Thiriez Extra Hoppy Saison Ale 11.2oz

This particular beer is an interesting joint effort with an English brewery. It uses one hop varietal, a rather unusual hop grown in Kent called ‘Bramling Cross.’ The malt is from 2-row spring barley grown in France.

The result has certain characteristics of an English bitter: it’s not too strong, very dry, and eminently drinkable. The idea is of course that you should be able to drink a lot of it over the course of a long sit-down with friends, in the English ‘session beer’ tradition. The English, of course, excel at creating deeply flavorful beer at a low abv — the ideal beer really, since you can enjoy that flavor rolling over your tongue for hours without leaving your lunch on the floor — and Extra is in that vein.

With all those hops, you might even see Extra as a more traditional English IPA. Yet since Daniel Thiriez is a little ‘Belgian-oriented,’ by his own description, and uses a Belgian yeast that he obtained from the Belgian brewing school where he studied, the beer also has a good bit of the earthy, spicy character of a saison.