Brasserie Dunham - Propolis

This month we’re excited to be able to offer our Rare Beer Club members an exclusive import from the folks at Brasserie Dunham. Propolis is a honey saison brewed with lemon peel and coriander, in a long series of delicious beers created by Dunham. Propolis is brewed with rye, wheat, and oats with a small amount of fall honey, lemon peel, and coriander. Propolis is lightly hopped and gets fermented with Dunham’s house blend of farmhouse ale yeasts and Brettanomyces.

Dunham Propolis pours a hazy golden yellow capped by two fingers of dense white foam with great retention and lots of lacing left behind in the glass. Upfront we are met by impactful aromatics of citrusy lemon peel, green apple, and Anjou pear. We’re also met with inviting notes of honey, stone fruit, and lightly grassy elements from complex fermentation playing out in the background. The addition of coriander works seamlessly alongside the complex, lemony funk and phenolic elements in the aroma.

The Brasserie Dunham Propolis is light to medium in body on the palate, though its flavor profile is much bigger. It has a lightly toasty malt bill, bringing forward the lemon peel and coriander elements from this beer, and allowing the honey, stone fruit, apple, and pear we encountered in the aroma to play out as fresh flavors. There is then a fresh, lightly grassy, and herbaceous aspect that arises from the sprinkling of bittering hops, giving a nicely refreshing experience, sip after sip. This is quite a thirstquenching beer that we’ll go back to time and again.

Brasserie Dunham’s Propolis’s mouthfeel results from a lightly aggressive mousse that smooths out towards the finish. The flavors linger on and the long dry finish makes for a great overall experience. This beer hasn’t been imported to the United States for over five years and is now being offered exclusively to Rare Beer Club members with a very limited amount available. We highly recommend stocking up on this one.

The Brasserie Dunham Propolis is ready to drink now with no further need for aging. If aging is preferred, we recommend 1-3 years, sampling a bottle or two every six months or so. We here at the Rare Beer Club enjoy drinking saisons such as this one on the fresher side. For pairing options, we focused on the core elements of honey, lemon peel, and coriander and recommend fare such as herb-crusted chicken tacos, buttery seafood with lemon, or bar-style pizza with a light drizzle of hot honey. There is also a wide range of cheeses to pair with such as fresh goat cheese, muenster, and Époisses.

Brasserie Dunham was founded in June of 2011, and they’ve been making a major impact on the world beer scene ever since. One of the first times we crossed paths was sampling their Assemblage No. 1 a few years back—a memorable blend of a saison/witbier hybrid and an American-style pale ale, with Brettanomyces and Zinfandel barrels for good measure. Some of our Rare Beer Club members may recall Dunham’s tasty dry-hopped Pale Duck or Concubine we featured a few years ago. We’ve really been looking forward to bringing these folks back into the club again, and this month we’ve got an exclusive from Brasserie Dunham: Propolis, a honey saison brewed with lemon peel and coriabnder, imported exclusively for our Rare Beer Club members.

While inspired by the European classics, the team at Brasserie Dunham has also found a lot of inspiration in their hometown of Dunham and the surroundings. The brewery works with local farmers to source ingredients, especially seasonal produce like raspberries, cherries, and black currants for their fruited beers. Their restaurant also has them working with local farmers, and their barrel-aging project has grown to hundreds of barrels (with some foeders tossed in). They’re constantly tweaking the yeast blends for their wild beers and saisons, including testing out spontaneous fermentation and cultivating wild strains from the local air.

Brasserie Dunham has been awarded medals for their grisette Ping Pong Wizard (a collaboration with Cambridge Brewing Co.) and their Rye ESB. Brasserie Dunham is also named the in the top 50 breweries in the World per RateBeer.com. We’ve really enjoyed everything we’ve tasted so far from Brasserie Dunham and we hope you do as well!

Brasserie Dunham currently self-distributes to points of sale across Québec, with a small amount getting shipped to other Canadian provinces and internationally, including the U.S., Belgium, France and Germany. Most of their production, though, gets consumed within Québec (and most of the Brasserie Dunham beer making it into the U.S. comes in kegs).

For those who enjoy Brasserie Dunham’s releases as much as we do, you might also want to check out one of the major beer events Dunham throws each year (which often see them releasing around a dozen barrel-aged beers at once). For more info on the brewery, upcoming events and more, check out www.brasseriedunham.com.