St. John's Wort Beery Musings and Amusing Beers

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: , ,

Keith’s Hop Series

March 11, 2013 3:36 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

If you’ll recall, I wrote a column early in January about the Hop Mason beer that Keith’s are brewing for pubs in the Prime chain across Canada. The conclusion that I came to was that it was objectively good and that the specs for the beer put it squarely in the realm of English IPA. In addition to this it bore some of the hallmarks of a beer produced by a very large company. It was comparatively accessible and it was aggressively filtered resulting in a much clearer beer than you’d usually see in a craft IPA. It wasn’t exactly a world beater, but it could be said objectively to be a good beer.

On Thursday last week, I received a package from Keith’s with the beers from their new Hop Series. They’re not really IPAs. My understanding is that the BU’s come in way under specification for even an English style.

Here’s the really interesting part: They’re not being marketed as IPAs. Not really.

Rather than going for overwhelming bitterness, they’ve opted to showcase the flavour and aroma of a single hop in each Iteration of the Hop Series. The first two are Hallertauer and Cascade, which would be pretty approachable for the drinkers that they’re trying to reach. Rather than going for bittering, they’ve opted to dry hop the beers pretty aggressively. You get aroma without the sting of bitterness. Furthermore, it’s an all malt product.

You’ll read a lot of reviews if you follow beer blogs where the subject is approached with the intent of suggesting to you that the author is developing a begrudging respect for the product. I’m not going to bother with the pretense. The Keith’s Hop Series beers were pretty good. If offered one, I would not turn it down.

The reason I’m not bothering with the pretense (aside from the fact I knew they were going to do this two months ago) is that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that large brewers can make flavourful beers if they want to. It’s just that they’ve never seemed to want to before, or at the very least, haven’t quite understood how to approach the problem.

It’s unusual that two separate topics flow into each other this well. You’ll remember my conclusion about Discount Beer February: That in 1993, President’s Choice getting 3% of the beer market in Ontario was a large enough threshold to force large brewers to play their game and that this situation might be relevant to Craft Beer in Ontario 20 years later, given that Craft has about 5-6% of the market depending on who you include.

Usually it takes months for the other shoe to drop.

The thing about the Alexander Keith’s Hop Series is that it’s not simply a beer release. This is going to be an event. There’s going to be mobile sampling across the country through April and early May. They’re actually interested in doing education on the product and on how hops work in beer. They’re taking it to the streets.

Shed your cynicism about large brewers for a moment and look at what just happened. Forget that it’s Keith’s. If I were to exclude the company name and say to you that a brewery with a budget for marketing and education were making a push to introduce the public to single hop beers as an attempt to make flavour the focus of their product, what would you say?

The problem, for Keith’s at least, is that there are likely unforeseen consequences. I suspect that most of your dyed in the wool craft beer drinkers, if they’re reasonable, will admit that the Hop Series beers are pretty good. I don’t believe for a second that they’ll purchase them in quantity. This means that the success of the Hop Series beers depends on drinkers from other segments of the market. I’m talking generally about people who drink stuff like regular Keith’s or Canadian or Budweiser.

If you’re a Keith’s drinker and you see a new product with the Keith’s logo on it, you’ll probably give it a shot. If the marketing convinces you that the flavour that you’re now enjoying is hops and the educational aspect is enough to display to you that there is a causal effect between ingredients and flavour, what is preventing you, the average Keith’s drinker, from making the small leap to drinking more hoppy beer on a regular basis?

Nothing. That’s what.

If it goes the way I think it’s going to go, this is going to lead to a steady trickle of beer drinkers discovering and purchasing craft products instead of big name beers. I can see no reason that the Hop Series won’t be as successful for AB InBev in Ontario as Creemore and Granville have been for Molson. Hop City is doing the same for Moosehead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miller wants out of their distribution contract in Ontario so that they can push their Leinenkugel stuff.

