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Book Review – The Audacity Of Hops

May 28, 2013 10:41 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

Recently, I was sent a copy of Tom Acitelli’s new book, The Audacity Of Hops, for review purposes. I finished it last week and I can tell you that it’s well worth reading. The prose is engaging and the story that it tells of craft beer’s rise to prominence is thoroughly well researched and entertaining. It’s not exactly a page turner, but for a book that has 40 pages of notes and bibliographical references, he’s done a great job of keeping it factually dense without having it become a slog.

It’s a book that has become necessary, especially since we’re now well into a third generation of people for whom craft beer is relatively normal. If you were born in Ontario in 1994, you can now drink. I see people in their early 20’s for whom locally made IPAs have always been around. That’s progress.

The problem is that without a proper chronicle of the good old days, like Acitelli’s book, it can be difficult to understand that this wasn’t always the case. It must seem inevitable if you are just now starting to drink beer that craft beer will continue to grow and expand in infinite ways. It has, in other words, become commonplace.

The Audacity Of Hops is really best compared to something like The Right Stuff. It wasn’t inevitable that Gordon Cooper was going to spend a whole day orbiting the earth. I don’t mean to suggest that craft beer is as important as manned space travel. What I mean to suggest is that the narrative structure is the same.

The analogy might not stand up indefinitely, so I won’t push it too far. Suffice it to say that when Chuck Yeager was flying test planes it was about pushing the envelope and seeing what was possible. It was the Wild West in terms of aeronautics. At the beginning of the exploration of space you had the Mercury Seven astronauts. You had a small number of people capable of doing a difficult and demanding thing. The public knew them and loved them. They were personalities as much as they were pilots and astronauts.

In any endeavor, there’s a brief period of time when it is associated with the personalities that excelled at the beginning. Whether they succeed or fail, there’s a tendency to impose upon their stories, if you’re reporting on them, a sense of dramatic struggle.

This is where Acitelli succeeds. He makes Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe, Ken Grossman, Charlie Papazian, Michael Jackson and Jim Koch look as though they were all taking on the world from the same angle, all intentionally cahooting. You’ve got independent brewers and people running semi-legal homebrewing shops and people writing about beer, and all of these folks are pushing the envelope of what’s possible. It may not have resulted in the International Space Station and the Mars Rover, but heck, we’ve gotten some pretty good beer out of it.

The book kind of slows down towards the modern day. This is interesting, since there’s more information about more breweries and more brands of beer and more writers than ever there were before. Is it informational glut? Is it simply that it’s hard to put together a comprehensive history of two years ago if you’re attempting to thread a narrative through to the future?

This is a problem that craft beer faces, and it’s similar to the issues NASA faced following the moon landing. The initial narrative has more or less run its course.

The main issue with having legendary exemplars of an industry like Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe and the others is that they’re by nature iconoclastic figures. These are, by and large, highly intelligent people who didn’t like what they were doing and chose a new career. Jim Koch ran against Mitt Romney for the presidency of their Harvard Business School class, for God’s sake. He probably could have done anything, but he chose beer.

I’ve mentioned before, probably in the context of the sale of Goose Island to AB In-Bev, that this iconoclasm tends to be a mixed blessing for the craft brewing industry. Without a certain amount of gumption, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The fact that people took risks on an unproven industry in the late 70’s and early 80’s is the only reason we’re experiencing this renaissance of locally produced beer. In some ways, it’s a good thing.

There are downsides, though. Because it’s one person’s dream, it’s not necessarily a generational, familial type of business. Eventually, the people who started the earlier breweries find themselves to be of a certain age and begin to think about retiring. Breweries are huge businesses with a lot of equity sunk into equipment and branding and it soon becomes evident that you have to sell the whole thing as a going concern. Depending on who you sell to, the public might get fickle. Goose Island got blowback on their sale. Someone like Peter McAuslan, who recently sold his St. Ambroise to Brasseurs RJ, was simply wished well.

At some point, the rest of the pioneers involved at the beginning of craft beer will also fade out of the narrative structure of craft beer. Fritz Maytag is retired. Michael Jackson (who I increasingly wish I had gotten to meet) passed away a few years ago and is already part of a new iconography. Jim Koch turned 64 the other day. Charlie Papazian is 67. These folks will eventually want to (or have to) retire.

The problem is this: You never get the power of the original narrative back. Yes, there are now more craft breweries than ever. Yes, it’s an increasingly global fascination. However, there are now more voices than ever and its becoming increasingly unlikely that they will all continue to sing from the same hymnal.

You can probably name all three of the astronauts involved in the first moon landing. It was a momentous event. If pressed, you might be able to name two astronauts from the 1980’s. You probably can’t tell me the names of the people on the ISS at the moment. Sometimes, NASA lucks out and gets personalities like Commander Hadfield and they manage to bring attention to space exploration. That’s about as good as they’re going to be able to do because you can’t be the first man on the moon twice.

Craft beer is going to be like that. Acitelli chronicles the deeds of Greg Koch, Tony Magee, Kim Jordan, Sam Calagione and Garrett Oliver. The problem is that despite the fact that they’re excellent spokespeople for the industry, the industry is now so large that I’m not sure there can reliably be one spokesperson for any aspect of it.

The milestone Acitelli chooses to end the historical narrative on is the fact that there are now more breweries than there were a century ago, before prohibition. A very reasonable question to ask, and one that Craft Beer should be asking itself far more frequently is “now what?”

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , ,

Big Rock – Changes in Direction

May 22, 2013 10:52 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

One of the things that always interests me in craft beer is how larger regional breweries deal with the market. Of course, there are independently owned regional breweries like Great Western who are pretty much devoted to doing one thing and doing it well. Then there are large breweries like Big Rock that make a number of different beers which would have been considered relatively adventurous at one point in their history.

It's Alberta. Each brewery is mandated by law to own a cow.

It’s Alberta. Each brewery is mandated by law to own a cow.

I’ve been compiling notes on beers from Big Rock for a while now, but it wasn’t until February that I got out there to see the brewery. One of the things that’s amazing to me is the amount of hushed respect that everyone I talked to had for the first brewmaster at Big Rock: Bernd Pieper. The brewery produces something like 330,000 HL and I was given to understand that most of it was laid out under his watchful eye. It can always be a little daunting to have a shadow like that around a brewery, especially if you’re trying to change direction.

Now, this is the size that they're making most of their beer on. It's huge. This is the third story.

Now, this is the size that they’re making most of their beer on. It’s huge. This is the third story.

