Beer, Beats & Bites

Movin' On...

2007-08-24T18:00:00.002-04:00

After running Beer, Beats & Bites for the last year or so with a Blogspot address, it seemed to me that it was about time to give it it's own domain. And since I've come to prefer the Wordpress blog software we've been using for Taste T.O. over the Blogger software used on Blogspot, I decided to move the whole thing over to Wordpress.com.

That means there will be no more new posts at this address, so please change your bookmarks to http://www.beerbeatsbites.com (or if you're using an RSS reader, http://www.beerbeatsbites.com/feed).

Since the domain was just registered this morning, the DNS record may not be finished propagating yet, so you can use http://beerbeatsbites.wordpress.com as a back-up address for now. Please don't use it permanently, though, as I may move to a new host in the future, but the main beerbeatsbites.com domain will follow wherever I go.

Thankfully, Wordpress.com has a handy import utility for Blogger blogs, so I was able to get all of my old posts - including comments - over to the new location. There are still a few glitches to be worked out and some sprucing up needed, but generally, it's ready for prime time.

See ya on the other side...

A Trio From Isle Of Skye

2007-08-13T23:24:00.000-04:00

A recent Bar Towel posting from import agents Roland + Russell regarding a pending order from Scotland's Isle of Skye Brewery reminded me that I never got around to cross-posting my thoughts on the sampler pack they delivered to me a while back from RateBeer to here. Sorry about that, R+R!

Here they are now, better late than never:

Isle of Skye Hebridean Gold
This ale has a vibrant golden colour with a moderate pure white head. Nice, fresh aroma of honey, heather and herbs, and a soft, pleasant body. Flavour is simple but enjoyable with notes of graham crackers and lightly toasted oats followed by a mild, herbal finish. Nice and quenching, I quite liked it.

Isle of Skye Red Cuillin
Slightly murky reddish-brown colour with a small head. The aroma holds roasted malt, Fuggles hops, a touch of caramel, and a hint of peat. The flavour follows the aroma pretty closely, with the peatiness becoming more prominent as it warms up. Not a bad little ale.

Isle of Skye Black Cuillin
Deep brown porter with a good sized off-white head. Roasted malt, coffee and a hint of smoke in the aroma. Medium body. The flavour is big and roasty, with smoky and sour notes around the edges. A very good porter.

The Session #7: Theme Announcement

2007-08-12T23:20:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in my round-up of Session #6 last weekend, Rick Lyke of Lyke 2 Drink is the host for Session #7, and a couple of days ago he announced the theme:

Have you ever noticed how many animals show up on beer labels? We have lions and tigers and bears, plus various birds, reptiles, fish, assorted domesticated and wild animals, plus a few mythical creatures. For whatever reason brewers have a tradition of branding their beers using everything from pets to predators. The Brew Zoo will celebrate these lagers and ales.

Your assignment for The Session #7 is to go on a beer safari and help stock our Brew Zoo with animals large and small. This is one hunt that even PETA should not protest.

This should be a fun one, although I do have two thoughts right off the bat:

1) All of the locally-available beers I can think of with animal names and/or graphics are pretty lousy. I'll have to wrack my brain to come up with something before September 7th.

2) It's funny how the idea of drinking a "zoo brew" is perfectly acceptable to the beer geek contingent, while serious wine drinkers generally look down upon so-called "critter wines" that feature animals on the label.

Anthony Wilson R.I.P.

2007-08-10T22:56:00.000-04:00

This post has nothing to do with beer. It's vaguely related to the usually ignored "Beats" portion of this blog's name. But mainly, it's just my small tribute to a man who changed my life, even though I never met him.

His name was Anthony Wilson, he co-founded Factory Records, and he died today.

During it's relatively short and infamously volatile existence, Factory was the home of a number of artists whose work I enjoy - Section 25, A Certain Ratio, Happy Mondays, Durutti Column, OMD - but most importantly, there was Joy Division and, following the death of singer Ian Curtis, New Order.

Very few bands had as much of an influence on my musical tastes as they did, and if the stories are to be believed (and if you've seen 24 Hour Party People, you'll know that often they are not...), it was Wilson's encouragement that kept Joy Division together in the first place.

So for that, and all the great music and ideas that he presented to the world via Factory and his other undertakings, I simply say: "Thanks, Tony."

You Down With OCB? (Yeah You Know Me)

2007-08-08T22:45:00.000-04:00

Last week, I received a special delivery from the fine folks at the Ontario Craft Brewers to promote the appearance of many of their members at Toronto's Festival of Beer, which kicks off tomorrow at Fort York. The package contained an assortment of eight beers (well, actually, six different beers, with doubles of two of them), as well as a copy of Bill Perrie's book Craft Brewers Of Ontario (which I already received and reviewed last summer, so it's been passed on to a friend) and various promotional materials.

Now, even though I received hundreds - if not thousands - of free CDs and records during my years of music reviewing and DJing, this free beer thing is still a cool novelty to me. But I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed by the contents of the package. Not that I didn't appreciate receiving it - I mean, hey, it's FREE BEER! But as someone who is quite familiar with the products of pretty much every brewery in the OCB, I felt that the full spectrum of what our province's craft brewers have to offer wasn't as well represented as it could've been, especially if the same package was sent out to less beer-saavy media. As noted above, two of the beers were there twice, and of the six distinct beers in the pack, four were pale lagers, one was a cream ale, and one was a porter. Meanwhile, one of the promotional pamphlets bragged about the diversity of the beers being brewed in Ontario, and listed the various styles available such as fruit beers, dark ales, pale ales, and so forth. So why didn't they include examples of some of those in the packages?

Anyway, I guess I should write a bit about the beers that were actually in there, eh? Well, to start with, there was a bottle of Great Lakes Golden Horseshoe Lager and two bottles of Cool Beer. I drank these one after the other, and I honestly couldn't tell the difference between them. Each of them is a pale yellow lager with a vaguely sweet aroma, mild and clean flavour, and little to no aftertaste. Both are well made for the mainstream lager style, but they're just not my kinda thing. However, based on the number of neighbourhood drinking holes that I've seen with one or the other on tap, I can only assume they're doing pretty well at cracking at least a few bits of the market, so more power to 'em.

