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Liam snapped his fingers. “Saison.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Saison. That’s what would go well with Ruth’s cheese. A nice saison with some herby overtones. Basil, say, or maybe coriander.” He could almost taste it—the light, fizzy Belgian beer with the fruity overtones and the hint of spice.
“Coriander’s more traditional, but I suppose basil would work.”
Liam paused. “We used to do a saison. Have you thought about doing another?”
Bec shook her head. “There isn’t a lot of it around here. A porter or a milk stout would be more in line with people’s tastes in Antero.”
“Maybe you could do a small batch.”
“All of our batches qualify as small batch. I’d rather concentrate on stuff I know there’s an immediate market for. We need to build up inventory and our rep, pump out stuff that’s going to sell, at least for the time being.”
Liam frowned. He wasn’t sure why he was making a point of this, but he suddenly wanted to take a stand. “What if I made it? Very small batch. Just a try-out. Maybe Wyatt would take it, or maybe I could sell it to Stanton.” Although Stanton would undoubtedly try to drive the price down to pennies.
Bec narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me for saying it, but you haven’t made any beer on your own for years.”
He felt a quick pinch of irritation. That doesn’t mean I can’t. “I know. But I’ve done saisons as home brew, and I know how to make it. I used to make beer all the time back in the day, and I’ve been helping you for quite a while. I know how it should be done.”
Bec held up a hand. “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to insult you. Of course you know how to make beer. You made good beer back when we were starting out, and you’ve been a lifesaver around here since last year. I just meant that it’s been a while since you designed a beer from the ground up. And saison isn’t exactly easy, even if you did make it as home brew once upon a time. The balance is tricky—you can’t make it too hoppy or too malty, and you need the spice to be there but not to take over.”
“But it’s bottle-aged, and we could use the big, champagne-style bottles so it wouldn’t duplicate the other stuff. And it uses the pilsner malt you’re using for the IPA, so we wouldn’t have to special order it. I’ll start small to get the spice balance right, then do a bigger run when I get it to work. And I won’t do anything drastic until you sign off.”
Given that he’d only just come up with the idea of a saison that would match Ruth’s cheese, this was a lot to promise. But thinking about it stirred a certain excitement in his gut. Maybe his first genuine excitement about brewing since Colin Brooks had taken off and Antero Brewing had gone to hell.
Even if he never got anywhere with Ruth, he’d have the saison. And he was going to get somewhere with Ruth. On that, he was set.
Bec looked skeptical, but finally, she shrugged. “Okay, go ahead. At the most, we’ll be out some money for malt and hops, but like you said, it’s not like we’ll be ordering anything exotic.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not thinking of anything exotic, are you?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Just basil and maybe coriander. Although I wonder how mint would work.”
Bec gave him a quelling glance. “No mint beer. Not on my watch. Basil would probably work. And let me taste after it’s through the initial stages.”
“Absolutely.” He was willing to let her be brewmaster. As long as he got to try brewing again on his own. “It’ll be great. Or anyway, it’ll be drinkable.”
“Right. Now I need to get the fermenting kettle ready for some beer we can actually sell.” She headed off toward the next set of equipment.
Liam watched her go, ignoring his own quick flash of annoyance. It didn’t matter if Bec didn’t have any faith. He did. As soon as the idea for the saison had waltzed into his brain, he’d known he had a winner.
Saison and goat cheese and Ruth. He was betting on a winning trifecta.
Chapter Six
The glow of the saison idea stayed with Liam through the first hour of work. Not that he was doing a lot of bartending at two in the afternoon. Once again, the lunch crowd was more into iced tea and lemonade than lager and cocktails. He’d cleaned the bar, prepared enough setups for the rest of the day and most of the evening, and was now considering rearranging the glassware just to have something else to occupy his time.