The size is a significant factor in changing the direction of a brewery. If you’re making 200,000 HL of beer and another 130,000 HL of your capacity is tied up in brewing for contracts, then you’ve already got a relatively sure thing going. The beers all have an internal logical consistency for better or for worse. You’ve got a series named after animals which sells pretty well. You’ve got a series named after the brewery’s founder which is, I guess, more highly regarded. You can’t simply change a brand after nearly 25 years. Well, you could, but you’d always wonder whether the market would follow you before you rolled out the new brands.

It's the obligatory malt room shot. Only interesting because of the scale.

It’s the obligatory malt room shot. Only interesting because of the scale.

If you’re someone like Paul Gautreau, who’s brewing there now, I suppose the question is “what do you do to maintain the reputation of the brewery while attempting to keep up with emerging craft brewers who are free to create brands from scratch that feel contemporary?”

You have to stand out from the crowd, but in order to be considered by the crowd you probably need one offs. You could jump on the bandwagon and make a big hoppy west coast IPA, but that puts you square in the middle of intense competition from imports in a style you’re not known for. You could do that, but it would be an uphill climb. Instead, this year, they published a road map545957_10151547253490660_950734235_n

The decision to make a bunch of fairly esoteric beer reminds me a lot of Great Lakes in Ontario. In point of fact, one of the beers in the alchemist is a Stein beer, which is one of the things Great Lakes was doing when I first started paying attention. Superheating a lump of granite seems like a bad idea to me, but I have long since been rendered cautious by those PSA’s with the robot from Saturday morning cartoons.

Big Rock, possibly because they noticed that my column runs in Calgary, started sending me beer about a year ago. Now, some of them have been a touch underwhelming. I think that the Helles Bock was brewed very much to the dead center of the style and as a result wasn’t really a standout. I think the Saaz Pilz could probably have had a touch more Saaz in retrospect. I also question whether I simply don’t like their lager yeast strain. I usually get a slightly sour finish of Big Rock lagers.

I love it when people refer to systems of this size as their pilot system. It makes me wonder whether they homebrew in a small glacial lake.

I love it when people refer to systems of this size as their pilot system. It makes me wonder whether they homebrew in a small glacial lake.

But some of the Big Rock stuff has been pretty good. In point of fact, some of it has been really good.

Some of them I never wrote about in the newspaper. I think they understand that not all of them are going to make it to print. Take, for instance, Barghest Barleywine. Well, first of all, there are only 3000 bottles. Secondly, it’s not for sale in four of the markets in which the column appears.

It was as though I had asked them to send me the beer with the largest amount of Bargh possible.

It was as though I had asked them to send me the beer with the largest amount of Bargh possible.

That said, it was a pretty astonishing little number. It had already been aged in barrels for a year prior to bottling. I think that it was made in the image of the Thomas Hardy, and while I had to drink the bottle that was sent for notes, I had the sneaking suspicion that it would probably have aged and improved for five years. There was a slight character of sherry-like oxidation that I think would have merged eventually with the dried fruit and caramel that was in there. I could see what he was trying to do, which was a good sign. Trying to emulate something that respected while most people are going for big hoppy American Barleywine is laudable. (Next time, larger volume and more bottles so you can do vertical events in years to come.)

Seriously, 3000 bottles is just not a big enough run for something like this.

Seriously, 3000 bottles is just not a big enough run for something like this.

The Purple Gas didn’t really do it for me. I mean, who puts together a wheat based beer with an indigenous fruit variety and blue agave nectar… I mean, other than that time I did it.

The Paradox Light Dark Ale, on the other hand, was pretty darn good. I don’t know why they named it the way that they did. It was essentially a mild bitter. It was nicely balanced and at 3.75% it would have been a great summer barbeque beer. Probably, they should have made more of that one as well. (In my notes I gave it a 3.5/5. The spider tasting chart looks a little like a dyspeptic seagull, which is neither here nor there.)

The Erratic Stone Fired Ale (see, cause it’s a hunk of granite and they’re named after a glacial erratic.) was probably one of the best packaging jobs I’ve seen on a Canadian beer this year. The aroma was a massive caramel and sweet malt hit, but on the palate it dissipates away through some minerally tones. The first sip is luscious malt, but maybe so much of it that it seems to recede on subsequent ones. I have written in my notes “interesting style, good experiment” which I think is all anyone can expect of a Stein Beer.

This is a legitimately attractive packaging solution. If you told me it was from Big Rock without showing me the press release, I would have been shocked.

This is a legitimately attractive packaging solution. If you told me it was from Big Rock without showing me the press release, I would have been shocked.

Last week, they sent a beer called Rosmarinus Aromatic Ale, which is pretty much a Pale Ale with some rosemary infused. The rosemary exists in it as a faint aroma and as an accent on the palate. I don’t know why, but the hop schedule seems to have worked with it. Of the new school, this is probably the best result. Really quite tasty, plus I bet you could marinate a Pork Tenderloin in it.

Here’s the thing: Big Rock and Paul Gautreau are getting better at creation, which is a hard thing to do when you’re brewing a really large amount of only a few kinds of beer. The quality of the one offs has been steadily ticking up since they started them. Some of the ones on the list I’m actually excited about trying. The thing is this: being a creative brewer is different than brewing a brand on a large scale, but Big Rock is managing the transition better than I would have expected. At some point in the near future they’re going to really nail something and shock the hell out of everyone that hasn’t been paying attention.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Reviews, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

The Twisted Kilt

April 27, 2013 9:36 pm ⋅ 5 Comments ⋅

In this week’s column, I answered one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, which is “What do YOU drink.” I imagine that anyone with a beer blog or column gets that question quite a bit. Most people go with the tried and tested answer “a lot of different things, depending on…” and then there’s a brief period where they name variables like whether it’s the third Tuesday in the month or which direction the wind is blowing.

I’ve answered the question with the choice of the moment. That’s different than having a favorite beer, by the way. My suspicion has always been that everyone who writes about beer probably has a favorite beer, but that since it is massively impolitic to answer the question, we’re allowed to get away with proportional amounts of prevarication.

The other question that I get a lot is “Well, where do you drink?”

I get around. I’ve been to most of the beer bars in Toronto at one point or another, and I have to say that I’m generally happiest in my local pub. This was not always the case. One of the reasons that I became a beer writer was because my local pub inexplicably went downhill at some point in 2007. I ended up hanging out at Bar Volo instead, which is the kind of place that just drills beer information into you and convinces you to take pen in hand.

The Twisted Kilt is looks improbably like the faux tudor pubs in England look.

The Twisted Kilt looks improbably like the faux Tudor pubs in England look.

