'Tis the Zaison

You never know who you'll meet when you're out for a pint. Last evening I was hanging with friends at Ashley's, and I bumbled across Jason Spaulding, co-founder of New Holland Brewing and now out on his own starting another small brewing operation. The new operation is called "One Beer" and, fittingly enough, it produces a single beer, the "Zaison" saison ale. It's available (for now, anyway) only at Ashley's and Zingerman's Roadhouse. At 9% ABV, it's not one to suck down with abandon, but it's a slightly peppery take on the classic style, designed to pair with a wide variety of victuals. Jason's looking for a home for his new brewery, and of course I selfishly hope he'll decide to make it in or around Ann Arbor. (Side note: He also hand-carved the tap handle himself.)

2 comments:

Pete said...

Ooooooh,... we discovered this at the July 21st Early Summer Harvest dinner at the Roadhouse. My brother-in-law from California, who knows a good beer or wine when he sees/smells/tastes it, ordered this first (I had the Sazerac, another topic for another time, to start).

This is truly exceptional, the closest to the "nectar" ideal that beers, with the emergence of widely-available Belgian styles, have been promising for 15 years now.

Incredible beverage: To refer to it with the same term, "beer", that is used to describe any other such beverage is really to call Savion Glover a dancer, Jeff Lang a guitarist and Daniel Day Lewis an actor (with that, I've just plugged three of my standard-bearers: If you don't know them, look them up on YouTube). It both transcends and recalibrates the term.

Anonymous said...

My point of view partially coincided with yours. Thank you for trying. antidepressants