So, to sum up: Large brewers are now spending very large amounts of money on making all-malt beers and ensuring through education that they are conceptually accessible to the public. I have to suppose that they’re doing this to take advantage of the fastest growing segment of the Canadian beer market. They know going in, if they’ve done their research, that there is not a huge amount of brand loyalty in the craft market segment. People don’t identify as a Cameron’s drinker or as a Muskoka drinker. They identify as Craft Beer drinkers (an interesting side effect of which is that small brewery imports are now defacto “craft beer”).

They are actually converting their customers to craft beer drinkers. I can’t even pretend to know what the endgame is here. I will make a prediction though: One of the results of this activity is that the craft beer segment is going to expand faster this year than we’ve ever seen before in Ontario.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ 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: , , ,

Discount Beer February – What Did We Learn?

March 7, 2013 12:32 pm ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

One of the things that has defined the Discount Beer experience for me is the increasingly obvious point that there is a large segment of the market that isn’t drinking beer for flavour. You would think that given 60 products of varying quality that all cost the same amount of money at a 24 bottle volume, that there would be a handful that would rise to the top based on their merits and the decision of rational actors as consumers. You would be entirely justified in thinking that and every fibre of your being would call out for this supposition to be proven correct, but you’d be wrong.

There are some odd things at play in the Discount sector of the market. It seems to me that many of the brands in the category wouldn’t exist without a significant amount of brand loyalty. It has proven to be  a sort of island of misfit brands from Canadian history. Take Old Vienna, for example. I would have assumed that no one would be up in arms about its continued existence, but if you look at the comment section on The Beer Store’s website you get:

“It has a reputation of its own. It’s that old man beer that strikes a conversation every time you’re at a bar. It’s the “I learned how to drink beer stealing these from my dads beer fridge” OV is in a league of its own, its a great old man beer that doesn’t get enough respect. LONG LIVE OV!”

I have, while looking through the comments on The Beer Store’s website, wondered if there are brewery representatives splashing the pot in the comments section. I have concluded that there are probably just people who feel this strongly about cheap beer. (For a laugh, try picking out which comment about Boxer Lager I think is supplied by a brewery representative.)

So there’s a Canadiana element to the sector. People are protective of brands they grew up with. Just yesterday a reader pointed out that I really shouldn’t call Upper Canada Lager a discount brand. He didn’t think it fit in the category. Maybe it doesn’t fit conceptually, but it sits on the same shelves and costs the same amount.

There are some all malt products in the discount section, and they tend to be objectively more flavourful. Look at something like Trailhead, brewed by Wellington. It would, I think, be completely acceptable to just about anyone. It’s a well made Vienna Lager that happens to cost a very small amount of money. You’d think they’d have a stranglehold on the market.

It makes no sense to me, but I suspect that it has to do with the amount of choice. If you’re faced with 60 brands, you can hardly taste test all of them without spending a lot of time doing it. They all cost approximately the same amount of money (I don’t believe anyone is debating this seriously on the basis of a nickel per 24) and they all contain approximately the same amount of alcohol (I do believe some people are opting for the 6.0% option on that basis).

This rules out selection being explicatory on the basis of flavour, price and alcohol content. I think that what we’re looking at is the dying vestiges of brand loyalty. You’ve got to admit, even as a craft beer drinker, that there’s a certain joy in being able to choose a product, being able to know that it will always be the same and that it will always be available. You’ve just removed one decision from your life.

As it stands now, craft beer is always focused on the new thing. New Style! New Ingredient! New Format! New Brewery! It’s an entirely different market segment with more adventurous and better informed consumers. You’d be amazed at the dearth of information available online for some of the Discount brands, whereas a quick google will usually get you a clone recipe for a famous craft beer. You want to torture a craft beer drinker? Make them choose one beer to drink for a year to the exclusion of all others and then make them actually do it.

That said, here are some takeaways from the month:

1)      Even if they’re drinking beer that you think is terrible, the people buying Discount Beer are human beings and not some kind of hideous morlocks. I don’t think that you can afford to give up on people just because they drink cheap beer. If the craft beer market is going to continue to grow, those consumers need to come from somewhere. Don’t evangelize to them. Don’t condescend  to them. They probably like beer just as much as you do. They just haven’t tried the stuff you have. Might want to focus on the younger folks who just don’t know any better.