The Bow and Arrow, as it was then, had some serious problems. First of all, it’s a relatively large pub and it seats something like a hundred at a time, and probably more than that if it’s busy. By the time the Bow and Arrow was on its last legs, there might have been 20-30 people in at once on a Friday night. It was maudlin. The carpets hadn’t been replaced in living memory and the pub had acquired that stale beer smell that goes along with that condition. The food had gone downhill. It was caught in a miserable spiral of less income leading to less upkeep leading to less income.

It was Brutal. If you had wanted to write a textbook on running a place into the ground, you could have looked at the Bow and Arrow at its nadir and worked backwards for your narrative.

At some point about three years ago, it became The Twisted Kilt. People periodically misread that and think that I’m talking about the Tilted Kilt chain of breastaraunts that are creeping into the Ontario market. Just the other day David Ort asked me whether I worried what people thought when I updated Untappd from a place like that. I wasn’t really upset that he thought I would frequent a place where the waitresses excuse a certain amount of obscene leering for a 25% tip. I was upset that he was impugning my pub. (For the record, I don’t care how good people claim the wings at Hooters are. Being a server in a pub is hard enough without having to display your décolletage for douchebags.)

Just for contrast, that's the minto building at Yonge/Eglinton in the background, highlighting the improbability of a faux tudor frontage existing in the same neighbourhood.

Just for contrast, that’s the minto building at Yonge/Eglinton in the background, highlighting the improbability of a faux tudor frontage existing in the same neighbourhood.

The Twisted Kilt, while occupying the same space that the Bow and Arrow occupied, could provide a different textbook entirely. It has been building up relatively constantly for a few years now, and this is mostly due to having good management. The owner, John, is the kind of guy who looks at his enterprise on a nearly daily basis and attempts to decide what he can improve. This is a good quality in a pub owner.

Take the beer selection, for instance. When he started out the variety of stuff on tap was a bit samey. There were some standard Ontario offerings. There were some English Ales and some Euro Lagers. It wasn’t a very interesting lineup. At some point subtle changes started to be made. A crop of Paulaner lagers showed up one month along with a new beer tower.

Nowadays, when I go in there, he’s always got something to show me. They’re starting to get beers on tap before the other pubs in Toronto. He’s got Ommegang Hennepin. He’s got Maredsous. He’s got Hofbrau Munchen and Black Oak Pale Ale; a one-two sessionability punch that I’m not sure you can beat. It’s one of the most balanced tap lineups I’ve seen in town. Not European for the sake of being European. Not Craft for the sake of being Craft. It’s more or less one of everything.

When you consider the small number of taps and the location of the pub, the variety of the selection is boggling.

When you consider the small number of taps and the location of the pub, the variety of the selection is boggling.

He’s working on getting a selection of bottles of Belgian beer in. I haven’t seen the list recently, but I remember that some of the bottles were things no one else has. Part of the draw is the value for money. Duvel’s on at $6.50 a bottle (the regulars are now apparently going through about two cases a week). Westvleteren 12 is priced at $20.00. I popped in on Thursday night and he asked me whether I thought Green Flash in bottles was a good idea. The week before that, he was showing me pictures of the new chairs the pub will get in a few weeks. I have rarely seen a grown man so excited by chairs.

Of course, it’s not just about the beer. He’s managed to hire good people and keep them on. All of the bartenders have been there since the day the pub opened, which is something I don’t believe I’ve seen elsewhere. Turnover amongst the servers is fairly low as well. The food continues to improve, having gotten to the point where it’s near becoming a gastropub. I’ve gotten to the point where I trust them enough that I just order the special if I’m staying for dinner.

If you ask people about the beer scene in Toronto fifteen years ago, they’d probably mention that the Bow and Arrow was one of the highlights and that its sister pub The Woolwich Arms in Guelph was great too. I was at the Bow and Arrow fifteen years ago, and I can tell you that the Twisted Kilt is better than the Bow and Arrow ever was. It hit that mark about three months ago and it’s climbing steadily. It bustles. Wednesday through Saturday, it hums the way a neighbourhood pub ought to. They’re going to have to open the second floor.

Sometimes, I have tried to get some writing done at the table in the upstairs window. It has never led to productivity.

Sometimes, I have tried to get some writing done at the table in the upstairs window. It has never led to productivity.

It took me a long time to write about The Twisted Kilt because there are really appealing qualities in having a neighbourhood pub that isn’t a destination. For one thing, it is just barely sparsely populated enough that I usually get the same stool. That’s not going to last forever. It keeps getting better in minutely perceptible ways on a weekly basis and eventually quality will out. As a beer nerd, it’s fun to watch the progression. For me, it’s practically like a spectator sport. I don’t know that it’s one of the best pubs in the city yet, but if it keeps ticking along as it has it will be soon.

 

 

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: ,

The LCBO Dupont Brewery Feature

April 22, 2013 4:12 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Probably the most interesting thing about the currently available LCBO brewery feature is the fact that many of the beers from Brasserie Dupont are not as easily quantifiable as past featured breweries.

If you look, for instance, at one of the first brewery features from Tree Brewing in British Columbia, many of the styles that were on offer were relatively accessible. They had a dopplebock, a hefeweizen, a double IPA and a raspberry porter. There’s not much to be said against any of these beers, pleasing as they were. They are relatively accessible styles and fairly easily explained. Dopplebock is covered annually during lent. Hefeweizen is quite popular as a summer staple. You might need a double IPA explained to you if you’re new on the scene and have never read a blog.

The brewery feature from Shipyard featured big American bruisers. The Norrebro Brygghus and Nogne features had some less easily explained standouts (I’m thinking specifically of the Nogne Underlig Jul, which is a sort of Christmas Ale by way of Scandinavia and contains some interesting spice additions).

The brewery feature program has been a success, but I think that this is partly because the offerings are not particularly daunting. That goes more or less out the window with Brasserie Dupont, especially since the average beer drinker will need it explained to them exactly why the brewery, which specializes in Saison, a style that is really only beginning to have representation on Ontario shelves, is held in such high regard.

From what I’ve seen of the Brasserie Dupont lineup, the beers don’t really seem bothered to confine themselves to particular sets of guidelines. This is one of the real strengths of Belgian ales. The brewers don’t really care to restrict themselves, being far more interested in just making something that they like. Look at BJCP sections 16 and 18 which define Belgian Ales. There’s so much variation within each of the subcategories that the categorization can only ever really be a loose approximation. It’s an attempt to categorize knowledge systemically through imposition. It’s useful as an intellectual tool, but probably not reflective of reality, which has a bias against rigid categorization.

