About the Beer: Biere de Fete

By Greg Carlson

Biere De Fête, our strong spiced lager, is based loosely - loosely - on the esoteric Biere de Garde style. Specifically, it’s based on the even more esoteric sub-style, Biere de Noel, as described in Phil Markowski’s landmark brewing book, Farmhouse Ales (a great read, even for brewers who don’t focus on farmhouse styles. Like us!)

For the uninitiated, Biere de Garde is kinda like if saison’s fourth cousin moved in across the street from it; they’re technically related and geographically close, but honestly just completely different people. Where typical saisons (e.g. Saison Dupont) are famously bone dry and defined primarily by their loud, expressive, spicy, yeast-driven flavors, Biere de Gardes are typically (e.g…shoot, I dunno, Jenlain?) showcase a greater focus on malt flavor and rounder mouthfeels, as well as a quieter and cleaner fermentation profile. The name, Biere de Garde, translates to “beer for keeping,” which points to the typical extending maturation period employed in brewing these beers.

In other words, Biere de Garde is a malt-forward style fermented with a neutral yeast and aged for longer than most beers. So, yeah - we’re just gonna turn this into a lager. 

This was a long way for us to just say “what if we brewed Sam Adams Winter Lager but a little stronger,” but we’re glad you all came along for the ride and hope you learned something about a beer style we don’t actually brew in the process.

As for our Biere De Fête (which translates to “festive beer” and perhaps also “party beer”), here’s how we did it:

We start with our house-favorite blend of pilsner and pale malts, and add a hefty chunk of a specialty German malt that I will admiringly call MEGA MUNICH. This is what imparts Biere de Fête’s lovely chestnut color and assertive raisin and toffee flavors. It’s a fun toy to play with!

We mash with the aim of creating a medium-bodied beer, and add just enough bittering hops to provide balance. Our goal is a beer that is decidedly malt-forward but not particularly sweet, because beers that are decidedly malt-forward but not particularly sweet are the best.

Then, because this is a Holiday beer, we add a hearty handful of ginger and allspice - to put the “spiced” in strong spiced lager - right at the end of the boil. We just dump them on in, spices aren’t complicated.

From there, we employ our standard lager fermentation and conditioning process, which leave the beer well-attenuated, clean, clear, and crisp. 

What results is one the beers we most look forward to every year. Biere de Fête presents an aroma of ginger and allspice, as well as dark fruit and toasted bread crust, a medium-sweet mouthfeel with just a touch of warming alcohol, and a crisp, slightly bitter finish. All jokes aside, beers like this that don’t neatly fall into any formal beer style but instead bounce around and borrow bits and pieces of many different beer styles and their histories and processes are some of our favorite to brew, and we hope this beer shows you why. Happy New Year!