2)      There are actually some quite decent things in the Discount Beer Section. Trailhead is good. Upper Canada Lager is good. I’d be reasonably happy to be served  a Trailhead anywhere.

3)      There is some really horrible dreck in the Discount Beer Section. I’m not naming names, but I certainly dry heaved while drain pouring a couple of these.

4)      Some people drink those beers by choice, which leads me to remind everyone that the primary reason that we drink beer isn’t flavour. We all like alcohol. That’s fine.  We’re adults. Flavour is wonderful. Flavour is fabulous. I’m a believer. I’m doing research into Monoterpenes and Maillard reactions for food pairing knowledge, for God’s sake. It’s just disingenuous to claim that it is the main reason it’s enjoyed.

5)      If you drink very simple lagers for a month and then come back to craft beer, things you thought were mild will knock you on your ass.

Finally, I have an observation about the next few years:

Lakeport started in 1993 with about 3% of the market and the big guys felt obligated to compete on their terms. Over the next several years, the discount section of the market grew significantly. The competition was a powerful force for growth and by the time Labatt bought Lakeport out in 2007, they had something like 15% of the market in Ontario.

Craft brewers in Ontario reportedly have between 5-8% of the market. I think the figure depends on who you include based on production and taxation levels as specified by the ministry of finance. I would probably discount Brick, who are small enough to be considered craft but seem to make up most of their volume on Laker products. That’s not a slight against them, incidentally. Let’s call it about 5% and rising relatively quickly. All of the major brewers are now competing on the terms of the craft brewers. Keith’s Hop Series IPAs is taking a stab at the market in a very serious way. Creemore is expanding.

The Discount Section is the only historical model we have in Ontario for this kind of competition. If the model holds, I think the competition from Molson and Labatt is going to cause market segment expansion above anyone’s predictions for the next two years.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY

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: , , , , ,

Craft Brewing in Alberta – An Outsider’s Perspective

March 2, 2013 10:38 pm ⋅ 10 Comments ⋅

I don’t pretend to understand the Alberta beer scene completely. After all, I was only there for about five days, and there’s only so much information you can process. Fortunately, brewers like to talk.

While the column this week is about the unique beer hall scene that Alberta has developed over the last two or three years, one of the things that you have to understand is the conditions that have made that possible. Ontario, because of its thoroughly unique set of laws, has just reached the point where there are 100 microbreweries (although, some of those are in planning.) British Columbia is going through a similar spurt of growth. Both Ontario and British Columbia have long and storied histories with craft brewing, dating back essentially to the advent of the craft beer movement. Alberta’s history is less storied.

The beer hall scene in Alberta exists mostly because of privatization in the early 1990’s, which means that there are any number of beers available on tap that would be impossible to get in Ontario. You might be tempted to leap to the conclusion that the demand for local beer doesn’t exist because of this available variety. Over the course of 48 hours, I got to sample things from Brooklyn, Deschutes, Ducato, Mikkeller, Evil Twin and Tamarack (which I had never tried before and which was a pleasant surprise.)

It seems to me that any scene that can support 60 or 72 or 120 taps is always going to be hungry for more variety, and that will play into the hands of anyone that can set up local breweries. The question is therefore “where are the local breweries?” Near as I can tell there are approximately 11 for the entire province, with three more in the offing.

The problem is that the barrier to entry is simply too high for there to be a rush to very small micro breweries or nano breweries. The way that licensing works in Alberta is that a Class E license (the one that lets you make beer) has a certain number of requirements, which I’ll quote here from the Licensee Handbook:

A Class E licence may be issued to a qualified applicant to manufacturer liquor in Alberta. The manufacturer must meet the following production requirements, with production capacity minimums met within 18 months of start-up:

a) Brewery

i) 5,000 hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres) minimum annual production capacity;

ii) all beer manufactured on site;

iii) fermentation, maturation and storage tanks with a minimum capacity of 10 hectolitres each; and

iv) 50 hectolitres minimum weekly capacity for fermentation, maturation and storage, with space available for additional tanks to achieve minimum annual production capacity

Now, this is truly interesting and goes a long way to explaining why you only have eleven breweries.

