Woodland Wonders - Bottle
6.0%

Woodland Wonders

Elderflower Saison

Commercial Series

An ode to forest ecosystems, "Woodland Wonders" was brewed in collaboration with Higgins Ale Works using copious amounts of wild elderflowers that were personally hand-picked from the Bavarian Alps. This refreshing saison nudges you to take a step back from the urban landscape and tune your senses to the floral aromas, spicy flavors and subtle earthy notes of the forest.

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  • Last brewedJuly 13, 2023
  • Alcohol6.0%
  • MaltsPilsner, Vienna, Abbey
  • HopsHallertau Mittelfrüh
  • YeastMangrove Jack's M29 French Saison,
    White Labs WLP521 Hornindal Kveik
  • ExtrasElderflowers
Woodland Wonders - Label Design

With a proven track record of brewing artisanal ales at home, the time finally came to scale up production with a much larger commercial batch. Sharing a common love for beer and the outdoors, not to mention a high standard for quality, it was only natural that I joined forces with my friends at Higgins Ale Works so that together we may brew a refreshing saison for the summer. This wasn't gonna be a shot in the dark either, as I had already been homebrewing my "Eyes Of Emerald" elderflower honey saison every summer for a few years now, which served as a solid foundation for this new recipe. That being said, there were still a few tweaks I wanted to make, such as lowering the alcohol level for better drinkability and substituting the honey addition at flameout with Abbey malt in the mash. Once we had a solid recipe to work with, we brewed a small test batch on my homebrewing system to get an idea of what to expect before scaling up production. Of course scaling up also meant using more elderflowers, a lot more! So I went scouting for areas in the Bavarian Alps from where I could forage this key ingredient for our collab. With some good places mapped out, I ended up picking over 4.5kg of wild elderflowers, destemming them by hand to get 2kg of just pure flowers. We used these in the whirpool to give the saison a distinctive but not overpowering burst of floral aromas, which paired excellently with the spicy notes of the yeast resulting in a farmhouse ale that has a wild feel to it while still being delicate enough and easily drinkable by beer lovers and casual consumers alike.

Woodland Wonders - Pencil DrawingWoodland Wonders - Ink IllustrationWoodland Wonders - Digital Print

The Artwork

Nature and wildlife have fascinated me ever since I was a child, wondering endlessly through forests and meadows while my family would forage for mushrooms and plants. Returning home still bewildered by my discoveries, I'd often find myself browsing through zoological and botanical atlases until their pages quite literally fell off. These featured incredibly detailed illustrations of fauna and flora from many habitats, helping me learn about ecosystems, while in the same time fueling my imagination. The artwork featured on this label design is a tribute to all those illustrations and to the artists behind them.

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Woodland Wonders - Artwork
Woodland Wonders - Showcase

Glossary

After countless hours of researching species from Europe's temperate climate forests, what resulted was a composition that resembled those naturalist plates from my old atlases:

  1. Banded darter (Sympetrum pedemontanum)
  2. Cross spider web (Araneus diadematus)
  3. Heathed woodtuft (Kuehneromyces mutabilis)
  4. Grove snail (Cepaea nemoralis)
  5. Trumpet cup lichen (Cladonia fimbriata)
  6. Large marsh grasshopper (Stethophyma grossum)
  7. Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina)
  8. Flat-brocade moss (Platygyrium repens)
  9. Red deer antler (Cervus elaphus)
Woodland Wonders - Wildlife Glossary
Woodland Wonders - Outdoor View
Vorderer Drachenkopf in Mieminger Mountains • 2,306m
Tyrolean Alps, Austria

Availability

Brewed in early summer when elderflowers are in their full bloom, the latest batch of this magical saison was released on September 7th, 2023 at the Higgins Ale Works Taproom in Munich, Germany. This was available on tap as well as in a limited amount of cans, but since then it has sold out entirely.

Merchandise

If you dig the label artwork and would like to get your hands on some merch that features it, then check out the Hopsylvania web shop and snoop around for something you might like. All orders and manufacturing handled by Spreadshirt.

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Woodland Wonders - T-Shirt

Other Beers

Check out some of the other things I brewed that might be similar to this one, or alternatively just explore the full range regardless of their style.

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