That said, the Dupont beers wind a bit farther afield than some, probably because of the house yeast character. The Saison yeast ferments hot and creates a lot of ester and a certain amount of authentic Wallonian funk. Average ale yeasts will ferment optimally between about 58 and 74 degrees. Dupont Saison yeast is up in the range of 80-95 for best results. I remember the first attempt Great Lakes made at fermenting with Saison yeast, buying into the romance of the thing about brewing in March for a summer beer. The ambient temperature in the brewery wouldn’t let it work at the high temperature, even with space heaters pointed at it. (Eventually they got it and those beers are doing extremely well.)

The result is a pretty phenolic experience. It doesn’t have the “horse blanket” thing that Brettanomyces does. There is a suggestion of damp, fermenting hay. I think Saison is a good deal closer to Sheep Pen than Horse Blanket. There’s a suggestion of damp spring drying out for summer if that makes any sense; of the dust rising from earth that is giving up the last of its moisture in the sun. These things can all be experienced on a hot late may day at Riverdale Farm.

The Monk’s Stout is the least alcoholic of these offerings at 5.2% alcohol and I think that it’s probably closest to being a dry stout, and the yeast character comes across relatively mildly, leaving an impression of roast character. It’s not the most approachable of the Dupont beers currently available in Ontario by a long chalk, but it’s an interesting variation on what would be a traditional style if made by another brewery.

The Cervesia seems to me to be a sweeter version of Dupont’s Saison, retaining much of the carbonation and character of the original. The additional sugar seems to bring out slightly more floral character and it leans towards the territory of Strong Blonde Ale or even a Tripel (but without the additional graininess.

The Moinette Brune (for which my tasting notes mysteriously include the phrase “oooh, I went”) is an extremely interesting representation of the difference that a brewer’s house yeast can make in a relatively standard style. It pours more red than brown, with a fairly vibrant head. There’s the fig, brown malt flavour and a small amount of chocolate that you would typically experience in a Belgian brown ale, but the yeast dries it out slightly and seems to make those robust flavours more subtle. Because of that there’s an initial surge of the flavour that you expect which then fades gradually to the finish.

That said, I think that the most interesting beer in this release is the Biere de Miel, which is apparently an organic product. The brewery at Hainaut has apparently always had apiaries nearby, so it makes sense that it should be used in their beer as it was prior to the takeover of the brewery by the Dupont family. For me, the really interesting part is that there is a pronounced spearmint character in amongst the floral highlights. I don’t know exactly where that comes from. There are hops that give off a mint character, but usually it is not this pronounced. I end up wondering whether the honey used in brewing was taken from a colony of bees that were pollenating spearmint, since there are differences in flavour between colonies reared next to clover or alfalfa or blueberries. When you add this to the hints of apricot and lemon, I begin to wonder whether this might not pair particularly well with a Mediterranean dish, either from Spain or possibly Greece. I really can’t recommend the Biere de Miel highly enough, especially given that Dupont has done what would be basically unthinkable in Canada: They’ve made a honey beer a highlight of their repertoire.

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Beer and Food: Goose Island and Nota Bene

April 14, 2013 9:19 pm ⋅ 20 Comments ⋅

The other day, I was invited to a lunch launching a couple of Goose Island’s beers in Canada. Specifically, Matilda and Sofie. The Goose Island property is a contentious one, and to attempt to relate the details of the lunch without at least acknowledging some basic facts about the brand and about their perception would reek of incompletion.

As most beer nerds (and I suspect relatively few other people) know, Goose Island was bought out by AB InBev a couple of years ago for about 40 million bucks. Some of the existing personnel have changed over. John Hall, the original owner, stepped down as CEO. Greg Hall, who was the brewmaster is now making craft cider.

There was outcry about the purchase. People swore up and down that they’d never drink the stuff again. Then there was an announcement that some of the beer would be brewed in upstate New York. Again, people more or less lost their minds.

It has been about two years since the takeover, and for better or worse, I had never managed to get to Chicago when it was under the old ownership. I have no platonic ideal of what the product ought to be to compare it to. For me, it holds no sentimental value. I feel like I’m relatively well equipped to talk about the beer and the food that was paired with it without a whole lot of bias.

So, that being said, let’s have a look at what’s going on here.

I'll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

I’ll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

The launch took place at Nota Bene at lunchtime, and the beer and food pairings were designed by their chef, David Lee. It seems that the beers are more or less exclusive to Nota Bene until the end of April (although, I have heard reports of them popping up in other quarters.) According to a representative for AB InBev, Matilda and Sofie should hit liquor stores the week of April 29th, with other brands following in the nearish future.

The concept of a beer launch in Toronto that is restricted to a restaurant, as opposed to a pub or bar is something of a rarity. I don’t recall that happening before. Even a single location launch is practically unheard of. I believe this to be because of the specialized nature of the Goose Island Vintage Ales. I’m sure that you could drink them by themselves, but they cry out for food. This is not because there is some hole in the flavour profile that needs to be filled, but rather because there is so much nuance throughout. Food teases things out of them.

Take Sofie, for instance, a Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale. It’s a Saison with brettanomyces and it’s aged in neutral oak barrels for three months. Neutral oak, as it was explained, essentially means that the barrels were used for wine at one point, but have been re-used frequently enough that they now only impart oak flavour. The aroma is huge with pear and pepper and tropical fruit and wheat and the mildest touch of barnyard. On the palate it diffuses into ripe peach and kiwi and passion fruit and honey. It finishes dry and is dangerously more-ish. The carbonation is vivacious.P1020516

It was paired here with Poached Nova Scotia Lobster with a Citrus Vinaigrette, Pineapple-Vanilla Reduction, A Foam made from the beer itself and um… Crispies.

Now, the lobster is rich and the carbonation cuts right through that, but there’s nothing particularly revelatory about pairing seafood with saison. Where David Lee’s pairing shines is on the understanding of the periphery. It might seem overly elaborate to include a foam and a reduction and a vinaigrette on the same plate, but all of them hit different tones in the beer. The Pineapple-Vanilla reduction is especially clever because if there’s even a mild note of vanillin from the barrels, it will highlight it. Not mentioned in the brief on the menu was the bed of what I believe were enoki mushrooms. I had never considered it previously, but there is probably some umami component in a bottle conditioned beer that resonates there, creating a detail in pairing that is somehow more about commonality in mouthfeel than flavour. A trick I had never seen before.