5,000 hl of beer doesn’t seem like a huge amount of beer, until you realize that it’s 500,000 litres.
That is to say that you have to be able to make a million pints of beer a year within 18 months of starting up. Additionally, all of your fermenters have to contain at least a thousand litres and you need at least enough of them to make five thousand litres a week. Even given those conditions, five thousand litres a week puts you at about half of your minimum annual production capacity, so you’re really talking about much larger scale equipment.

There are breweries in Ontario that have been around for more than a decade that have never reached the theoretical minimum amount of beer you’d need in Alberta for the AGLC to consider you above board. In point of fact, I’d guess that some of our more interesting new breweries may never see 5000hl.

Consider being someone looking to start up a brewery in Alberta. Can you imagine the relative cost of meeting those standards? You probably need at least a 10hl brewhouse, five 20hl fermenters, storage vessels to keep the product moving and possibly multiple bright tanks for packaging. Not to mention the packaging lines, the packaging materials, labour, renovations to whatever structure you’re going to end up in and you’ll need a sales force to move all of the beer that you’re producing. Simply, the barrier to entry is Capital.

You’d need a significant amount of investment just to open your doors, and you’d better be damned sure that you’re brewing something the public wants. You’d need to be turning a profit fairly quickly in order to keep the doors open. As I toured around the breweries, there were some significant indications that this doesn’t always happen.

The Hog's Head Logo: Tastefully shaded, but slightly evil lookin'.

The Hog’s Head Logo: Tastefully shaded, but slightly evil lookin’.

Hog’s Head Brewing in St.Albert is Edmonton’s newest brewery, and I can tell you that they do not suffer from lack of expertise or talent or ambition. Their first beer was a year round spiced pumpkin beer, which should tell you all you need to know about their faith in their product. The Hopslayer IPA is probably their most objectively impressive brew, containing five hop varieties at somewhere near 80 IBU. Their beers are as hop forward and as assertive as anything being brewed in Canada, and they’ve only been at it for six months. Plus, their labeling is entertaining.

Hog's Head Baby Back IPA : "That'll do, beer. That'll do."

Hog’s Head Baby Back IPA : “That’ll do, beer. That’ll do.”

The brewery itself, if I may be forgiven for saying so, is held together by engineering skill and sheer force of will. It seemed to me that they were running flat out in an attempt to reach the amount of production the provincial government stipulates. I have no doubt that they’ll succeed, but as their brewer, Bruce, was showing me around the brewery, he would periodically point out which breweries their equipment had come from. The equipment was certainly well loved, with the occasional ding or scratch that years of vigorous use still don’t quite account for.

Sometimes I think to myself that a brewery logo doesn't really need a caption. This should probably have been one of those times.

Sometimes I think to myself that a brewery logo doesn’t really need a caption. This should probably have been one of those times.

Another example is the Yellowhead Brewery in Edmonton. It’s housed in a building that was specially designed for a brewery. In fact, it previously held Maverick Brewing. It’s a delightful space, and their brewer, Bryce, is clearly extremely able and talented. They currently brew Yellowhead Lager, which I would consider a Northern German Pilsner. It has that light grain and slight hint of grape, with a small hoppy bite. Eventually, they’re looking to expand to a second variety. For the time being, they would be content with becoming Edmonton’s beer in much the same way that you might claim Steam Whistle was Toronto’s beer. I would not claim that they are copying the model, but they are doing one thing well.

The brewhouse at Yellowhead is visible from the street, which is an excellent reason to break out your brewhouse polish and chamois.

The brewhouse at Yellowhead is visible from the street, which is an excellent reason to break out your brewhouse polish and chamois.

The space the brewery occupies at Yellowhead might be one of the nicest I've ever seen. There's such an airy feeling.

The space the brewery occupies at Yellowhead might be one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. There’s such an airy feeling.

The thing that struck me is that the space is full of the spectre of Maverick Brewing. From their white horizontal tanks which now sit disused in a corner of the brewery to the unused promotional materials housed elsewhere in the rambling warehouse, there are reminders that the previous tenants did not quite make it. Bryce was quick to point out how ludicrous some of those promos were. “Who gives out a knife in a case of beer?”