Next up where a pair of lagers from Neustadt Springs Brewery - Bruce County Premium Lager and Neustadt Lager. I wrote these up for my Beer of the Week column on Taste T.O. this week, so I'll just give you an excerpt from what I wrote there:

(Bruce County) has a nice golden colour which is a bit darker than you might expect from a 4.5% lager, with a good sized white head that doesn’t stick around. The aroma is predominantly malty with a sweet and toasty character, and the body is a bit thin, but suitable for the style. The flavour is mild but well balanced, with bready malt and herbal hops in their proper places, and the hops getting a bit bolder as it warms. Yeah, it’s a relatively simple and easy-drinking lager, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the beer is well crafted and holds a fair bit more character than a typical macrobrew.

The same can be said for the brewery’s flagship Neustadt Lager. In some ways, it’s quite similar to the Bruce County, but with a bit more colour, more aroma and more flavour. Also like the Bruce County, it’s not an envelope-pusher, but it doesn’t have to be. I like so-called “extreme beers” as much as the next guy, but well made and enjoyable golden lagers like these have their place as well, especially during the dog days of summer.

From there, I moved on to Cameron's Cream Ale. Right up front, I have to say that I'm generally not all that hot on cream ales. The style seems like a bit of a cop out to me - an ale for people who don't really like ales. That being said, Cameron's version is an enjoyable quaff, with a slight fruitiness to the nose, the expected creamy body, and a balanced, refreshing flavour. Still, I much prefer their Auburn Ale.

Finally, there were two bottles of Mill Street Coffee Porter, neither of which I was able to drink because my wife stole them to take to a friend's BBQ on the weekend. But I've had this one often enough to know that it was easily the best beer of the bunch. They've toned down the coffee from the early batches, but it's still an excellent porter with tasty roasted coffee notes, and easily one of Ontario's best beers.

As mentioned, these five breweries and around a dozen other OCB members will have booths at Toronto's Festival of Beer running August 9th-12th at Fort York. For all of it's flaws, the fest is still a good opportunity to get a taste of Ontario's craft brewing scene, as well as a bunch of the good (and some not-so-good) quality imports available in the province. Just stay away from the Labatt and Molson tents and you should be fine.

The Session #6: Round-Up

2007-08-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

Well, I think this was the busiest Session yet, which is pretty impressive considering that BB&B is probably the least active blog to have hosted so far. Here's what everyone had to say:

Al at Hop Talk confesses that he's really not much of a fan of fruit beers, and after trying six new ones, his opinion doesn't change much.
Also at Hop Talk, Ron compares a couple of blueberry beers, and tries to improve one of them by mixing it with Guinness.
Andreea at Belgian Beers tries the "pink" and "girly" new Hoegaarden Rosée, a raspberry flavoured version of the classic Belgian witbier.
Stan at Appellation Beer tries a fantastic sounding Raspberry Strong Ale from Berkshire Brewing in South Deerfield, MA, which is brewing using a whole whack of real raspberries.
Ray at The Barley Blog is another fruit beer hater, so he dodges the bullet by reviewing Duchesse De Bourgogne, which isn't a fruit beer at all but does have some fruit lambic character to the flavour. Plus it's one of my favourite beers, so I guess I'll let it slide.
Rick at Lyke 2 Drink gives quick notes on 11 different fruit beers he's tried in the last month, ranging from light wheat beers to some high-octane ales, and featuring flavours as varied as raspberry, blueberry, apple and pomegranate.
Alan at A Good Beer Blog is pleased to find a fruit lambic that he likes in the form of Kriek De Ranke from Belgium.
The Beer Nut in Dublin gets the award for tasting the most unique beers for this Session, as he tries examples flavoured with green tea and yuzu, palm nut, and banana.
Steve at Summer of Beer is a relative newcomer to fruit beer, but he enjoys the pair of raspberry beers that he tries.
Tim at Sioux Brew is new to the Session, and debuts with a look at Brau Brothers Strawberry Wheat.
Wilson at Brewvana doesn't really dig Longs Peak Raspberry Wheat, but is very happy with his homebrewed Cherry Bomb, a Belgian strong ale enhanced with bing cherries. He also offers a helpful list of beer styles that often have fruit-like characteristics without having any actual fruit added.
Captain Hops at Beer Haiku Daily gives a couple of his patented 5-7-5 tributes to Lindemans Pêche and Dogfish Head Aprihop.
Paul at Stuff. Y'know. is another Session newbie, and he tries two cherry beers: Bell's Cherry Stout (which he doesn't really like) and Unibroue Quelque Chose (which he does).
Craig at Beers, Beers, Beers reviews three beers in three different flavours - apple, cherry and peach - and ends up liking them all.
Another Session newcomer is The Dude at Akelas Biggins, who gets nostalgic with a look back at the original Austin-brewed version of Celis Raspberry.
Jay at Brookston Beer Bulletin checks in with one of his typically informative and interesting posts where he lists dozens of different fruit beers grouped by fruit, and then reviews what is probably the first ever beer brewed with plumcots, a plum/apricot hybrid that's one of my favourite fruits.
Paul at Beer & Food is a Session virgin, so it's fitting that his post is entitled "My First Cherry".
Stephen does double duty once again, with reviews of Bell's Cherry Stout at On The House and Wild Rose Wraspberry Wheat (plus mentions of a few other Canadian fruit beers) at Stephen Beaumont's Beer Blog.
Sage at My Beer Pix does a bit of self-analysis regarding what he likes and doesn't like about fruit beers in general, rather than reviewing one in particular. And he also has a very funny picture of a banana in a glass of beer.
Ted at Barley Vine is pretty happy with his choice of Atlantic Brewing's Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale.
Jon at The Brew Site doesn't have any fruit beer on hand, so he decides to "wax rhapsodic about fruit beers in general", and also links back to reviews of some fruit beers he's posted about in the past.
Andrew at Flossmoor Beer Blog offers his personal opinions, and those of some other people, on two fruit beers (or more accurately, two different versions of the same fruit beer) that he brews for Flossmoor Station.
OK, I lied when I said that The Beer Nut tried the most unique beers, as the award really must go to Chris at Beer Activist, who brewed up a batch of mfula mfula (aka riva riva), an African fermented drink made with bread, oats, sugar and pineapple.
Jesse at Twin Cities Beer Geek takes one for the team and reviews Miller Chill.
Jack at The Beer Tap missed last month's session, but he returns this month with a mixed trio of peach, raspberry and blackberry beers.
Bill at Beerjanglin' is yet another Session newbie, and he arrives in fine form with a witty and well-written feature on three East Coast offerings.
Dave at Hair of the Dog Dave pays tribute to my Canadian-ness by writing up two fruit beers he tried on a recent visit to Vancouver.
Adam at Beer Bits 2 (does that mean there's a Beer Bits 1 somewhere?) looks at two raspberry beers that are quite different from each other despite featuring the same fruit.
maeib at maeib's Beerblog looks back at some of the many fruit beers he has known.
Spence at Brewer Man reviews Dogfish Head Black and Blue - a beer that I sincerely wish was available in Ontario, as it sounds fantastic - and also gives his thoughts on a few other fruit beers that have impressed him.
Londoners Boak & Bailey review a couple of blackberry beers - including one they brewed themselves - as well as beer brewed with tayberries (yeah, I'd never heard of them either - they're a cross between raspberries and blackberries).
Lost Abbey's Tomme Arthur is late with his post at Brewer’s Log (Blog), but since it's a really fascinating look at his own Cuvee de Tomme, we'll let it slide.
And finally, some guy named Greg at Beer, Beats & Bites is pissed that the beer he wanted to review didn't show up, but stumbles across three others unexpectedly, so it all works out in the end.

