116 of the Best Saisons, Blind-Tasted and Ranked

In the course of conducting this tasting, the regular crew of Paste blind tasters hit upon an essay prompt of a question: If you could only drink one beer style ever again, what would it be?

The almost expected answer, at least at this point in the American craft beer experiment, would be IPA—or perhaps pale ale for the drinker favoring approachability rather than all-out hop decadence. But over the course of nine days tasting farmhouse ales, many of us came to a new conclusion. It’s the most versatile, eclectic and adaptable of all beer styles. Like champagne is to wine, saison is to beer—you can pair it with anything, and a variant exists for any situation.