Beer Spotlight!

Deschutes Cultivateur Provision Saison

$17.99 for the 22oz bottle
Barrel-aged Brettanomyces Soured Saison

Bend, Oregon’s Deschutes Brewing Company first released their Cultivateur Provision Saison in 2017 as part of their Reserve Series. It was the first beer to graduate out of their small batch experimental Pub Reserve Series. It’s been years since we’ve had it in the shop, and we were excited to return to this beer to see if it’s as good as we remember it having been.

Fair warning: we’re going to get a little beer geeky in this paragraph. Feel free to skip ahead. To be honest, we’re not sure if a Provision Saison is a particular type of Saison. We’ve only been able to find two or three others in a Google search — one, of course, being the classic Brasserie Depont Vieille Provision Saison. One source says that in southern Belgium, a provision Saison was a “reserve” Saison, and it was tart. That kind of works. Dupont’s Vieille Provision Saison has a healty bitterness to it, and the other two we’ve found have both been fermented with Brettanomyces yeast — one of those being the Deschutes Cultivateur.

Fermented with Brettanomyces yeast, the Cultivateur Provision Saison is aged in oak barrels for the better part of a year. Out of the Brett, Deschutes is able to weave a delicate sourness. You get it at the beginning of the sip, then it fades into the malt only to come back on the finish. That sourness plus an earthiness and appley-ness are corralled by the tannins from the barrel-aging. A full-flavored experience, though this beer is richer than you expect from a Saison, it still doesn't lose the Saison’s refreshing nature.

Try this beer with Indian food, especially something rich like a korma. Oh … and to answer our initial question, it was better than we remembered.

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