This was a fun beer to put together. When speaking with Hansharo, we discovered we both had similar interests in flower and sake yeast beers. Rather than decide which one to do, we combined the styles together into a wildflower sake saison! Truly a mix of our two breweries' styles and techniques, we sourced and then propagated the sake yeast based on their experience using the strain. One of our brewers hails from a previous sake brewery before joining KBC, so we used her knowledge and connections, and designed a fermentation profile merging both Hansharo's style with some of her experience, with the goal of enhancing the pear and honeydew melon flavours that this yeast can produce. Using our experience with wildflowers, we used a blend of dandelion, jasmin, and chrysanthemum. We wanted to use the light sweet fruit sake yeast elements, combined with the fresh flowery character to make a beer akin to a Pinot Grigio style white wine. We paired this with complimentary hops such as Audacia and Vista, Audacia contributing rose, lilac, and lavender characteristics with a touch of lingonberry sweetness, and Vista supporting the Sake yeast esters with melon, pear, tangerine, and other light tropical flavours. The malt base was a blend of a mixed grain style saison with some wheat and rye, with some added rice flakes for a softer dry sake-like finish. This beer was months in the making with a 3 stage yeast propagation, followed by a 3-week primary fermentation with several weeks conditioning. While sake yeast beers are not a new thing, we wanted ours to take a slightly different direction, and we think we were able to achieve that here. This beer was a labour of love from start to finish, but a beer worth the effort.