We have only used strawberries once before at Floodland, in the 2017 harvest strawberry/elderflower combination for the Roseate blend 1. Strawberries are tricky to work with, and mostly I'm of the opinion that good strawberries should just be eaten rather than turned into beer. But we've returned after a long break to using them, this time from Sidhu Farm. This blend contains other berries, but it's about 60% strawberry, along with marionberries, blackberries, and a small portion of blueberries. Blind you might think it's strawberry and blueberry, because the marion and blacks blend in with the blues to flesh them out and add a floral/lavender bramble that is hard to differentiate.

While this is big berries on the nose, it avoids the problems I've had with most strawberry beers (phenolic and being overly acidic). The acid on this is perfect for me, and I think the back-end of this where the strawberry and blackberry blend comes across as very guava/tropical, but with more depth of flavor.

Of all the various berry blends we've made over the years this is absolutely my favorite. It has some blueberry texture and complexity, but they are so low in the blend that none of the spice/leather from them that can be challenging is really present here, the and black/marion blend help make them more berry pie than anything, without being jammy like cooked berries from aseptic puree can get ("jammy" is a pejorative around here).

This is a lovely one, super happy with how it turned out. Probably I'll keep making these and keep evolving not only the berries we blend in but the beers we use to highlight the berries, as I think we got the saison in this one absolutely dialed to highlight the fruit.