So, I think that went pretty well, don't you? I figured that my theme choice would be a controversial one, and based on the number of people who started their post with "I normally hate fruit beers...", I guess I was right.

To be honest, though, I think the reason why fruit beers get such a bad rap from a lot of beer geeks is because they instantly think of the ones that are most common in North America - i.e. filtered wheat beers or other light ales and lagers that are flavoured with cloyingly sweet and often artificial tasting fruit extracts. The fact that such beers made up a large percentage of those covered in this Session goes to show just how ubiquitous those type of fruit beers are. But thankfully, a number of people looked at some more classic and/or bizarre examples as well.

In the end, this whole Session can be summed up nicely by the following words from Jay Brooks at Brookston Beer Bulletin:

(There is an) amazing diversity of different fruits used in beers. No two are alike, and so saying you don’t like fruit beer is like saying you don’t like people. There’s just too many variables to make such a blanket statement. I think it comes down to perception again of some weird prejudice in the U.S. where fruit in beer is seen as unmanly, as ridiculous a notion as I can imagine. There’s just too many good flavors here to ignore them over masculinity. But I guess that’s more for the rest of us.

Amen. And thanks to everyone who participated. I now pass the pint glass to Rick at Lyke 2 Drink who will be hosting next month's Session. I'm sure we're all looking forward to his theme announcement with much anticipation. No pressure, Rick... :)

The Session #6: Fruit Beer

2007-08-03T23:02:00.000-04:00

OK, here's the thing: When I selected fruit beer as the theme for this month's instalment of The Session (that beer-blog round-up thingie that a bunch of us do on the first Friday of every month, and that I'm hosting for August), I did so in anticipation of the pending arrival of Liefmans Kriekbier as part of the LCBO's summer beers promotion. I loved this beer when I first tried it a couple of years ago, and was looking forward to downing a couple of bottles to see if it's as good as I remembered, and to write about it for The Session.

However, the beer - along with its non-fruited counterpart, Liefmans Goudenband - never showed, leaving me at a bit of a loss as to what beer I would write about it. After all, as my fellow Ontarian Stephen Beaumont mentions in one of his contributions to the Session, there are very few fruit beers produced up here, and only a couple of imported examples on our LCBO and Beer Store shelves. But I guess the beer gods were smiling on me, as I managed to get my hands on three new fruit beers in the past week, giving me a lot to write about after all.

The first was a beer that came in as a part of the now Liefmans-free LCBO release: Chapeau Banana Lambic from Belgium's Brouwerij De Troch. The Chapeau line-up consists mainly of highly sweetened and strangely flavoured lambics, and my past experiences with other Chapeau beers like Exotic (pineapple) and Mirabelle (plum) had been, shall we say, less than stellar. But in the case of the Banana, I was surprisingly not offended by it. In fact, I kinda liked it, and even picked it as my Beer of the Week over on Taste T.O. this week. Here's a bit of what I wrote about it there:

The aroma is a combination of those marshmellow banana candies I used to like as a kid (yeah, you know the ones I mean), mixed with a slight lambic funkiness. (My wife also found notes of strawberry, melon and kiwi.) The body is sticky, and not very refreshing, which is a common fault in sweetened fruit beers (or any overly sweetened drink, for that matter). The flavour is quite sweet off the top, although it tastes more like real banana than the candyish aroma suggests, and there’s a pleasant tartness peeking through in the finish.

That being said, beers like this are still closer in style to coolers and other alcopops than good quality fruit beers. Which is quite the opposite of the second one I tried thanks to my pal Paul bringing it to a tasting night: Oud Beersel Oude Kriek from the respected Belgian lambic producers Brouwerij F. Boon. This hazy ruby-rose coloured brew is a much more traditional fruit lambic, with the expected funky and musty aroma with notes of sour cherry, wood, old books and mouldy cheese. (Yeah, I know, it doesn't sound that appealing when I write it, but believe me, it was.) After the aggressive aroma, the flavour was actually a bit of a let down - it was good, very dry and tart with a strong cherry character, but a bit milder than the aroma let on. Still, it's a classic example of the kriek lambic style, and provided a great contrast to the Chapeau sugarbomb that I drank the night before.

Moving from the Old World to the New, my third fruit beer of the week came to me courtesy of import agents Roland + Russell who dropped off a package of a few of their new offerings for me to sample. It actually contained two fruit beers, but I only had a chance to sample one of them: Southern Tier Raspberry Wheat Ale from Lakewood, NY. While I'm usually underwhelmed by fruit flavoured versions of North American wheat beers, I'd enjoyed pretty much every Southern Tier beer I'd tried before this one, so I had fairly high hopes. Unfortunately, it followed the pattern of it's style: light golden-yellow colour; lots of fruit and faint malt on the nose; thin, spritzy body; and a mild, lightly fruited flavour. It was certainly refreshing, especially during the nasty heat wave that we're currently experiencing in Toronto, and I'd take it over the Chapeau Banana any day of the week. But I guess I just expected a bit more oomph from a Southern Tier beer.

So now that I've got my own post out of the way, it's time for me to put on the hosting hat for this month and compile a round-up of the posts that all of my fellow Sessioners have published today (in most cases, in a much more timely manner than yours truly). I'll get that together over the next day or two, allowing any stragglers to get in on the action before posting the final tally. If you have a contribution to be included, drop me a line or comment on this post.

Tomorrow: The Session!

2007-08-02T16:24:00.001-04:00

Just a last minute reminder to my fellow beer bloggers and other interested parties that tomorrow is the August instalment of The Session, the monthly beer blogging round-up that I happen to be hosting this month. This month's theme, as I announced a while back, is fruit beer.