Matilda is a Belgian Pale Ale, but no less complex. The aroma I picked up off of it, aside from the cloves and some other baking spice which likely derive from the yeast were stewed apple and possibly persimmon. The hops are Saaz and Styrian Golding, and there’s this quality of depth to it reminiscent of some English Pale Ales which I can really best describe as forest floor; that hint of herbal dampness in brisk autumn.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I've tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I’ve tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

It was paired with a Suckling Pig and Boudin Noir tart with Maple-Smoked Bacon, Mushrooms, Arugula and Truffle Vinaigrette.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn't that clever? I don't know if he intended it that way, but I'm given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn’t that clever? I don’t know if he intended it that way, but I’m given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

Looking back now at the plating, I wonder whether David Lee came to the same conclusion I did: Matilda is an Autumn. From the plating up through the pastry to the mushrooms to the staggering variety of pork, he’s practically recreating that forest floor, layer by layer. The suckling pig is (and I hate to use the word) unctuous and the boudin is surprisingly light. The bacon and crackling are, I suspect, just there to round out the concept of the pig rooting for truffles. It is not so much a pairing of beer and food as an evocation of October.

You can see why they chose Nota Bene. David Lee should really be doing this kind of thing more frequently, as he clearly has some insights into how pairing beer and food should work.

As to the Goose Island beers, let me say this, if you’re concerned about the takeover: Both Matilda and Sofie are lovely, complex beers. If you’ve had them before, I would advise to seriously consider should you find there to have been a decrease in quality, whether it is imagined. If you haven’t had them before, you’re in for a treat.

As for the launch at Nota Bene, I have to suggest to you that I have not seen anyone pair to the whole flavour profile of a beer like David Lee. The specialty menu is on until April 30th.

Posted in: Beer and Food, Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

They Send Me Beer: Bush Pilot Brewing Company Stormy Monday

March 27, 2013 12:35 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

Sometimes I get sent a bottle of beer that I don’t know exactly what to do with. In this case, it’s Bush Pilot Brewing Company’s Stormy Monday.

I’m a little conflicted about this beer because I’ve seen most of its stages of development. Before it was brewed, I got to see the recipe. I’m pretty sure it was this beer since I’ve only ever seen one recipe with dried quince in it brewed at Niagara College.

I remember thinking at the time that it would be ludicrous. Seven malts in a beer is almost unheard of. Five hop varieties might make it into a high end IPA. I remember my main objection to the recipe was the amount of dried fruit going into the fermenter, which would almost certainly soak liquid and create some pretty significant volume loss on the way to packaging. Then there was the spice load. And the maple syrup. At the time, I didn’t know about the Calvados barrels that the beer would be aged in, but beyond a certain point you can’t even feign surprise.

What I didn’t know was that it would be the first offering from Bush Pilot Brewing Company, which is a collaboration between Roland and Russell and Anders Kissmeyer, Gypsy Brewer Extraordinaire. Vlado from Roland and Russell points out that the main reason they decided on a Barley Wine is because the first thing they imported was Thomas Hardy’s Barley Wine. The other reason that they decided on a Barley Wine was because it represented a challenge. You can’t accuse a brewery of taking the easy path if their first beer is the size of Helsinki.

It weighs in at 11% and the 750ml bottle can apparently be aged for 8 years. The best before date is listed as October 2020 (although at that point, you can give or take a month.) It represents a collaborative contract brew between Niagara College and Nickel Brook. It is probably the first Canadian beer to use Calvados barrels (although I’ve seen a similar treatment used to great effect on Moor’s Freddy Walker.) It’s always difficult to find an opportunity to open a bottle like this. There’s a question of appropriateness. Given that the nice people at Roland and Russell expect feedback, I have decided that Wednesday morning is as good a time as any.

Once you get through the waxed top (I knew I owned steak knives for a reason) and pop the crown, there’s an immediate aroma of mulled cider detectable from nearly a meter out. It pours a reddish tinged brown and is nearly opaque with only a trace of lacing around the rim of the glass. You’ll probably want a snifter for this one.

It’s a pretty complex aroma with dried fig, clove and vanilla in addition to pretty significant apple pie spice. There’s a slightly boozy note that’s hard to ignore completely, but at 11% that’s to be expected. The flavour runs sweet to bitter on the palate, starting with some calvados stickiness and malt, fading away into a lingering bitter finish the intensity of which never really seems to fade; a feeling of dried spices in the throat.

It’s an interesting beer. I think that there is probably a fine line between complexity and confusion. I sit here wondering whether the beer would be noticeably different if a couple of the ingredients had gone missing. Would I miss, for instance, the juniper berries? The quince? I’m wonder if this has gone beyond the sweet spot at which it is more than the sum of its parts and is now becoming less cohesive as a result of overpopulation. I wonder whether any brewer is clever enough to know going into a recipe how 25 separate ingredients are going to interact with each other.

I have a little difficulty here in that I don’t have much to compare it to even for seasoned beer drinkers. I suppose the closest thing might be a Traquair Jacobite Ale if you really pushed the alcohol and spice content.

That said, I don’t want to come down too hard on Stormy Monday. It is, at the very least, ambitious. It is big. It is bold. It’s got a certain amount of bravado. It’s actually conceptually a good fit for a company named after a Bush Pilot. Imagine trying to land a fast moving flying vehicle on a small lake without ending up with your pontoons wrapped around a douglas fir. That takes some chutzpah. So does releasing a Barley Wine of this complexity in Ontario.

Posted in: Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

WURST Calgary

March 18, 2013 12:51 am ⋅ 7 Comments ⋅

When I was in Calgary last month, there was one place I visited that didn’t really fit into the overarching narrative of the beer halls that are springing up there, and this is because it doesn’t really do North American craft beers in the same way that the other beer halls do. WURST is more interested in serving traditional German beers and in creating a somewhat more authentic Bavarian beer hall atmosphere.

__WURST Badge

The truth of the matter is that I didn’t know exactly what to do with what I was seeing within the larger context. All I know is that this sort of thing doesn’t really exist in Toronto in the same way. There isn’t the same dedication to the concept. We have WVRST, which is unrelated and very good, but the selection of beer is wider and the focus of the food menu is narrower.

