Shiawassee Saison Puts Banana Ahead of the Pepper

Farmington Brewing's saison is back on tap at 5.2 percent, and the brewery lists banana before citrus and pepper. For a farmhouse ale, that is an unusual order to put the notes in.

• Style: Saison
• Release Date: 2026-09-17
• ABV: 5.2%
• Farmington Brewing Company (Farmington, MI)

Farmington Brewing Company lists three flavors in its Shiawassee Saison, and the order they come in is the interesting part.

The Farmington, Michigan brewery has the beer on tap at 5.2 percent ABV and 28 IBU. It describes Shiawassee as a Belgian classic, an easy-drinking ale that is effervescent, with banana, citrus and peppery flavor.

Banana at the front of that list is worth a second look. In a saison, the pepper note usually leads. It comes from phenolic compounds that farmhouse yeast strains produce readily, and it is the character most drinkers use to identify the style at all. Banana is an ester rather than a phenol, and it is more commonly associated with German wheat beers than with Belgian farmhouse ales.

Saison yeast is capable of both, and which one dominates depends heavily on fermentation conditions. Warmer, more vigorous fermentations tend to push esters forward. A description that leads with banana and finishes with pepper points to a rounder, fruitier version of the style rather than the austere, aggressively dry interpretation that saison can also produce.

The rest of the brewery's framing supports that reading. Effervescent and easy-drinking are not words attached to a demanding beer, and 5.2 percent sits at the gentler end of a style that frequently runs past 6.

High carbonation is doing structural work here as well. It is a defining feature of the style rather than a finishing touch, and it keeps a beer with this much yeast character feeling light on the palate.

Shiawassee Saison is pouring now at the brewery's Grand River Avenue taproom.