What counts as a farmhouse ale?

<< 2020-07-26 14:52 >>

Mug of sahti, Finnish farmhouse ale, brewed with hot rocks

The most common question I get in interviews is "what do you consider to be a farmhouse ale?" and since the answer is a little involved I decided to write it up more fully. There is a fairly clear-cut definition, but it takes a little explaining.

The original farmhouse ales

This was pretty simple back in the old days, before the modernization of agriculture, completely changed life in the countryside, and the traditional brewing with it. Farmhouse ale was beer brewed on the farm, from the farm's own grain, for the people on the farm.

The great transformation of the countryside transitioned the farms from subsistence agriculture, where you eat what you grow, to growing products for sale. Many farmers switched from mainly growing grain to growing fruit, dairy farming, or other products. And eventually most people stopped being farmers at all.

These people had to start buying grain, and later they even started buying malt, which strictly speaking made them home brewers. But modern home brewers brew commercial styles. These home brewers kept brewing the traditional beer in their region, using the traditional ingredients and often the farmhouse yeast, using the traditional equipment. They also remained in the traditional mindset, brewing only one style of beer, and relying on methods taught by participation and observation instead of learning from books.

Tore Jan Ramsøy moving the mash to the lauter tun. Ulvik, Hardanger.

Today's farmhouse ales

Today, nearly all the farmhouse brewers are economically speaking home brewers, but I still consider them farmhouse brewers because in every other respect they are continuing their local brewing tradition. The beer definitely tastes farmhouse ale, and not modern beer. This definition doesn't make a 100% sharp black-or-white distinction, but in practice I find it works.

In Hardanger, western Norway, I met two brewers who expressed skepticism about traditional brewing. The main brewer was Danish and had learned to brew in Denmark, while his friend came from an area in western Norway where the brewing had died before he was born. Their beer tasted of US west coast hops, but had low carbonation. And they brewed in a traditional-like brewhouse, using juniper branches, brewing 150-liter batches like farmhouse brewers, and even used a traditional lauter tun. But they used Protaflocc to clear the beer.

To me they have to be considered hybrid brewers. They were clearly influenced both by modern home brewing, but also by the local tradition.

Glass of commercial farmhouse ale at Alaus Namai in Vilnius.

Commercial farmhouse brewers

But what about commercial farmhouse breweries?

There are people who grew up in the farmhouse brewing tradition who have started commercial breweries producing the same kinds of beers their parents and neighbours made. Their brewkit is usually specially designed to produce the local farmhouse style. These are obviously farmhouse breweries, whether they are located on a farm or not.

Examples: Pihtla in Estonia (both of them), Jovaru Alus, Piniavos, Su Puta, Ramunas Čižas, and more in Lithuania. Also several breweries in Finland.

Voss Bryggeri in Voss.

Craft breweries

It gets more complicated with a brewery like Voss Bryggeri. One of the founders was a farmhouse brewer in Voss for decades before starting the brewery, but on the other hand they made only modern styles the first few years. Nearly all their brewers have been people with no prior connection to farmhouse brewing who have moved to Voss. And yet they do make a beer they call Vossaøl, with the correct ingredients and the closest approximation to the traditional process that they can achieve with the brewing equipment they have. One local farmhouse brewer described the beer as "the closest thing to Vossaøl you can get into a can."

My conclusion is that while Voss Bryggeri is not really a farmhouse brewery, that beer has to be accepted as if not 100% true farmhouse ale, then something very close to it.

When someone outside the farmhouse brewing region tries to make a traditional farmhouse ale with the correct ingredients and process and produce something that tastes close to the original, then to me that's a replica of a farmhouse ale. And if someone were to skip the phrase "replica of" and just call it a farmhouse ale I wouldn't really complain.

There are of course many breweries that call themselves "farmhouse breweries" on various grounds. For example because the brewery is on a farm. To me that's not a farmhouse brewery. If it were, we'd have to also introduce industrial estate breweries and railway arch breweries as categories. These categories make no sense, because the location has nothing to do with the beer. You can't taste what kind of location the brewery is in.

