Pottstown, PA — The wildly-popular, warm weather offering Grisette Working Class Ale was first canned by the Sly Fox Brewing Company in 2013. In that initial year of its release, the refreshing farmhouse-style ale was awarded a silver medal in the French and Belgian-style Ale category at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival (GABF). It returned the following year to win the gold, and now, in 2015, we’re proud to announce that Grisette was once again awarded a silver medal at the country’s largest beer competition.
The 2015 GABF competition winners were selected by an international panel of 242 expert judges from the record number of 6,647 entries received from 1,552 U.S. breweries. The GABF represents the largest collection of U.S. beer ever served in a public tasting event, plus a private competition that brings together the brewers and diverse beers that make the U.S. the world’s greatest brewing nation.
Grisette was originally brewed for miners in the Walloon region of Belgium, just as Saison was the beer of the farmers. Grisette was lighter than Saison and frequently contained wheat as well as barley malt (as does the Sly Fox version). The name is derived from the French word for “gray,” referring to both the drab factory frocks worn by the young women (the grisettes) who doled out pints as the men exited from the mines, and also the color of the cobblestone rock being extracted. Grisette will return to the shelves in the spring of 2016.