Given my ridiculous schedule lately, I probably won't be getting my own post up until fairly late in the day. Those who are more on the ball than me can feel free to email me or reply to this post with a link to their contribution, and I'll do the obligatory round-up on the weekend (which is a long one in Canada, thankfully).

More Weeks, More Beers

2007-07-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

Geez, I keep forgetting to make a post about these! Here are the last few "Beer of the Week" posts I've made to Taste T.O.:

Waterloo Wheat - "...seems like a hybrid of a Belgian witbier and a German weissbier: it has the citrus and spice notes expected from a wit, but also a bit of the banana and yeast that’s typical of a weisse..." (full review)

Christoffel Blond - "...a somewhat unique version of a Pilsner, at least in comparison to the ones that most people are familiar with..." (full review)

Southern Tier Phin & Matts Extraordinary Ale - "...the pungent, grapefruit-like aroma of the Cascade hops [...] makes it obvious that this beer has some balls..." (full review)

Castlemaine XXXX Export Gold - "...aside from homesick Australians with bad taste in beer, I can’t imagine anyone enjoying this chunder from Down Under..." (full review)

Hacker-Pschorr Hefeweisse - "...a fantastic beer from a venerable brewery..." (full review)

Beer & BBQ: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

2007-07-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned on this blog in the past, I was a pescetarian until a few months ago. I had been so for a number of years, not because I have a problem with animals dying for human consumption per se, but because I have a lot of issues with the factory farming industry that produces most of the meat consumed in North America. (OK, there was also the fact that my wife dropped meat from her diet before I did and stopped cooking it for us, and since I'm a lousy cook, it seemed easiest just to give it up as well.)

Earlier this year, however, I decided to start eating meat again for a number of reasons. I won't go into all of them here, but I will admit that at least some of it was due to me quite simply having cravings for meat more and more often. I nearly caved a couple of times, and then finally fell off the wagon when I was given the opportunity to attend a Brooklyn Brewing dinner at beerbistro back in February where the menu featured many delicious meaty courses.

Since then, I've been eating meat on an occasional basis, most often at dinners or events that I'm invited to attend via Taste T.O. or Bar Towel. One of the most recent of these was a lunch earlier this week at Steam Whistle Brewery featuring the succulent creations of Canada's reigning Grand BBQ Champions, Team Cedar Grilling. Consisting of Steve Adams, Daryl Maybanks and Mike Adams, the Team Cedar trio are a non-profit team who depend on sponsorship to defray their travel and equipment costs (although the $6500 they won a couple of weeks ago probably helps as well - congrats, guys!). Hence their partnership with Steam Whistle who not only hosted this little media get-together, but who also have their beer featured in several of the Team's recipes.

Held on Steam Whistle's sunny patio just south of the CN Tower, the lunch started with Cedar Planked Garlic Shrimp with Asiago Gratin served to us right off the planks. There were also an array of salads available, but as we started spooning them on to our plates, one of the guys shouted over that we'd better not eat too much as there was a lot more to come from the grill.

Like, for example, their award winning Parrot Sticks. These are chicken wings that are stretched to their full length and skewered, resulting in a sort of wing-meets-kebab thing that looks kinda funny but tastes damn good, especially when dipped in the accompanying Steam Whistle Chicken Sauce.

Of course, what we really wanted to try were the ribs, and when they finally made it off the grill, they didn't disappoint. Prepared using the team's Steam Whistle BBQ Sauce recipe, they were juicy and tender and bone-sucking good. So good, in fact, that they made the Pulled Pork Sandwiches that followed almost anti-climatic. Which is too bad, because the meat itself was possibly the best pulled pork I've ever had, it was just let down a bit by the doughy supermarket style bun it was served on and the odd inclusion of cole slaw on the sandwich. Still, I ended up finishing it even though my stomach was threatening to explode from the previous courses and the couple of beers I'd already put back.

Speaking of the beer - as you'd expect, Steam Whistle Pilsner was the only beer option. This beer/brewery gets a lot of flak from the beer geek community due to the fact that it's a fairly simple, straight-forward, crowd-pleasing lager. But I've defended them in the past, and will continue to do so now. Sure, it's a simple beer, but it's also a very well-made and refreshing one, and if you drink it cool and fresh - such as the less-than-a-week-old bottles we were served to us at the brewery - it's a perfect accompaniment to eating some killer BBQ on a warm patio.

For those in Toronto, Team Cedar Grilling will be appearing at the Fort York BBQ Championships on Sept. 14-16. If you're a fan of the swine and the smoke, you should definitely plan to be there.

Announcing Session #6

2007-07-13T22:57:00.000-04:00

OK, it's been a week since the last Session took place, and since I'm hosting the next one, I guess it's about time for me to announce the theme.

First, some background:

2007 seems to be the year of the farmers market in Toronto. We've always had a few regular markets in the city, both seasonal and year-round, but there's been a mini-explosion of new ones this year, including a Sunday morning one in the Liberty Village neighbourhood, just a few minutes from my apartment.

As a result, my wife and I have been eating even more fresh produce than usual this summer. We're at the Liberty Village market almost every Sunday, and Sheryl also takes trips around the city to check out other markets for the Market Basket feature on our website, Taste T.O..

For the past several weeks, we've been gorging on fresh local strawberries and cherries, and have just recently gotten our first taste of the year's raspberry and blueberry crops. Coming soon will be peaches and plums, and later will be the first crisp, tart apples of the year.

With all of this fruit on the brain (or more accurately, in my belly), it gave me the idea for a theme for Session #6. Therefore, I hereby declare that on Friday, August 3rd, 2007, beer bloggers the world over will be writing about Fruit Beer.

Aside from the stipulation that it be a beer brewed/augmented with fruit (or fruit juice or extract), there are no other rules or guidelines. Anything is fair game, from a tart and funky Kriek or Framboise, to a sugar-laden "lambic", to a Blueberry Wheat or Raspberry Ale from your local brewpub.

And have some fun with it. After all, it's the summer! (Well, except for where it's the winter, but you know what I mean...) Spread the word, enjoy the rest of your July, and check back on August 3rd to report your contribution for the obligatory round-up post.

Book Review: Grilling With Beer with Lucy Saunders

2007-07-08T16:00:00.000-04:00

Grilling With Beer
by Lucy Saunders
F&B Communications, 224 pp.
US$21.95

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a manly man. I don't care much for any sports besides hockey, I don't own any power tools besides a simple drill set, and I don't have any interest in cars (in fact, I don't even have a driver's license).