Some use local farm products in the beer, like hops or fruit. Or they harvested a yeast nearby. Again, to me that has nothing to do with farmhouse brewing. If they grew the grain and malted it themselves I suppose it could be called neo-farmhouse, or something like that, but the essence of farmhouse brewing is the tradition that links the brewer with past brewers in the same area. Anyone who brews modern styles is working in essentially the same tradition as, say, Brewdog, Fuller's, and Carlsberg. Farmhouse brewing is about the tradition, not the source of the ingredients.

Ploughing the hop field to keep the weeds down. Belgium.

Saison: farmhouse or not?

Which brings us to perhaps the trickiest case of all: the brewers of saison and biére de garde. To me the test is: are the beers they make today replicas of what the farmers in those areas used to brew from their own grain? Are they still working in the same tradition? Getting a definitive answer to that is surprisingly difficult.

Phil Markowski's foundational book, Farmhouse ales, contains a historical essay on saison by Yvan de Baets which claims the current saisons are like the historical farmhouse ales. The basis is partly tastings he personally conducted of old saisons, which would demonstrate a link with the early 20th century, but those were still commercially brewed beers. He also cites two brewing books, published 1946 and 1871, but it's not clear from his text exactly what the link is, nor what types of beers are being linked.

Roel Mulder took exception to this presentation and did a thorough blog post walking through the evidence as far as he knew it. A key point for him is that De Baets's sources do not describe farmers brewing from their own grain. Further, De Baets claims saison was originally brewed at the start of winter and stored through winter, spring, and summer to be consumed during the heavy harvest work at the end of summer. De Baets says the beer was stored through the summer because brewing during the summer "was almost out of the question" (p96). Mulder takes exception to this, too, because he found records of commercial saison breweries brewing in the summer.

Personally, I think De Baets is very likely right that saison got its name from a seasonal beer intended for harvest workers on the farm. And it's also very likely true that the current Belgian saison breweries have a link with this tradition. How close that connection is I cannot judge, although from what research has been published so far it seems that it might be possible to do a comparison.

Brewing beer for either haymaking or the grain harvest was extremely common in the farmhouse brewing regions in general, and the practice is overwhelmingly documented. I've summarized that evidence on pages 176-177 in my book.

Nøddebjerggaard farm on Møn in Denmark used to brew gammeltøl.

In Denmark it was very common to brew a strong beer in February-April and store it until the heavy summer fieldwork. I haven't done the work yet to see if it was for the haymaking or for the grain harvest, but the principle is the same. This beer was called "gammeltøl" (old beer). (My book, p296.)

In Westphalia in Germany, a little over 250km from Hainaut, there was also a tradition for brewing beer in March that was drunk during the heavy summer fieldwork. (My book, p340.) A curious detail is that two accounts say the beer is similar to commercial altbier, which, strangely, is the same name as the Danish gammeltøl. Nobody seems to refer to the farmhouse ale as altbier, though.

So while I can't prove that farmers in Hainaut brewed beer in spring for the harvest work it would not be at all surprising if they did. I see no reason to doubt De Baets on this point.

Mulder makes a point out of Wallonia being one of the most industrialized regions in Europe, which on the face of it sounds like a strong argument against farmhouse brewing. But the brewers in Westphalia were just north of the Ruhr valley, perhaps the densest agglomeration of industry in all of Europe, yet the farmers brewed into the 1950s in some places.

Farmers who grow grain will brew beer as long as it makes economic sense for them, and whether there is industry nearby won't necessarily affect the economic logic at all.

Danish farm on north Zealand.

The brewing of saison shows a farmhouse signature on another point, too: the pitch temperature. Dupont pitches at very high temperatures, which is characteristic of farmhouse brewing everywhere. Again I think it's more likely than not that there is a link between today's saison brewers and the farmhouse brewers. I haven't seen any research actually demonstrating that link so thoroughly as to put it beyond challenge, but in his rebuttal to Mulder De Baets points to a possible starting point for doing that:

In the 18th and the 19th Centuries, you had plenty of farming treatises being published. In most if not all of them you have a chapter on brewing. And not only homebrewing (for the family), but also sometimes at a level allowing the making of beer for a larger amount of people (the saisonniers, or summer workers for instance, and most probably some folks of the village).

If these manuals describe brewing similar to present-day saison you would have a very convincing case for the link.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, personally I see no reason not to accept that saison is beer style in the farmhouse family, even though it may have changed somewhat over the years. For example, I would be very surprised if the farmers brewed a carbonated beer.

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