The first thing that you need to know about WURST is that it’s incredibly tastefully appointed. The main dining room in the upstairs section has gone for a beer garden feel complete with trees indoors and it feels a great deal more like a fine dining establishment than I was expecting. Since I was there on a survey of the Calgary beer scene, we retired to the downstairs section, which is more traditionally a beer hall with long table communal seating and a large selection of taps featured prominently at the bar. One of the nicest features of the place is the set of lockers that is visible as you descend the main staircase. They hold dozens of steins which are reserved for regular visitors to the beer hall. It’s a lovely touch that I’ve seen discussed in other pubs, but never brought to fruition on quite this scale.Wurst 1

The reason I’m writing about WURST now is that they have a launch on the 20th. They’re bringing in Hofbrau Munchen (and if anyone can tell me how to make this keyboard produce an umlaut, you’ll be thanked). I want to suggest to you that these are beers worth trying, and as a matter of fact they’re showing up across the country. I believe we’re meant to be getting them in Ontario shortly as well. Plus, Hofbrau has a new beer hall opening in Chicago. The Germans are an industrious people.

I think that it was because I had not announced a specific agenda that I was poured nearly a half pint of everything that was on tap at WURST and could be said to hail vaguely from the region of Bavaria. This may have coloured my impression of the lunchtime I spent there, as might the fact that they were served by a lovely young lady who looked capable of wrapping a stein around your head if you cracked wise about her lederhosen. I think you want a waitress you can respect (and possibly fear a little).

That said, my favourites were the Ayinger Brau Weiss, which I think is a very underrated beer (four dollars at the LCBO, Junior Rangers!) and the Hofbrau Munich Helles.

You have to understand: A month of drinking discount beer after going for the hoppiest thing going will do interesting things to your palate. If you drink a 60 IBU beer regularly, and that is your baseline… well, I’m sorry, but your palate is absolutely wrecked. The level of bitterness you enjoy has creeped up to the point that you’re probably not a great judge of stuff less hoppy than that. I have come back from February realizing that Black Oak Pale Ale may not be generally considered to be a hoppy brew, but it is. It just is.

At the midpoint, at twenty days of macro lager, Hofbrau Munich Helles was revelatory. It explained so much. Like, “why were the American 19th century breweries trying to copy this” and “why is 90% of the world’s beer lager?” The Hofbrau Munich Helles is just this beautifully poised, wonderfully balanced beer with a slightly honeyed sweetness that fades to increasing bitterness which fades away. The mouthfeel is marvelous. The carbonation is perfect. It’s balanced on the edge of a knife. I have a friend, Greg Sherry, who has periodically worn a Hofbrau Munchen hat to beer festivals. It made him look like Gandalf the Slightly Tipsy. I will never make fun of him again.

I’m sure the dark is good too, but in that moment the Helles was the first beer I tasted and I looked at the rest of the tasting glasses and thought “can’t I just stick with this?”

Truly, a really impressive charcuterie platter at WURST.

Truly, a really impressive charcuterie platter at WURST.

The other thing I should mention is that Grant Parry is doing a really excellent job in the kitchen. The charcuterie and cheese platter was marvelous down to the speck and landjager and this buffalo bresaola that I think he called wunderfleisch. Everything that reasonably can be is sourced locally. Much of the Charcuterie came from down the highway in Canmore. There is some really lovely stuff on offer.

The food that came out of the kitchen looked better than anything I’ve ever seen in a beer hall. Maria Mendelman, their events manager, ordered a Chicken dish that looked fantastic. I asked Grant what they do that no one else does. I should have known there would be trouble when he giggled to himself.

I want to introduce you to the BAVARIAN WING.

The concept here is that you take a chicken wing and bone it out.

They have a special sausage applicator for making the BAVARIAN WING.

They have a special sausage applicator for making the BAVARIAN WING.

Then, you stuff the wing with sausage.

And here it is in action!

And here it is in action!

You poach the whole issue, dry it off and coat it in pretzel crumbs. Then you cover it in hot sauce.

You know you want it. It's delicious. It's a terrible idea, but it is delicious.

You know you want it. It’s delicious. It’s a terrible idea, but it is delicious.

The BAVARIAN WING is a … well, let’s just say that someday it’ll end up in front of a tribunal at The Hague. They come three to an order, apparently. It is exactly the right kind of mistake to make at about 11:30 PM after a long night of hoisting a stein. It is exactly right for the venue, and it is the kind of thing that you need after an enthusiastic evening of drinking Hofbrau Munich Helles.

If you’re in or around Calgary this Wednesday, WURST is where you want to be. There’s food that is some of the best I’ve seen around beer in Canada. There’s a beer that really deserves some attention. And, if you get to the point in the evening where it’s death or glory, there’s the BAVARIAN WING.

If you’re in Ontario, you should also check out the Hofbrau Munich Helles. It’ll be on tap somewhere near you shortly.

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs, Uncategorized ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Left Field Brewery

March 9, 2013 12:28 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

There are advantages to writing a book with a guy. For instance, it’s a good bet that you’re going to get the first samples of his brewery’s new beer.

I’m talking of course about Mark Murphy, co-author of How To Make Your Own Brewskis: The Go To Guide For Craft Beer Enthusiasts. The link is to the right, if you don’t already own a copy of this book. If I may borrow from Douglas Adams, I’ll point out that it has two advantages over Charlie Papazian’s Complete Joy Of Homebrewing. Firstly, it is slightly cheaper. Secondly, it has the words “Yes You Can!” in big friendly letters on the cover.

It strikes me that I ought to be entirely honest with you basically immediately. I don’t know how objective I can possibly be when I’m reviewing a beer brewed by a man with whom I have written a book about brewing beer. I would advise you to take my opinion with a grain of salt, although I shall try as reasonably hard to be objective as I possibly can given that it is 11:45 PM and that I have already issued a caveat.

Mark and his lovely wife Mandie have started a new brewery called Left Field. Mark has amassed some not inconsiderable brewing experience over the last few years and Mandie has a lot of experience in alcohol sales and marketing. They’re both incredibly stable people. This bodes well for the brewery.

The brewery is baseball themed. This comes as little surprise to me as I don’t believe that I have ever seen Mark Murphy without a baseball cap. The subtle difference in his appearance tonight when he arrived with sample bottles is that he now has a baseball cap with the logo of the brewery on it. It is a Brooklyn Dodgers era inspired “L”. I like that a great deal, having grown up on Dad’s stories of Duke Snider and Flatbush.

The first beer from Left Field is called “Eephus.” It is an Oatmeal Brown Ale.

This is a nice conceptual effort. I can count on one finger the number of Oatmeal Brown Ales I have ever tried. An Eephus pitch is something you throw when you’re looking to catch the batter off guard. R.A. Dickey, who the Blue Jays have just signed doesn’t quite throw an Eephus, but the principle is the same. He has a painfully slow curveball that drops a foot when you swing at it.  Dave Steib threw Eephus pitches periodically. It’s sort of an attention getter. It messes with the batter’s brain. What’s the guy going to throw next?

