Incomplete Saison Ranking

Here is another ranking of beers from the website Paste.  This time it is thirty-five American saisons.  The results are linked to above for you to read, but it is an incomplete list of saisons.  Paste included saisions from brewery heavyweights The Lost Abbey, Crooked Stave, Prairie Artisan Ales,and Boulevard Brewing, but noticeably missing were master American saison brewers The Bruery, Hill Farmstead*, Jolly Pumpkin, Logsdon, Upright, Telegraph, and probably more, but those were the breweries I thought of while reading the article. 

Saisons are no longer exotic or niche beers, and the next time Paste tackles this style it needs to expand its review pool.  Paste states that possible reasons for the glaring exclusions were that some breweries would not ship beer, or did not want to participate in its survey (or, maybe, certain breweries did not want to give away free beer).  Any list of American saisons that does not have Logsdon's Seizoen Bretta, or Jolly Pumpkin's Baudelaire iO Saison, or The Bruery's Saison de Lente is a list short on depth and credibility.

I like Paste's blind tasting approach to ranking beers, which is why I have linked to its two lists.  The article does not state the methodology Paste used to judge its blind tasting but I am assuming it is the same as it used last month to rank 116 IPAs. 

Taste is subjective, especially in such an expansive style like saisons.   Prairie Artisan Ales' Prairie Ale was rated the number two saison but when I had it I thought it mediocre, not outstanding, while I found The Lost Abbey's Red Barn fantastic but it did not even crack the top twenty.   The top ranked beer was Side Project Brewing's Saison Du Blu (and Side Project came in at number three, too, with its Saison Du Fermier).  Another group of tasters would likely have had a completely different ranking of the same beers, which is what makes saisons such compelling beers, but this same quality also makes any kind of saison ranking hard to take too serious, especially when the ranking is missing some big name beers.

*The only beer I have tried from Hill Farmstead was a collaboration beer with a Belgian brewery, but Kaedrin Beer Blog has been raving about Hill Farmstead's saisons and other beers for years.