It’s definitely a sign that we have a healthy brewing situation in Ontario that it eventually becomes difficult to report on all the things that I go to. I always feel a little bad about that because what that means is that someone has worked really hard to make something happen and has invited me to show up to a beer tasting or hootenanny or whatever and I’ve essentially ignored the thing entirely. It’s kind of rude.
Some bloggers manage to mitigate this somewhat by using twitter and twitpic and untappd and other smartphone applications. You’ll see Chris Schryer updating several times a day. Even Matt Caldwell is updating constantly from California in order to make us all extremely jealous.
They have iPhones. I have an older Blackberry which is capable of accessing its data plan at speeds that make a rock look fast. It has less photographic capability than a science fair pinhole camera. I constantly feel like I’m in danger of crushing the thing. So, I can’t take pictures, I can’t get untappd to work and to be quite honest with you, it’s likely that even if I had those capabilities, I would forget to use them because I was distracted by something shiny.
For that reason, I’m going to run through a number of things that I should probably have mentioned earlier. I’m going to do it in a relatively short form and hopefully that’ll alleviate some of this blogger guilt.
Augusta Ale: Brock Shepherd down at Burger Bar has his own house brand now: Kensington Brewing Company. My understanding is that he’s looking to expand past Augusta Ale at some point in the future but that plans are not concrete at this point. He’s done something pretty clever by getting Paul Dickey to contract brew for him, since Paul Dickey can essentially do no wrong. It’s a refreshing Pale Ale and it’s quite hoppy. The combination of the Burgers and a decent pint of beer makes Burger Bar a significant draw and I fully expect that it will thrive this summer.
Cheshire Valley: In addition to the Augusta Ale, Paul Dickey is brewing up batches of his Cheshire Valley beers. I feel a little bad since I’ve tried all of them at this point without writing about them and they’re overwhelmingly satisfying. I got to try the Robust Porter at C’est What months ago and again during the Only Café’s festival. It’s impressive. It has all of the body that a porter is supposed to have while maintaining a lovely roast character and notes of coffee and chocolate: right in the wheelhouse of the style. I can’t level any criticism against the beer itself, but I’d suggest that it might come out a little earlier next year to take advantage of the colder weather.
He also made an IPA. It is also good. It’s more of an English style IPA than anything else, but since most of the IPAs we get these days are sort of hybrids, it’s nice to have something to point to as not only a solid example, but as a solid beer. It may tell you something about the quality of the Cheshire Valley beers that rather than finagling my way into extra sample tickets at the Ontario Brewing Awards, I actually paid for a pint of the IPA.
Dominion On Queen (where they held the Ontario Brewing Awards): Someday, someone is going to renovate this pub and take advantage of the huge amount of floor space and additional rooms and the conceptual history of it having been a brewery. I like the Dominion, but every time I walk in there I look at the space and the amount of seating and the layout and the high ceilings and I envision so much potential that it becomes very hard not to treat what is actually quite a decent pub dismissively. You could easily put a nanobrewery in there. Heck. You could probably manage a 5 hec system without much difficulty. It would cost a lot, but there’s going to be money moving into the neighbourhood over the next decade.
Amsterdam Tempest: Tried this Imperial Stout couple of days ago and it has a very complex grain bill going for it. All I can say is that the finished product is going to be good whenever they decide it has finished aging. I think it’s actually going to shock people a little. There are apparently going to be some variations of it. Here’s a freebie: Call the delicately flavoured one Ariel and the brutish one Caliban.
Amsterdam Oranje Weisse: It has a lot more body than it did last year. I tried it for the first time at the BelgOntario event at Bar Volo. It was rather more like a watery beer mimosa than anything else, but for all that not unpleasant. It has been tweaked and is now more of a citrus-y witbier. Refreshing.
Muskoka Cabin Fever IPA: I really didn’t like this one. Mostly caramel with maybe a hint of oak and too much body for the hop character to be able to break through effectively. I had it on draft at the Cloak and Dagger, so that might have had something to do with it. I’m curious to see if the Mad Tom IPA is in the same vein or if it’s markedly different. Curiousity is good.
Twisted Kilt: I feel like I should congratulate the folks at the Twisted Kilt, since the bill of fare has been steadily improving. I pop in periodically to see what’s going on and the place is steadily busy. They’re usually packed Thursday through Saturday. The food is better than it was a year ago. In addition to Fuller’s stuff on cask, they’ve recently had Great Lakes Crazy Canuck, Muskoka Cream Ale and Black Oak Chocolate Cherry Stout. People are actually competing to get on the hand pump and that’s a really good sign. They’ve got Sam Adams Noble Pils at the moment and about four Paulaner taps. I feel like they’re in the middle of an upswing.
This is important to me, since I hung out there a bunch when I was younger and it was the Bow and Arrow. People would sneak in there during high school. It was referred to in shorthand as “The Archery Club” which lent it a certain amount of extracurricular credibility. I can’t really review the pub objectively since there’s some considerable sentimentality involved. What I can tell you is that even with nostalgia clouding my judgment, it’s probably as good as it ever was and it looks like they’ll continue to improve.