This is a good explanation for launching with an Oatmeal Brown Ale in Ontario at the moment. If you consider IPAs a 98 mile an hour fastball, this really is an Eephus. It’s not something that you’re expecting.

To give you some idea, I’m aware of two Oatmeal Brown Ales. One is Cigar City’s Maduro, which I have tried. The other is The Beer Academy’s Oatmeal Brown Ale, which I have not. There are probably more of them, but the fact that I’ve only ever heard of two and have a greater breadth of context than most people makes it about as rare as anything I can think of.

Brown Ale is not something you see a lot at the moment. It’s an underappreciated style. Oatmeal Brown Ale is slightly different because it has a little more body because of the oats in the grist. It’s given a thicker, more substantial mouthfeel. Eephus doesn’t quite get slick in the way an Oatmeal Stout does. I would guess that there are fewer residual sugars to aid that property.

The label boasts that “This American Brown Ale finds its sweet spot with dark, dried fruit aromas, a touch of bitterness and spicy woodiness, and a surprisingly creamy smooth taste.” I’m happy to say that it does exactly what it says on the tin. I’d compare it favourably to Cigar City Maduro, although it’s worth pointing out that it’s slightly hoppier and has a little less sweetness to it.

I also like the label, which is understated and tells you everything that you might want to know about the beer. ABV. IBU. SRM.

I know it's not a very good picture, but you try taking a picture while holding up a bottle with a broken arm. It's fine, thanks. Range of motion is improving, but I'm on the six week DL.

I know it’s not a very good picture, but you try taking a picture while holding up a bottle with a broken arm. It’s fine, thanks. Range of motion is improving, but I’m on the six week DL.

I knew Mark was a good brewer, but I’m pleasantly surprised by the complexity here.

I asked him whether he was worried that the fate of his branding might depend on how well the Jays do in 2013, which is touted by many as the year they might actually do something. Say Encarnacion blows an ACL or something and they slide to third in the AL East by the All-Star Break? Mark was unworried. This was before I tried the beer. I can see why he was unworried.

I asked him whether he had the ability to produce enough beer to keep up with demand if the Jays go on a tear and end up in October. Say Colby Rasmus suddenly has a 40 game mullet powered hit streak. What then? People will order the beer with the baseball themed tap handle. Mark is unworried.

He’s an unflappable baseball-cappable man. It’s one of the reasons I like the guy so much. Stoicism is important in baseball and in brewing.

I have run out of nice things to say about this beer, so here is a list of 10 bad and relatively hackneyed Baseball Themed names he should consider to expand his lineup.

10. Lloyd Goseby

9. Roberto Ale-omar

8. The Ol’ Dipsy Doodle (Barley Wine)

7. Kenesaw Mountain Lambic

6. Citra Gaston IPA

5. Dopplebalk

4. Wit By Pitch

3. Lawrie (Clearly, a Brett beer)

2. Rally Cap (Actually a good name, which would be an excellent playoff beer)

1. Doug Ault-bier.

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs, Uncategorized ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

DBF – President’s Choice Genuine Lager

March 5, 2013 1:36 pm ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

Discount Beer February will finish up this week, and I’m very much looking forward to that. I am running out of descriptors for the flavours that you get in mass produced lager beer.

If you’ll recall from the beginning of the month, there was a post where I talked about the genesis of the discount beer section of The Beer Store and how it all hinged on the decision of Dave Nichols to brew a draught lager under the President’s Choice brand. That product launched in December of 1992. It’s now almost twenty years to the month since he changed the landscape of the brewing industry in Ontario, for better or for worse.

Initially, it was my intention to try all of the President’s Choice beers in order to get a sense of range of products that resulted from that decision. As it turns out, I’m only one man and my willingness to explore the category was compromised somewhat by a really delightful five day sojourn in Alberta. President’s Choice has seven beers on the market in Ontario, but I am inclined to say that the flagship brand is likely the Genuine Lager which is the most direct descendant of Dave Nichols’ original foray into the market.

I should preface this by saying that I had never had a President’s Choice beer prior to tasting the Genuine Lager. I should point out that I like President’s Choice as a brand. They generally make fairly high quality prepared foods at a reasonable price point. Sure it’s not all foodie stuff, but that’s a comparatively small portion of the market when you take into account all of the people who are just trying to get dinner on the table and are skilled enough to set an oven to 350.

Those points out of the way, this is going to sound pretty brutal.

PC Genuine Lager

Upon opening the can, there’s an overwhelming aroma of green apple. Now, some green apple in a lager is probably acceptable if it is restrained and subtle. At this level, it’s what you’d call acetaldehyde. Upon pouring, there was significant haze. That would be fine if this were a Kellerbier, but this is a descendant of a draught lager, which is meant to be crystal clear. It speaks of either poor filtering or old beer.

I checked the package and best before date and it seems that this was packaged on February 29, 2012. The best before date is a month away, so I figured that it may have been a problem with the individual can. With the exception of a few styles, beer is always better fresh. I tried another can. Same results.

The tasting notes for this beer read simply “green apple all the way down.” It doesn’t recede.

I want you to note that I tried. I gave it a second chance with a separate can. The average consumer, grabbing a six pack off the shelf, would not give you that courtesy.

VERDICT: Not only is it objectively fraught with issues, it doesn’t represent what is an otherwise trusted brand.

In other places in Discount Beer February, there have been beers that I don’t like. I’m not fond of Old Milwaukee, but that might be personal preference due to the sweetness there. I vehemently dislike James Ready 6.0%, but that may be because I’m not shotgunning it on some maritime campus.

With PC Genuine Lager, it’s not merely that I dislike it; it’s that I question why it exists at all. If your beer is sitting on the shelf at a busy location of The Beer Store for over a year, you have to begin to question the quality of the product. I think that might be happening already. Their beer is not referred to on the website.

I think they’re missing a trick. This is not unsalvageable.

You have a perfect storm in Ontario at the moment that suggests to me that it is time for a rebrand. The popularity of craft beer has never been higher. We’re getting LCBO locations in grocery stores as a pilot project across the province. President’s Choice has a section on their website that invites you to create dishes. They have a TV platform that is dedicated to making new products. They have an advertising budget and the ability to move high volumes of anything they choose to throw their weight behind.

Given that all of these factors are in play, I’ll point you at Trader Joe’s in the states which does similar private label products. They have a house label beer made by Unibroue, unless I’m very much mistaken. The website has a section devoted to beer styles and food pairing.

