The foudre: magnificent staple of the wine world turned wonderful tool for craft brewers. A foudre (pronounced either foe-der, foo-druh, or foo-der depending on who you ask) is basically a huge, wooden tank, historically used for the storing and maturation of wine. FV13 was aged in such a tank. Not only was FV13 aged in a foudre, but it was the first beer that Allagash brewers ever aged in one. Sure, our brewers had experience with barrel aging before FV13, but we still had a lot to learn about the mighty foudre.

What we call wild beer, many other people call “sour” beer. This is purely a preference, and not any hard and fast rule. But we wanted to explain why we feel like “wild” works a bit harder than “sour,” and what wild beers are to us.

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.

More than ever in our brewery’s history, we’re using Maine-grown grains to make our beer. In 2016, we made the pledge to increase our usage of local grain—that year, we ended up using around 65,000 pounds. In 2017, we increased it to around 150,000 pounds, and in 2018, 280,000 pounds. By 2020, we had hit 728,000 pounds.