Sometimes, even with aggressive marketing, breweries don't make it out of their first few years in Alberta.

Sometimes, even with aggressive marketing, breweries don’t make it out of their first few years in Alberta.

I don’t know whether I would find the reminder that Maverick Brewing didn’t make it a source of motivation or a big dark cloud over the proceedings, but looking at the almost impossibly polished new stainless steel fermentors, I got the sense that it is ignored as much as possible while people get on with business. When you’ve got to brew 5,000hl in your second year, it is hard to afford time for reflection.

In some cases, because of the scale and capital needed, you end up with what is a beautifully engineered almost entirely new brewery. Village Brewery in Calgary fits the bill completely on this front and is probably one of the best looking breweries I’ve ever seen. I’m a bit of a duffer on the process front when it comes to brewing, but looking out from the tasting room balcony I think that even a layman could probably tell you how the entire process would flow from brewhouse to kegging at Village. It’s almost terrifyingly well appointed.

Village's entire brewery is just pristine. Great use of the space in terms of layout.

Village’s entire brewery is just pristine. Great use of the space in terms of layout.

They make three varieties at the moment and work in a seasonal periodically. There was a Chai Winter Porter earlier this year. During my visit they were refining a special project for the spring and debating the amount and type of spicing like brewers everywhere do. Of their regular lineup, I believe that the Witbier is probably their strongest offering, with the Black IPA running a close second.

The truly interesting thing about Village is the model that they’re using for promotion. The business card reads “It Takes A Village,” a sentiment that Jim Button has borrowed from Hillary Clinton. You could be forgiven for forgetting that Village is in the beer business. The concern seems to be with bringing people together within Calgary, whether through culture or music. 10% of the bottom line goes to promoting a sense of community. There are podcasts available through the website. They even have a radio truck. They support visual arts. Their t-shirts and other paraphernalia are designed by local artists who keep the profits from their sales.

Jim Button: Next Mayor of Calgary or Steve Beauchesne's Doppelganger?

Jim Button: Next Mayor of Calgary or Steve Beauchesne’s Doppelganger?

I’m normally as skeptical as hell when I see things like this. At the same time, having talked to Jim at some length, I know that he’s genuinely interested in expanding Calgary’s cultural scene. Clearly, one of the side effects is that the brewery appears to be hip and with it and sells an awful lot of beer into the bargain. Not only does it ensure sales for a startup brewery, the entire culture of the city benefits and Village Brewing becomes inseparable from the artistic scene as it develops over the next decade. Jim would make a good mayor.

The commonality in all of these approaches is that they are finding ways to deal with AGLC License E. This has resulted in a situation where Yellowhead and Hog’s Head simply want to be the beer of choice for Edmonton and Village wants to be Calgary’s craft beer. This, more or less, means that neither of these cities currently have a representative brew.  Given the state of craft brewing in the rest of North America in 2013, where many major cities have as many breweries as Alberta does in total, this is baffling to an outsider.

It strikes me as odd that Alberta, which is rather more American than the majority of provinces, should have strictures in place that effectively limit the amount of local competition in brewing. It’s especially confusing when you consider the drinking culture that has sprung up in Edmonton and Calgary over the course of the last few years. Clearly, this is a market that can support an almost endless amount of variety. Sherbrooke Liquor has 1400 beers on offer from day to day. Craft Beer Market is absolutely thrumming along with over a hundred taps. The demand is there, but the supply seems to come almost exclusively from outside the province of Alberta. It’s not without reason that breweries from British Columbia and Ontario view Alberta as an additional market for their products.

If ever there was a time to revisit the reasoning behind the laws as they exist, it is now. Craft brewing provides employment. It provides a source of revenue through taxation. It provides a sense of local pride. Limiting the expansion of the industry with an artificial minimum volume seems vaguely anti-capitalist.

Changing the laws would also display some significant forethought for the brewing program that’s going in at Olds College in Alberta. In Ontario, we’re starting to see graduates of the Niagara College brewing program opening their own breweries, albeit on a relatively small scale. Imagine going into the Olds College program under the misapprehension that you’ll be able to start your own brewery fresh out of school. Unless you’ve got an extremely wealthy silent partner, that’s a pipe dream in Alberta. As it stands, I imagine this would probably result in brain drain to British Columbia or the United States.

