A saison, also often called a farmhouse ale, is a style of beer originating in the French-speaking Wallonia region of Belgium. In today’s brewing scene, it is widely accepted that a saison will be “exceptionally dry, highly carbonated, fruity and of moderate strength: 6-8% ABV.” Beyond that description, the saison style offers quite a bit of room for interpretation.

When it comes to innovating new beer, we rely on every single person that works at Allagash. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been at the company for ten days or ten years. That’s how our pilot system works: anyone at our brewery with an idea can propose the next big Allagash beer.

If we’ve learned one thing about sustainability, it’s that many small choices add up to a large impact. Below, we’ve put together seven of the small(ish) decisions that we’ve made as we’ve grown as a brewery that have helped us to continue to brew more sustainably and efficiently—all in the hopes of helping other breweries implement more sustainable practices.

One of our favorite food-and-beer pairings is beer and cheese. Both are versatile. Both are delicious. And the flavor combinations you can create between them are surprising and abundant. We love a good beer cheese dip, don’t get us wrong. But we wanted to approach this pairing from a much broader perspective than how the two melt together. Below, you’ll find pairing fundamentals, and a few suggested pairing examples, for beer and cheese.