The one manly pursuit I do enjoy, however, is barbecuing. At our previous place, my wife and I had use of a large backyard with a great deck, and we invested in a decent quality gas grill. While my wife is a fabulous cook, she always let me man the grill (even though she actually did all the prep work), and even during our years of being almost-vegetarians, we still did up some great grilled fish and veggies once in a while. Last year, we moved into our current yard-less and balcony-less apartment, which meant leaving the BBQ behind. I sort of missed it last summer, and now that I've started eating meat again, I'm really missing it.

Rubbing salt in the wound was the recent unexpected arrival of a review copy of Grilling With Beer by American food and beer writer Lucy Saunders. If only this book existed 5 or 6 years ago when I was at the top of my grilling game and getting more and more interested in exploring different beers - I would've been in beer & BBQ heaven! Sigh.

Still, even as a member of the unfortunately grill-free set, this is a great book to own. Logically arrayed into 10 main chapters - 5 covering sauces, glazes, marinades, rubs and other basic BBQ condiments, and 5 covering various meats/seafood and sides - Grilling With Beer features well over 100 recipes to match everyone's tastes (yes, even vegetarians - the recipes for Grilled Herbed Hazelnut Flatbread, Brined Grilled Eggplant, and Grilled Potato Salad all look delicious). And thankfully for kitchen klutzes like me, most of them are pretty simple as well, with clearly written ingredient lists and instructions.

Saunders has also brought a lot of her friends to the party, and features recipes from such beer cuisine luminaries as Brian Morin (beerbistro), Gary Marx (Pike Brewing), Mario Gongora (Marin Brewing) and Scott McGlinchey (Q Real American Food). Also pitching in are the Jason & Todd Alström of BeerAdvocate.com, who provide convincing argument for grilling with beer (in case you needed one) in their preface, and the legendary beer writer Michael Jackson, who explains why Saunders is pretty much the best person in the world to have written this book.

Making this book even more of a treat are the segments between the chapters. Written by Saunders and other beer scribes such as Anne Ausderau, Dan Rabin and Jay Brooks, these interludes provide profiles of festivals and events that feature craft beer and grilled/barbecued food, ranging from the New Mexico's Rio Rancho Pork & Brew and a BBQ Oyster Fest in San Andreas, to events in such exotic locales as Hawai'i, Australia and New Zealand. And as if that weren't enough, writer and brewer Stan Hieronymus gives some tips on pairing beers with the dishes that the book helps you prepare, and Saunders wraps things up with a list of mail order resources for all of your grilling needs, and a fantastic run down on the flavour profiles of various beer styles.

And it would be remiss not to mention how visually attractive the book is. The spot illustrations and font choices give it a slightly retro look (although not to the point of parody, like so many faux-retro cookbooks that are on the market), and the event profiles feature some nice photos, as do a number of the recipes. All in all, it's a slick little package.

Like most self-published books, the best way to get your hands on a copy of Grilling With Beer is directly from the author. Mail order instructions can be found on the book's website, grillingwithbeer.com, as well as at Saunders' main site, beercook.com. If you prefer the in-person method and live in Toronto, there's a good chance that she'll have some copies for sale at beerbistro this coming Tuesday, July 10th when she's there to present a special dinner as part of the restaurant's month long American Beer & Barbecue Fest.

The Session #5: Atmosphere

2007-07-06T17:15:00.000-04:00

Holy crap, is it already time for another Session? It seems like just three posts ago that I did a last one! Oh wait, it was just three posts ago, 'cause I've neglecting this poor li'l blog of mine more and more. If not for the monthly Sessions, it might just wither away to nothing. Sniff.

Anyhoo - for those just joining us, The Session is one of those things where a bunch of bloggers write about the same topic on the same day. In this case, it's beer bloggers writing about a particular type of beer, with the style chosen each month by a different one of us. Then the person/people who chose the topic keep tabs on all of the posts and compile a round-up. Our themes for the last four months have been local beer, milds, dubbels and stouts.

(I get to choose the theme for August, so watch for that to be announced here soon.)

This month, our "hosts" are Al & Ron at Hop Talk, and to mix things up a little bit, we won't be writing about what we drink this month, but rather where we drink it, as the theme is Atmosphere:

Beer is about more than flavor, IBUs, and the debate over what is a craft beer and what isn’t. It’s about Life. It’s the proverbial icing on the cake.

So, we want to know about the "Atmosphere" in which you enjoy beer. Where is your favorite place to have a beer? When? With whom? Most importantly:

Why?

Because while life isn’t all about beer, beer is all about life.

Since I'm an indecisive git, I'm going to do as I did in the first Session and give multiple answers:

1) Down The Pub

Yes, I know, it's the most obvious choice, and will probably be the most popular one today. But I think very few beer lovers would deny that some of their favourite beer imbibing moments have been sitting in a friendly pub - whether it's your local spot, a place across town, or a bar you discover during your travels elsewhere - and hoisting a pint or three with friends old and new.

Here in Toronto, the bar I frequent the most is The Rhino. It's been my neighbourhood bar & grill for the 13 years I've lived in Parkdale, and while they've had their ups and downs on the service and food quality fronts over that time, they've been pretty stable in the year and a half since I moved from a place 5 blocks away to a place even closer. Their dozen or so taps are dedicated primarily to good local craft beers, they added about 200 bottled beers to their selection around the time I moved closer last year, and they also started carrying cask ale a few months back. They may not match destination spots like Volo or beerbistro when to comes to truly eclectic beer selections, but the remarkably low prices for both beer and food combined with the ramshackle neighbourhood vibe of the place just can't be beat.

(Addendum: A couple of hours after I originally posted this, my wife and I went to Rhino for dinner. I had mussels and fries, she had a veggie sandwich, and we each had two beers. Total with tax and tip was 40 bucks. That may seem a bit high to you Americans who are used to $2.50 pint specials and the like, but trust me when I say that for Toronto, that's a fantastic deal.)

2) Tasting Sessions (aka Geekfests)

Being a beer rater, I'm always up for trying as many new beers as possible, and one of the most efficient and enjoyable ways of doing so has been via tasting nights with some of my fellow raters. Once a month or so, I get together with my regular crew (Jeff, Paul, Harry & Jer) and occasional guests to listen to some tunes, shoot the shit, and drink & rate a bunch of beers. Sometimes we have a theme - like last summer's infamous "Beers from the RateBeer Top 100" tasting - but usually, it's just a pot luck of beers that most of us haven't tried before. Yeah, it can be a bit geeky at times, as we jot in our notebooks and debate whether the beer is true to style or try to figure out what hop varieties were used. But mostly, it's just a bunch of guys (and sometimes one girl) with similar-but-not-identical interests and views sitting around and sharing something that we all love.

