With a proven track record of brewing artisanal ales at home, the time finally came to scale up production with a much larger commercial batch. Sharing a common love for beer and the outdoors, not to mention a high standard for quality, it was only natural that I joined forces with my friends at Higgins Ale Works so that together we may brew a refreshing saison for the summer. This wasn't gonna be a shot in the dark either, as I had already been homebrewing my "Eyes Of Emerald" elderflower honey saison every summer for a few years now, which served as a solid foundation for this new recipe. That being said, there were still a few tweaks I wanted to make, such as lowering the alcohol level for better drinkability and substituting the honey addition at flameout with Abbey malt in the mash. Once we had a solid recipe to work with, we brewed a small test batch on my homebrewing system to get an idea of what to expect before scaling up production. Of course scaling up also meant using more elderflowers, a lot more! So I went scouting for areas in the Bavarian Alps from where I could forage this key ingredient for our collab. With some good places mapped out, I ended up picking over 4.5kg of wild elderflowers, destemming them by hand to get 2kg of just pure flowers. We used these in the whirpool to give the saison a distinctive but not overpowering burst of floral aromas, which paired excellently with the spicy notes of the yeast resulting in a farmhouse ale that has a wild feel to it while still being delicate enough and easily drinkable by beer lovers and casual consumers alike.