Hip Hops: “Why Saison Dupont remains the Belgian-style country ale yardstick”
Caves Dupont, cafe across the street from the brewery (2002). Last week’s journey through time to the 1850s left me somewhat antebellum-lagged, and so this week a recuperative rerun seems merited.  — 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...Read more