3) I Drink Alone...

Supposedly, it's one of the warning signs of alcoholism, but I don't really see anything wrong with enjoying a beer on my own at home. (And to be completely accurate, I'm rarely completely alone when I'm doing so, as my wife is usually around, and will even join me if I crack something she likes). Sometimes, it's something new that I drink and contemplate and write about. More often, it's an old favourite that I quaff while watching the tube or poking around on the computer. Either way, it's an enjoyable and civilised way to unwind after a day at work. And it's cheaper than going out, as well.

So there you go - a trio of places that I like to drink. Check out the round-up at Hop Talk to see what the others have to say, and check back here in a couple of days to find out what we'll all be writing about a month from now.

Beer(s) of the Week(s)

2007-06-14T17:37:00.000-04:00

As promised a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to post teasers here for beer articles I'm writing for Taste T.O. and other sites such as Gremolata. The most regularly appearing of these will be my Beer of the Week column for Taste T.O., and here are the last couple of those...

Mill Street Cherry Beer

While I’m usually inclined to reach for a nice dry Pilsner or a hoppy Pale Ale when the weather gets warmer, I can understand the increased popularity of fruit beers in the summer months. Their fresh and lively flavours are a reminder of the warm weather harvest, and the often complex combination of sweetness and tartness that is found in many better quality fruit beers can be quite refreshing on a hot day.

So it makes sense that the folks at Mill Street would choose to make a cherry beer as the first summer seasonal at their brewpub. (Although I suppose the fact that they had a raspberry beer available during the early spring sort of ruins the "summer = fruit beer" angle I’m playing up here, doesn’t it? Damn.)

Click through to read the rest of this article

Gubernija Grand 9.5

When most people read the words “Malt Liquor”, the image that likely pops into their heads is homies in South Central drinking 40s of St. Ides, or perhaps the neighbourhood drunk slumped in an alley with a king can of Schlitz Red Bull spilled beside him. Either way, the beers that tend to be tagged as malt liquor aren’t exactly considered to be beverages of the highest quality.

Of course, the definition of “malt liquor” can vary depending on where you live. In some jurisdictions, any beer above a certain alcohol percentage must be labelled as “malt liquor” before being sold, meaning that everything from cheap, high-octane swill to elegant strong Belgian ales are considered to be in the same category in the eyes of the alcohol overlords.

As a beer style, however, malt liquor is generally understood to be a strong (usually 6% to 9% abv) lager that is most often brewed with the addition of non-barley adjuncts such as corn and sugar, and a very low hop content. The result is a sweet brew with very little bitterness and a strong alcoholic punch. The flavour and aroma are often unpleasant, with notes of everything from rotting vegetables to jet fuel, but such concerns are secondary in a beer that is simply intended to get the imbiber as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible.

Click through to read the rest of this article

Geek Speak

2007-06-10T08:38:00.000-04:00

Hey. Life is still pretty busy, hence the continuing silence around these parts. I've got a few posts either half-written or half-formed, and I'll get to them soon(-ish).

In the meantime, check out this great little article by Ken Wells, author of Travels With Barley, on how to speak beer geek. Most people reading this blog probably won't learn anything, but it's a great primer to give to your less beer-saavy friends have a hard time following when you start to geek out.

Also - the theme of next month's Session has been announced, and it's "Atmosphere". Interesting. I'll have to think about that one for a bit.

The Session #4: Local Brews

2007-06-01T20:04:00.000-04:00

Right, it's time for another Session, that day of the month when beer bloggers all over the damn place kinda-sorta post about the same thing. This month, it's being hosted by Gastronomic Fight Club, which is a bit odd since GFC appears to be a food blog (based in Omaha, no less) rather than a beer blog. But hey, beer is food, so it's all good.

For the past three sessions, we've focussed on particular beer styles - stouts, dubbels, and milds. But this month, we're mixing it up a bit, as snekse (I bet that's not his real name...) at GFC has decreed that we shall all drink and write about a local brew (or brews). The specific parameters were that it had to be brewed within 150 miles of our house, preferably at the brewery closest to us, and leaning towards beers that are not well distributed outside of our area.

Well, if I was writing this 10 years ago, my pick would probably be something from Upper Canada Brewing, as I live about 5 minutes away from their original brewery. But they were bought by Sleeman in 1998, and production was moved to the Sleeman facility in Guelph soon afterwards. Plus the UC brands are pretty much shit now.

Nowadays, there must be at least a dozen breweries within 150 miles of my apartment, if not more. If I were to stick strictly to the "closest" rule, my pick would have to be either Amsterdam or Steam Whistle. But Amsterdam's beers don't really wow me (except for maybe their Framboise), and Beaumont did Steam Whistle.

So the other day, when I was returning some empties at the Beer Store, I stared at the big wall of logos (Ontarians will know what I'm talking about) looking for something local, and decided upon an old favourite that I hadn't had in a while: Black Oak Pale Ale. And since I did this on Monday, the day that I was writing my Beer Of The Week column for Taste T.O., it gave me a chance to double dip, as I used it as my subject for this week's column.

In fact, the column became a sort of preview for the Session, as I wrote a bit about local beers, and my somewhat embarrassing habit of not drinking them as often as I should:

I’m not the type of beer drinker who sticks with a single favourite brand. I usually have a bottle each of a dozen or so different beers in the fridge at any given time, and another box or two of others stashed in the closet. Even when I go out, I rarely have the same beer twice in a night, unless I’m at a pub where there’s only one beer that I like on tap.

As a result, I often find myself giving short shrift to some beers that I really enjoy, but generally pass up in favour of grabbing something new. This is especially true of local beers that I tend to take for granted, figuring that they’ll always be available, while this new seasonal release or import may only be around for a limited time.

Like I said - kinda embarrassing. And also kinda stupid, given how good the beer is:

As the photo demonstrates, it has a beautiful golden hue with a good sized white head that leaves a fair bit of lacing on the glass as it recedes. The aroma is fresh and inviting, with a big hop presence, but with sweet malt to balance, and a faint woodiness. The body is a touch thin, but also crisp and lively - quite likely due to the addition of a bit of toasted wheat to the recipe - giving the beer a thirst-quenching edge. And the flavour follows the aroma closely: a good balance of sweet, honeyish malt and citric hops that linger deliciously in the finish.