The truth is that with some minor changes to the laws as they exist, you could have a craft beer explosion in Alberta within the next five years. The demand is there, and from what I’ve seen, there’s certainly no lack of talent or ambition.

 

 

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The North American Tour ⋅ 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: , , , ,

DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY – Molson Products

February 28, 2013 4:13 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

One of the best things about Molson, from the perspective of DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY, is that I have contacts over there. Once I explained what I was trying to do with a survey of the Discount beer section of The Beer Store, and that I really only needed two bottles or cans of each product, they complied. I mean, never before has anyone writing about beer professed a desire to give Ferg Devins a big ‘ol hug, but compliance here probably earns the guy one whether he wants it or not.

When this is all said and done, I’ll do a tally of what remains and you’ll see why the two bottle limit was a good rule.

Molson sent five products over in total. The fact that they sent four cans of Keystone Lager may be a gentle nudge in the direction of supporting that product. If that was the case, they may end up being somewhat disappointed.

KEYSTONE LAGER

I don’t understand where Keystone came from. It was Chico, California in 1989. Keystone is really a Coors product at heart and originally there were a number of varieties of it, not unlike you would have had with Lakeport in the early 90’s. There’s not really any story behind Keystone that I can discern, and I guess it was probably originally designed to fill a market niche. There’s nothing wrong with that.

In terms of Ontario, I’d guess that it was more or less brought in to fill a slot on the Molson roster that is roughly equivalent to the position of Busch in the Labatt portfolio.

The interesting thing is that they’re not really in the same league. Busch is sort of a light refresher, whereas Keystone is much fuller bodied and doesn’t have much in the way of hop presence. This is not surprising considering that it was once touted as the “never bitter beer.” It’s certainly smooth. I suspect that you could bump the IBU’s by about ten or fifteen and it would not overbalance.

VERDICT: There’s nothing wrong with Keystone Lager; It just sort of IS. Not being very interesting is not a capital offense.

CARLING

If you’re a Canadian beer nerd, then you probably know the story of Carling and the E.P. Taylor consolidation of breweries etcetera. The original Carling apparently sold his beer in the streets in London, Ontario from a wheelbarrow. Last year they sold 25 billion pints of it worldwide. You’d think we’d be proud of that as a nation, but the history is too byzantine and punishing and contains too many mergers to really get a feel for it.

It’s 4.9% and it’s got a biscuit malt sort of thing happening in addition to the slightly lighter mouthfeel you get from corn as an adjunct. I’m pretty sure I’m detecting the regular Molson red apple yeast ester, which is pretty distinctive.

I tell you what, though. Points go to Carling for the WTF factor and that’s mostly because of the website content. If you’ve got ten minutes to kill, you really need to check out the marketing under Great Beer Decisions. The “1930 – Beer After A Move” video is sort of hilariously metatextual. The “1955 – Beer While Watching Sports” video just gets incredibly dark very quickly.

VERDICT: It doesn’t exactly grab me, but in terms of value for money, this is pretty good. Plus, it’s a worldwide brand, so it’s not going anywhere if you’re one of the remaining brand loyal drinkers.

OV

OV is the butt of a lot of jokes, but it’s sort of a heritage brand. It was a 19th century beer from Ohio, which was made by City Brewing and subsequently the Koch Beverage Company. This morning I asked Jim Koch from Sam Adams if they were any relation. He thinks there’s probably a distant family connection. Brewing was always a small world. It was taken over by Carling O’Keefe at some point in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

OV smells like the 80’s, which is to say it reminds me of what I think beer smelled like when my parents would have Christmas parties. I’m surprised that there’s a nostalgia kick in the Discount Beer category.

There are recognizable hops in OV. There is balance here. There’s an oddly metallic edge that is not without charm, especially because of the nostalgia. Objectively, I think that this is a better beer than Keystone or Carling.

VERDICT: You should probably try this. It’s sort of living Canadian Beer History. Also, as discount adjunct lagers go, this is pretty good.

