, filtering or pasteurisation, so all the flavours of the ingredients are preserved for your enjoyment.

Martin Warren, The Poppyland Brewer
31.1.2013