As a result of all this, I've made a pact with myself to start drinking local beers more often. Sure, I'll still pick up new and interesting imports, and faves like Brooklyn Lager and Aventinus will still be coming home with me occasionally. But I need to stop taking breweries like Black Oak (and Neustadt and Mill Street and Magnotta and King and so on...) for granted. Despite what I write above, they may not always be available, so best to enjoy them while I can, especially in these warm spring and summer months when a cool, fresh beer is always welcome.

I've Been A Bad Little Blogger...

2007-05-22T21:27:00.000-04:00

Between work and Taste T.O. and other life stuff, this poor blog of mine has been sorely neglected the past couple of months, and I'm feeling a little guilty about it. I actually considered just shutting it down completely, but I still like the idea of having a place to stick up my writing - beer-related or otherwise - that doesn't quite fit at Taste T.O. or Gremolata, so it's safe for now.

My lack of time, however, means that it may still look a little sparse, at least for the foreseeable future. So in order to make it seem not quite so dead, I've decided to start cross-posting my articles from Taste T.O. and Gremolata - or rather, portions of those articles, with a link to the source so you can click through and read the whole thing if you're interested.

As an introduction to this, are segments from my last couple of Beer Of The Week posts at Taste T.O., as well as links to all previous ones. Watch for future instalments to be previews & linked here each Tuesday:

Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner

Back in 1987, just as Canada’s modern craft brewing scene was kicking off, a small brewery called Creemore Springs opened in their namesake town of Creemore, Ontario. Unlike most of the other microbreweries launching around the same time, they decided to concentrate their efforts on a single brand, Creemore Springs Premium Lager.

This flavourful lager with a rich amber colour has been praised by beer drinkers and writers from around the world, and is often listed with Brooklyn Lager and Samuel Adams Boston Lager as being a landmark lager in the North American craft brewing scene.

It took ten years from the brewery to add a second beer to their line-up, the dark and malty Creemore Springs urBock which is available during the fall and winter months. Another ten years on, and they’ve decided to mark the end of their second decade with a second seasonal brew, Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner (LCBO 53686, $2.55/473 mL), which will be available from May through October.

Click here to read the rest of this review

PC Blanche

It probably goes without saying that I’m not a discount beer drinker. It’s not that I have a problem with the idea of saving money, but as someone who drinks beer in order to enjoy the aroma and flavour rather than to serve as an alcohol delivery mechanism (well - most of the time, anyway), I’ve found the few “buck-a-beers” that I’ve tried have generally failed to satisfy me.

However, while flipping through the latest President’s Choice Insider’s Report this past weekend, I came across a blurb for a new addition to the PC discount beer line-up: PC Blanche. Considering that every other beer in the PC portfolio is a knock-off of some macro-brewed lager or other, from Genuine Lager to Dry to Honey, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the idea of them tackling the decidedly non-mainstream Belgian witbier style.

Click here to read the rest of this review

Hockley Stout

As noted in this column a month or so ago, I’m quite a fan of Hockley Dark, an authentic UK-style brown ale brewed by Orangeville’s Hockley Valley Brewing. So when I caught wind earlier this year that they were planning a dry stout to be released for St. Patrick’s Day via the LCBO, I was obviously very interested to try the results.

Well, they missed the St. Patrick’s Day target by a month or so, but Hockley Stout (LCBO 615625) finally started appearing on shelves a couple of weeks ago as part of the LCBO’s spring beer promotion. And having now tried all six of the beers in the rather meagre little release, I’m happy to declare this stout to be the best of the bunch.

In fact, I might go so far as to say that this is a quintessential example of a dry stout. Although the style is pretty rare around here, so aside from Guinness, there’s no real point of comparison.

Click here to read the rest of this review

Earlier "Beer of the Week" Reviews

Great Lakes Orange Peel Ale
Atlantic au Pineau
Duchy Originals Organic Ale
Wellington Arkell Best Bitter
Hockley Dark
Fuller’s Cask-Conditioned ESB
Gayant La Goudale
Trafalgar Celtic Pure Irish Ale
Fuller’s London Pride
C’est What Mild Brown Ale
Brooklyn Lager
Heritage Passion Brew
Denison’s Weissbier
Steam Whistle Pilsner

The Session #3: Mild

2007-05-04T13:53:00.000-04:00

Another first Friday of the month, another Session in beer blog land. This time around, we're being hosted by Jay at Brookston Beer Bulletin, and in honour of CAMRA's Mild Month, he chose mild ale as this month's style.

As Alan notes over at A Good Beer Blog, mild is a rare style nowadays, especially outside of the UK. But luckily, Toronto pub C'est What has a Mild Brown Ale in their line-up of house beers.

Even more luckily for me, I wrote an article on this beer just a couple of months ago as part of my series of Beer of the Week columns over at Taste T.O.. So I can be lazy this month, and just do some cut 'n' paste. Nice!

Here's what I wrote:

To most North American drinkers, mention of a beer with a 3% to 4% alcohol level will undoubtedly bring to mind fizzy yellow light/lite lagers that taste even less of beer than their 5% kin. But fans of UK-style ales will more likely think of Mild Ale, a style that was once on the brink of extinction but that has been gaining popularity thanks to the efforts of CAMRA and other real ale supporters.

Brewed since the 1600s, if not earlier, the definition of Mild Ale has varied a bit over the years, but it has typically referred to malty ales that are darker in colour and have a lower alcohol content than Bitters and Pale Ales. Back when ales were generally stronger across the board, Milds would vary in strength from 5% to 7%, but most modern interpretations sit somewhere in the 3% to 4% range.

Like most traditional ale styles, Mild is more common in the UK (although even with CAMRA’s efforts, it still hasn’t been restored to the point where nearly every pub had a Mild on at least one of their taps). But with the increasing popularity of cask ales in North America, more and more microbreweries are taking a crack at the style.

The only local example of the style comes courtesy of C’est What (67 Front Street East), the almost-brewpub (their house beers are brewed off-site at County Durham Brewing) that has been at the forefront of Toronto’s craft beer scene for over 19 years. Their C’est What Mild Brown Ale had actually crept up to 4.1% abv, but it was recently reformulated back to its original 3.4% level without sacrificing any of its unique character.

In the glass, it has the appearance of a nut brown ale or even a light porter, with a ruby-brown body and light mocha head. Both the aroma and flavour hold notes of roasted malt, cocoa, coffee and toasted nuts, with a delicate touch of hops in the finish. The body is on the creamy side due to the fact that it is served using a nitro tap of the sort typically used to serve stouts and some cream ales. Personally, I’d rather have it served as a cask ale, but in this case the nitro doesn’t have as much of a negative effect as it can have on lighter beers. Dispensing method aside, it’s just nice to have a flavourful beer that one can quaff several pints of in a session without falling off one’s barstool in the process.