Speaking of living Canadian Beer History

OLD STYLE PILSNERP1020384

I didn’t know why they sent me this beer, because it’s not actually available in Ontario as far as I can tell. This was originally from Fritz Sick’s brewery in Lethbridge in 1926. The website does a much better job of explaining the history than I can. This is a beer with a cult following to the extent that people dress up in bottles, apparently.

A word on the bottles, courtesy of Jim Button at Village Brewing in Calgary: In the old days, the long neck bottles were hefty enough that a bar fight might have resulted in a fatality. I mean just look at this thing.

Pretty sure the jumbo jet means that this is the one from the 50's.

Pretty sure the jumbo jet means that this is the one from the 50′s.

Here’s the thing: So far during Discount Beer February, I hadn’t run into anything that I would actually consider drinking if I weren’t doing a month of blog posts about cheap beer. Old Style Pilsner changes that. I like the fact that the label looks like a lower tech version of Oregon Trail. It’s goofy and fun. There is actual malt flavour here. There is an actual noble hop aroma. The head retention is good. It’s not a world beater by any stretch of the imagination, but it is recognizably a Pilsner. In terms of value this outweighs just about everything else in the category so far.

Eventually, they went back to the old label and a bottle you could stun a steer with.

Eventually, they went back to the old label and a bottle you could stun a steer with.

When I was talking to the folks at Sherbrooke Liquor in Edmonton about Discount Beer February last week, I mentioned that I thought Old Style Pilsner was probably at the head of the pack. They didn’t even feign surprise.

VERDICT: I like this beer enough that I’m not ashamed to admit it. Don’t go into it expecting a life changing experience, but by all means go into it. I dunno if I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome or what.

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

Beer and Food – Charcut

February 23, 2013 3:13 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Probably the highlight of Alberta so far was dinner at Charcut Roast House, which has garnered a reputation as one of the best new restaurants in Canada. I didn’t realize, when I saw it on the itinerary exactly why I knew what it was. It turns out that the chef is Connie DeSousa, who was a solid competitor on Top Chef Canada Season One. When I started looking into it a little more, I found out that this is a place that has developed a practically cultish following as a result of its cuisine and because of their Alley Burgers. The idea was that the restaurant would periodically inform the public through social media that  there was going to be a set number of burgers offered through the alley door of the restaurant. I’d say that if you can get people to line up in -35 degree weather, it’s got to be a pretty exceptional burger.

I was mostly interested in Charcut because they are one of the only restaurants in Canada with a beer sommelier on staff. This makes complete sense since the menu deals with shared platters of hugely beer friendly food. Kirk Bodnar prefers the moniker of Beer Steward. We have a lot in common. We’re both Cicerone Certified Beer Servers and we’re both waiting to hear back about the results of the Cicerone exams that we’ve recently taken.

When you’re faced with a menu like that at Charcut, there’s a wheelhouse of flavours that anyone pairing beer is going to be extremely confident working with. Connie picked the menu, resulting in a situation in which Kirk was forced to pair beer with each course on the fly.

Now, it has to be said that after four days of hobbling gently about Alberta with a broken arm and a mildly sprained ankle, that my appetite was not completely suited to the vast outpouring of dishes from the kitchen. I gave it my best shot.

The head really is the most delicious part of the pig.

The head really is the most delicious part of the pig.

You know that you’re in for a treat when the amuse bouche from the kitchen is house made mortadella with bubbling raclette and fresh made brioche. The mortadella is apparently formed in a pig’s head. I hear that Connie has the ability to debone a pig’s head in less than half a minute, which may well fall into Bill Brasky urban legend territory. The pairing here was tree hophead, which certainly had enough bitterness and carbonation to cut through all of the elements of the dish, and enough of a malt backbone to play nicely with the sweetness of the raclette and brioche.

Subsequently, dishes simply started arriving. Bone Marrow with Escargot Gratin. House made pretzels with a cheese dip and pickled vegetables. Tuna Conserva with a salad of arugula.

