Seattle’s Fair Isle Brewing has been releasing beers at a breakneck pace lately. Below, I’ve wrapped up a whole bunch of their latest releases into one post. Get the beers online here.
Info straight from the brewery.
Alexandra
4.7% ABV
375ml | 750ml | Draft
BATCH: ONE
PACKAGED: SEPTEMBER 2020
Alexandra is a saison brewed with fireweed foraged from the Cascades. Fireweed is an opportunistic flower that shoots up in the spring and flowers in the late summer. Light and bright, Alexandra has notes of green tea, herbs, lime and hay.
We fell in love with the ingredient fireweed when we did a collaboration in 2016 with Jester King – Fair Voyage (we brought foraged fireweed for the beer). Our friend and ethnobotanist, Alex, first introduced us to fireweed for it’s similarity to green tea and ability to sustainably harvest.
Brewed with malts from Skagit Valley Malting, hops from Crosby Farms and fermented with our house blend of wild and feral yeasts and bacterias. In the tradition for saisons, we recommend drinking this beer fresh.
Camellia
7.2% ABV
375ml | 750ml | Draft
BATCH: ONE
PACKAGED: AUGUST 2020
Camellia is a saison with pale orange hues and brewed with malted barley and wheat from Skagit Valley Malts and Hallertau hops from Yakima Chief Hops.
A break from your classic winter beer, Camellia has notes of tangelos, pineapples and lingering dried apricots. Expressing a chalky minerality and petrichor notes, it reminds us of summer storms in the Southwest.
In the 1970s our brewery was home to a begonia warehouse operated by the Brown Bulb Ranch. They laid the foundation for America’s lead in tuberous begonias including the varieties Madame R. Galle and the Camellia Double.
Lora
3.9% ABV
Draft & Crowlers
BATCH: ONE
Taking cues from the wine industry, Lora is a table beer with a field blend of berries from Sidhu Farms.
After our fruit forward beers are packaged, we are left with discarded fruit that retains sugars and is still full of flavor. These leftovers, along with the desire to conserve and use our resources better as a brewery, led us to give new life to the previously used fruit. We transferred and conditioned a bright table beer for two months on a blend of second-use boysenberries and blackberries, making it a wine-inspired beer akin to the process of producing a Piquette.
Lora is a 3.9% bright and tart beer with nuanced berry notes followed by a lacing of rosemary.
Available only on draft and crowlers!
Gemma
a saison with foraged elderflower and rose hips
4.9% ABV
750mL | 375mL | Draft
BATCH: TWO
PACKAGED: JUNE 2020
Herbaceous and botanical, Gemma is a precious saison infused with rose hips and dried elderflowers foraged from the Cascades by Andrew’s long-time friend and ethnobotanist, Alex.
Batch two has a more pronounced floral and elderflower aroma followed by tart undertones from the rose hips.
Helsar
a saison infused with cascara from Costa Rica
4.8% ABV
375mL | 750mL | draft
BATCH: ONE
PACKAGED: AUGUST 2020
Cascara in Spanish means “husk” or “shell,” and is used to describe the skin of the coffee fruit that has been removed during depulping.
Named after the micromill where the cascara is sourced, Helsar is a tart saison with notes of cherry fruit leather, tangy apple cider, fresh tomatillos and followed by a lingering orange zest.