Instead of making what is an objectively woeful discount brand, President’s Choice could focus on recreating this portion of their business by doing what they do best: offering a relatively high quality product at a reasonable price and incorporating it into their portfolio. They could easily develop a website section that would tell you what beer pairs with the food in their lineup. They would have so much to work with that it would beggar belief. Not only that, but they could sell the stuff through LCBO locations in their stores (assuming that this pilot project takes off.)

Better even than that, they could do a special edition of their television show Recipe To Riches to make the project publicly visible. It would be possible to own up to the fact that one part of the portfolio is not very good and at the same time ride out the growing popularity of craft beer. You could invite home brewers to submit their best effort in a handful of styles and then reward them with cash or a brewing position or a hearty handshake from Galen Weston.

You’d scrap entirely the concept of having seven brands (no one makes a low carb beer anymore anyway) and you’d choose three relatively accessible styles and do them right. You could have a seasonal product rotating on the same SKU.

It could work. It could work brilliantly.  The best part is that judging by the date on the can, they wouldn’t be risking a drop in sales.

Naturally, I’m available to consult.

Posted in: DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY, Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Discount Beer February – Sleeman Products

March 1, 2013 1:18 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

I know. It’s March. I chose a short month. Deal with it.

PABST BLUE RIBBON

What can you say about Pabst Blue Ribbon that Dennis Hopper hasn’t screamed in the middle of an ether binge?

Well, there’s the big important thing, which is that PBR more or less defines the concept of American Adjunct Lager. It keeps winning medals in that category at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. So does its parent company, Pabst. This means that it has probably won significant awards in three different centuries, which is not bad.

It’s a light flavoured beer, and at first there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on. Interestingly, there’s a progression of flavours through it from sweetness to increasing (if mild) bitterness. It’s an interesting study in subtlety and is objectively well made. It’s significantly different  from most of the stuff in the category, likely because of its heritage. If there’s a difference between American Adjunct Lager and Canadian Adjunct Lager, this would be the beer you’d use to make the case.

VERDICT: I can see why you wouldn’t like PBR if you were a craft beer drinker. It’s light and might not taste like anything if you weren’t looking very carefully at it. Also, hipsters drink it and I think we’re all just about done with hipsters.

OLD MILWAUKEE

If PBR is balanced, Old Milwaukee is cloying. It’s overbalanced in terms of sweetness. I’m not even doing a historical profile on this thing because I can’t bring myself to drink enough of it to work up tasting notes. Maybe it wasn’t cold enough, but the fridge only has so many settings.

VERDICT: With so many options available, I can’t see why you’d drink this. Since I’m trying to say something nice about each beer, I’ll point out that there’s a Betty Page lookalike on the can and that it’s a pleasing callback to WWII nose cone art.

MACLAY’S

Maclay’s is a little odd, since Sleeman brews Maclay’s Traditional Pale Ale in Canada and it doesn’t seem to exist in the U.K., at least if ratebeer ratings are to be believed. By all accounts, some of the things that Maclay’s produce in Scotland are pretty interesting. There’s an Oat Malt Stout and for a while there was a pretty highly regarded IPA.

I’m confused by the Traditional Pale Ale because I wouldn’t have chosen to license it. Maclay’s is not exactly a huge brand in the UK, so you have to wonder if it stems from the 1990’s when there was a burst of interest in bringing stuff from Europe into Canada. It’s also quite a bit lighter than I would have expected from a Scottish Pale Ale. It’s more of a Golden Ale.

It would have possibly been a good idea to bring it in to compete on price point with Keith’s in the Maritimes. It has approximately the same level of hopping and some of the same notes through the body. If you were competing solely on price point against Keith’s with this, you might actually gain traction. It might have been a good strategy at one point, but there’s so much other stuff now that it seems like a lot of work.

VERDICT: Sort of a poor man’s Keith’s IPA. Given the paucity of ales in the discount section of The Beer Store, its continued existence makes some sense.

UPPER CANADA

Sleeman, as the result of injudicious IPO’s, plans for expansion and a kerfuffle in the mid 1990’s involving the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, owns the Upper Canada brand. If there’s a lesson that can be taken away from that period in Ontario brewing it’s “whatever you do, don’t go public.” You leave yourself open to all manner of variables. Upper Canada Brewing was a huge deal. Looking at Jamie MacKinnon’s 1993 guide to Ontario beer, they made really good stuff. A nice bitter. A malt liquor that sounds a little like a Maibock.

It’s hard to write about Upper Canada as it currently stands because so many people active in Ontario craft breweries used to work there. Clearly, if I write something that is overly laudatory of something that has doubtless changed significantly since 1998 and which brewers feel is a shell of its former self, that could cause some friction. There’s an emotional investment and pride even now in what Upper Canada accomplished before the buyout, so it must chafe mightily to see the brand in the discount section.

I’ll add the caveat: I’m too young to remember with clarity what these beers tasted like. I know I must have had the dark ale before the buyout, because it was popular with a friend’s dad. I would have been about seventeen. I’m looking at this purely from the point of view of what’s in the bottle.

UPPER CANADA LAGER

For something in the discount beer category, this is surprisingly good. There’s a toasty grain note here that suggests that they aren’t using adjunct. Damon Difruscia from Sleeman has confirmed this for me. There is some hop bitterness in the tail and even some mild floral noble hop aroma. It retains its carbonation nicely and overall, it’s pretty balanced. I mean, you have to assume that at the price point it may not be getting the absolute highest quality ingredients, but even given that, it’s a solid offering.

VERDICT: You could do a lot worse than this in the category and also in general. I’m sure that it’s not what it was, but it’s enough like it was that people buy it. Possibly it’s the nostalgia factor, but when I asked the staff at the Summerhill Beer Store, they suggested that it was one of the best selling beers in the section.

UPPER CANADA DARK

This is an interesting beer, mostly because it doesn’t quite manage to hang together. There’s some roast character that comes through and a little grainy sweetness, but there’s a sort of vegetal tang to the hopping that strikes me as odd. I wondered whether the first bottle was somehow off, but it turns out that it’s probably just that way, since, as I mentioned, they move a lot of it at the Summerhill Beer Store. I recall having it on tap at some point in the last year, and it seems to be standard. If this was originally inspired by an English dark ale, I can see that being a desirable flavour, especially given that it was designed in the 80’s. With the tang it strikes me as having been inspired by historical porters, which is a really strange fit for where it has ended up.

VERDICT: This is an odd fit for the category, but it’s probably the best ale you’re going to find there. As I say, I don’t recall exactly how it was, but if this version from fifteen years on hints at it, then I can certainly see what the fuss was about.

Posted in: DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY, Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,