Bone Marrow and Escargot Gratin

Bone Marrow and Escargot Gratin

P1020437

Tuna Conserva and Arugula

Tuna Conserva and Arugula

Kirk chose two beers for the appetizer course. A Munich Helles and an Schneider Weisse Aventinus. While the Aventinus tended to compromise the subtlety of the Bone Marrow and the Tuna, it was a dead certainty for the house made pretzels and cheese dip. The highlight of the course was the Tuna Conserva, with its lightly pickled (either new or fingerling) potatoes and its nuanced kick of citrus. The Munich Helles complimented the citrus perfectly and never interfered with the delicate mouthfeel of the tuna.

The realization that my eyes were bigger than my stomach arrived at approximately the same time as the plethora of entrees. There was the Share Burger, with its garlic sausage patty, cheese curd and fried egg (which explains completely why you’d stand in an alley late at night freezing your area off.) There was the Duck Fat Poutine with a truffle gravy. A Double Cut Pork Chop with Smoked Baked Beans and Aged Cheddar Cornbread. Although I didn’t realize it for several minutes, a butcher’s steak with chimichurri and matchstick potatoes nestled gently under a nonchalant bunch of arugula. Also, there was a salad, which was delicious but almost entirely disregarded by the table as the meat fever gripped us.

Pork and beans and cornbread. Deceptively complex and definitely worth the trip by itself.

Pork and beans and cornbread. Deceptively complex and definitely worth the trip by itself.

Everything, all at once.

Everything, all at once.

A truly excellent salad, which we, heathens that we are, mostly ignored.

A truly excellent salad, which we, heathens that we are, mostly ignored.

Kirk decided on three beers to pair with this course. A Naramata Nut Brown Ale, an Affligem Dubbel and the Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock. Now, to be fair, it should be pointed out that any of these in combination with any of the dishes would probably have been an excellent pairing if only because of the character of the dark malts. I have a theory that the maillard reaction that takes place in the malting process and during the boil helps pairings with meat that has been prepared through a dry cooking method. Grilling, roasting, frying, even a braise will probably produce complimentary flavour compounds because of maillard browning.

That said, the subtleties of pairing are really about the minor elements of a dish. Kirk mentioned at this point that he is in favour of pairing with underlying flavours of a dish, and I agree. The Affligem Dubbel really does a number on the truffle in the Duck Fat Poutine’s gravy. The Celebrator pairs wonderfully with the smoke in the baked beans and compliments as well the smoked paprika that was in the rub for the pork. It even makes sense culturally. If ever a cuisine was Pork-centric, it was Germany’s. That southern fixin’s would slot in alongside makes perfect sense. The earthy qualities of the Naramata Nut Brown even picked up herbal elements of the Chimichurri sauce (possibly oregano if I understand the milieu.)

There was dessert, which I’ll mention only briefly since I had reached the point where I was begging for slightly more mercy than Uncle Jesse.

For me, the highlight here is the Apple Pie Gelato, and I am a pie hating man.

For me, the highlight here is the Apple Pie Gelato, and I am a pie hating man.

The dessert beer was a 2008 Brooklyn Chocolate Stout, which had picked up some sherry like notes as a result of the slight oxidizing that takes place through age. That it would work with the chocolate dessert was a given. More surprising was the support it lent the preserved cherry cheesecake and the apple pie gelato. (An apple pie gelato could easily be a one note experience, but this remained tart despite significant sweetness and pronounced cinnamon.)

Proper glassware is important, as any good beer steward knows.

Proper glassware is important, as any good beer steward knows.

People praise Charcut for its food, and that praise is clearly well deserved. There are, however two things you should know about Charcut:

1)      It should be one of the prime beer destinations in Calgary. There are nine carefully chosen draught lines and approximately twenty five bottled beers. Thanks to Kirk’s expertise, not a single one of these is a dud. The staff has been educated on the subject and this is an excellent place to experiment with the potential of pairing beer and food if you’re unfamiliar with the concept or uncomfortable trying it at home.

2)      You’re going to either want to skip lunch before going to Charcut or bring a small army of confreres with you. To say that the portions are generous would be to do them a disservice. They are practically Brobdingnagian.

Posted in: Beer and Food, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,