Saison de Terroir – 225L Barrel 2026

About This Beer

A pale, dry, low-bitterness saison brewed to fill a 225-litre barrel — a collaborative, multi-brewer project built around Paul Fantham’s ex-North End Brewery barrique, the barrel that previously held North End’s own Saison de Terroir. The wood still carries North End’s resident house culture, so the barrel is not a neutral vessel but a living one: the whole point is to feed clean saison into it and let what lives in the oak make it sour and funky over a long age.

The wort is a canvas rather than a finished beer. Gladfield Pilsner carries about 74% of the grist, with Vienna for a touch of malt depth, a little wheat for body and head, and a small Munich addition for colour — 8.7 EBC, OG 1.050 to a dry 1.004, and just ~6 IBU. The bitterness is deliberately far below a clean saison: iso-alpha acids inhibit Lactobacillus, so a mixed-fermentation barrel beer is under-bittered on purpose to let the resident culture acidify freely.

This page is the whole 2026 barrel — every batch brewed to fill it, totalled as they go in. The ingredient figures are the running total across batches brewed so far.

One Barrel, Several Brews, Several Strains

The barrel is filled from a run of separate 50-litre batches, each brewed to the same wort recipe but fermented to terminal on a different strain, then combined in the barrel. The strain differences are the point — each throws its own ester and phenol profile, and blending them before the long barrel age gives more complexity than any single pitch could. The initial fill runs to four batches across two brewers:

• Mangrove Jack’s M29 — two batches (Matt’s ~104 litres): French saison, peppery, fruity, very attenuative to a bone-dry finish.
• LalBrew Farmhouse — one batch (Paul’s): a farmhouse strain that, being non-diastatic, leaves its dextrins behind as long-term food for the barrel’s Brett.
• A wild slurry — one batch (Paul’s): his own wild-captured, Brett-forward culture, the wildcard and the funk driver.

And the barrel itself carries the heritage line: North End fermented their Saison de Terroir with BE-134, so that house strain already lives in the oak. So the character comes from every direction at once — three fresh cultures, plus whatever the wood has been keeping. Each contributor ferments their own batch to terminal in their own fermenter first, so primary lees stay out of the barrel and only clean beer goes into the oak — the same ferment-then-combine discipline used on the Lark foeder.

The Fill So Far

Both of Matt’s batches are down — brewed 24 and 27 July 2026, both on Mangrove Jack’s M29. Around 104 litres of shared wort, both at OG 1.058 — eight points over the 1.050 target, from a clean mash conversion. (The ingredient figures on this page are Matt’s two batches; Paul brews the other two.)

The first batch was run hot into three no-chill cubes — two black cubes filled brim-full at around 23 litres each, and a third topped up with the remainder and its headspace purged with CO₂ — then dropped off to Paul, who has it fermenting on M29. The second batch, brewed three days later, is the same wort fermenting here in a 60-litre fermenter; it took off fast, bubbling hard and eight points down inside the first day, exactly the quick clean start M29 is known for.

Both batches shared the same improvisation on the way. Fifty litres genuinely maxes out the 65-litre BrewZilla — with the full mash and sparge it brims near 57 litres and only about 24 of the 28 litres of sparge will fit. Rather than shave the sparge and lose sugar, the overflow runnings were caught in a clean bucket, boiled down separately on the stovetop, reduced to a few litres and added back to the kettle late in the boil. All the extract kept, the full volume kept.

Paul, meanwhile, has the other two batches away. His LalBrew Farmhouse went well — vigorously enough that the krausen pushed straight up and out the top on the tight headspace. His wild slurry, the batch everyone was most curious about, kicked off fast with the bubbler ticking over inside a day; Paul rates it a very good culture, thinks it carries a touch of Belgian-style character, and is happy to commit it to the shared wood — which counts for a lot given whose beer rides on it.

That is four batches away, and between Matt’s two M29, Paul’s Farmhouse and his wild slurry — before the barrel’s own resident bugs even get a vote — it is already a properly wild mix. Rather than fill to the absolute brim now, the plan is deliberately staged: these four go in, the barrel ages about three months, and then it gets checked on pH and taste. If the souring and wild character are coming along, a final saison batch tops it up to the brim and banks an overflow reserve for the angel’s share. If the barrel is being shy, that top-up is also the moment to add more bugs. As each batch is brewed the totals on this page climb; four down, and all away cleanly.

The Wort

Every batch is the same 13.0 kg grist: 9.6 kg Gladfield Pilsner, 2.38 kg Vienna, 0.64 kg wheat and 0.38 kg Munich. A low, long saccharification rest — 64°C for 75 minutes — drives a highly fermentable, dry wort, because each saison strain finishes bone dry and the barrel wants a lean beer with little residual body to carry acidity and funk cleanly.

The single hop charge is 43 g of Styrian Goldings (Celeia) at 60 minutes for bittering only, around 6 IBU. It stands in for the recipe’s Styrian Gold at matched alpha units — the varieties barely matter at 60 minutes and this low a bitterness, and both sit happily under a long mixed-culture age. There are no late or dry-hop additions.

Water is built on soft Wellington municipal to a balanced, slightly chloride-leaning profile — deliberately not sulfate-forward, since aggressive sulfate reads harsh against developing acidity and does nothing useful in a barrel like this. The mash is brought to pH 5.3 and the sparge kept down around 5.5–6.0 to keep husk tannins out of a pale, pilsner-heavy runoff. The salts do just enough for yeast health and mash chemistry; the barrel, not the water, carries the character.

At the Rig’s Limit

A 50-litre batch is above the comfortable maximum of the 65-litre BrewZilla, and that is the deliberate stretch. Two tight spots each brew day: the mash, where 42 litres of water and 13 kg of grain nearly fill the malt pipe and the bed has to be doughed in slowly to avoid compacting and stalling the recirculation; and the boil, where roughly 58 litres of pre-boil wort leaves only about 10 litres of headspace for the hot break to climb into. Both are managed rather than avoided — a slow, watched start to the boil, and a careful dough-in — and if a batch runs tight it simply drops a couple of litres off the sparge, which costs nothing on a barrel filler.

Status

All four of the initial batches are away — Matt’s two M29, Paul’s Farmhouse and his wild slurry. The barrel begins filling once they reach terminal gravity and are transferred clean under CO₂ into the purged wood. Then it ages roughly three months before the first real look: a pH reading and a taste. If the wild character and acidity are on their way, a final saison batch tops the barrel to the brim and banks a reserve; if it is coming along slowly, that top-up is when more bugs go in. From there it is a long, slow project — the resident North End culture working across the blend over 12 to 18 months, sampled periodically and tracked toward a balanced, finished acidity. It comes out when acid, funk and oak sit right — a decision the palate makes, not the calendar.