Beyond being our most award-winning beer, Touch of Brett is one of our absolute favorites and one we try to return to each year! For us, it's a wonderful expression of how yeast and hops can complement each other and pairs with most foods making it extremely versatile at the dinner table.

This hoppy saison is always 100% fermented with brettanomyces yeast and aged in French oak barrels and foeders before being liberally dry-hopped to finish of the blend. This year we used Pacific-Northwest-grown Azacca hops for the dry hop, layering delicious notes of citrus, mango and pineapple on top of the already wonderfully tropical yeast profile.

Barrels
French Oak

ABV
6.4%

Microbes
Brettanomyces blend

Availability
Tasting Rooms, Club

Release
February 2024

Prior Vintages
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

Bronze, Oregon Beer Awards 2022, “Mixed Culture Beers”

Silver, Best of Craft Beer Awards 2022, “Brett Beers” category

Silver, GABF 2020, “Brett Beer” category

Gold, FOBAB 2020, “Wild Beer, Brett” category

Double Gold, SIP NW 2020, “Saison/Farmhouse” category

Bronze, GABF 2018, “Brett beer” category

Gold, GABF 2016, “Brett Beer” category

Bronze, GABF 2017, “Brett Beer” category

Lemon roast chicken, aged gouda, grilled portabella mushroom sandwich with goat cheese, focaccia with mango ricotta & black sea salt

Touch of Brett is, for us, the embodiment of brewing the beer you like to drink! What makes our Touch of Brett series special is that unlike most Brett beers, we use a large and healthy Brettanomyces pitch in primary fermentation, which results in more fruity notes than funky (as many people associate with Brett).
These beers gain so much complexity while aging because of the yeast. Whereas most beers ferment in just a couple of weeks with typical brewer’s yeast (Saccharomyces), Brett ferments beer incredibly slowly, and with that comes complex flavors and aromas that are hard to find anywhere else in the culinary world.
These yeast-derived flavors complement the natural qualities of malt and hops incredibly well. Brettanomyces ferments deliver some light fruity notes that help blend the yeast and hop aromas together. They also create some herbal, hay-like notes, spicy qualities like coriander, and sometimes “funky” flavors that compliment the malt character.
With that said, Brett can also be very unpredictable, sometimes causing barrels treated exactly the same way to taste dramatically different. And that’s when we go from brewers to blenders. We taste through every barrel to find the ones with fruity qualities and spicy qualities and other flavors we think will meld into the perfect beer. Knowing we won’t be adding fruits or spices to this blend, we’re particular about not letting one barrel overpower any other — while blending, we’re striving for balance
And to top it off, we get to custom pick the hop whose flavors will help accentuate some of the already-present characteristics in our beer. For Touch of Brett 2022, we dry hopped (hopping the final blend) with Nectaron hops, that accentuate the tropical notes of the ferment.