Shaken or Stirred?

2007-05-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

First of all, I must apologize for the severe lack of posts here lately. April was, to put it bluntly, a completely fucked up month for me. First my wife got sick, and then I got sick, and then my wife got sick again. Add to that a busy day job and work on the increasingly popular Taste T.O., and something had to give.

Anyway, speaking of Taste T.O. - we launched a discussion forum earlier this week, and I made a post there yesterday that I thought readers here might find interesting. It doesn't have to do with beer, but it does have to do with booze:

I've been a fan of New York Times wine & spirits columnist Eric Azimov for quite a while, primarily because unlike many other booze writers, he has a healthy respect for beer as well and don't treat it like a second- or third-rate drink.

My respect for him has gone up a couple more notches today thanks to his article about martinis. Or more accurately, his article about a gin tasting where they decided to taste 20 different gins in the form of martinis.

Here is the specific bit that I really enjoyed...

Before we discuss the findings, though, we need to clear up a little matter. It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail.

In a follow-up post on his blog, he continues...

I’m annoyed at myself for even asking this question, but when’s the last time you had a real martini? Not a chocolate cocktail, or watermelon drink or any of the other spurious hangers-on that threaten the integrity of the word martini, but a real honest-to-goodness gin-and-vermouth martini?

What annoys me is that few people really know or care what a martini is anymore. They’ve just appropriated the appeal of the term to sell other cocktails, drinks that may be fine themselves but are decidedly not martinis.

The funny thing is, I'm actually not a huge martini fan. I'll have one once in a while, but I tend to prefer my gin mixed with tonic. But this whole trend of sticking "-tini" onto the end of the name of any alcoholic drink that's served in what people consider to be a "martini glass" (which it's not, by the way - it's just a cocktail glass) has always gotten under my skin. Especially when I've been handed a "Martini List" at a place that really should know better.

So are Azimov and I both cranky old sticks-in-the-mud who should get over it? Or do we have a valid point here?

Review: Micro Matic Kegerators

2007-04-15T17:30:00.001-04:00

(The following is a paid review solicited via ReviewMe.com.)

For my second ReviewMe mission, I've been asked to give my thoughts on the line-up of Kegerator draught beer dispensing units produced by the Micro Matic company. Although they didn't actually send me one for a test run, so I guess I'm really just giving my opinion on how they look on the website.

As with my first ReviewMe post (a review of the UK-based website Homebrew 4U) , I'm at a slight disadvantage because I'm not really in the Kegerator target market. As much as I like beer, the idea of having kegs on tap at home has never really appealed to me, probably because I rarely drink more than one of the same beer in a row.

That being said, if I was interested in getting a draught system for home, the Kegerator models look pretty decent. They come in a variety of sizes and prices, ranging from a US$495 unit that holds a pony (1/4 barrel) keg, to a US$1,470 professional grade unit that houses full-sized (1/2 barrel) keg. There are a couple of double-tap models available as well, for those who like a bit of variety.

Customers could also have some confidence regarding the quality of the products based on the fact that Micro Matic has been around since 1953 and is one of the world leaders in the manufacture and distribution of draught beer equipment. If the stuff they make is good enough for bars and restaurants in over 120 countries, it should be more than good enough for a home bar set-up. And the fact that all of the units have fairly detailed info and specifications available online makes comparison shopping easy.

So - I probably won't be buying one for myself any time soon, but if you're in the market for a draught beer dispenser for your own home bar, this site may be a good place to start, if only to get an idea of what's available from the pro-grade manufacturers. If you don't believe me, just ask Alan.

The Session #2: Dubbels

2007-04-06T23:46:00.000-04:00

Another Session, and another last minute post from yours truly. This month, we're doing dubbels. Which means that I should probably start by confessing that I'm a bit of a spaz when it comes to Belgian ales.

It's not that I don't enjoy them. Like most beer geeks, some of my favourite beers come from Belgium, or are brewed in the Belgian style. It's just that I have a hard time keeping track of what characteristics differentiate the various Belgian sub-styles from each other. So when Alan announced his pick for the second edition of The Session was dubbels, I was at a bit of a loss, and had to check RateBeer to see which beers were actually in that style.

Another factor was figuring out which dubbels are actually available in Ontario, since we're at the mercy of a government owned liquor monopoly here. As I mentioned in my last post, the only dubbels we can get here on a regular basis are Leffe Brune and Chimay Premiere (Rouge). Both of them are decent enough beers, but I was hoping for something a bit more unique for this Session.

But then I noticed something interesting: According to RateBeer (as well as Beer Advocate), Tickle Brain Ale from the UK brewery Burton Bridge is considered a dubbel. And it just so happened that I had one bottle of Tickle Brain left in my stash from a private order that a few of us got in on last year. A nice stroke of luck.

According to the label, "Tickle Brain" was a Tudor name for strong drink, so it fits this 8% beer well. It has a nice, rich ruby colour with a slight haze from the bottle conditioning. The aroma is big and sweet, lots of malt and caramel and dark fruit, and some sharper spicy notes coming through as it warms. More of the same in the flavour - caramel, brown sugar, dark fruit and berries, and an alcohol warmth that comes on a bit strong, but which is appreciated on this unseasonably cold Good Friday night. It's not an everyday beer to be sure, but it's nice to have around for those times that you want something a little stronger to savour. Too bad that this is my last bottle.

Thanks to Alan for picking a style that led to me getting a bit of an education. I'm already looking forward to next month.

Session 2: Electric Boogaloo

2007-03-28T11:19:00.000-04:00

I'm posting this mainly to remind myself of the date, but some of you might be interested to know that the second Session will be taking place on Friday, April 6th. It's being hosted by Alan at A Good Beer Blog this time around, and the style he's chosen is dubbel.

I wasn't especially thrilled to hear this at first, because there are only two dubbels currently available at the LCBO, both of them quite common ones. But then I remembered that I have a couple of bottles of a rather unique one in my stash. So it should be a bit of fun after all. Check back next Friday and see.

Beerfest

2007-03-25T17:20:00.000-04:00

At the latest beer tasting/rating session with my usual crew this past Thursday, we decided to take a bit of a break from the notebooks for part of the night and watch Beerfest, which this month's host Paul - aka The Guy Who Buys Every Movie Released On DVD And Watches Them On A Kick-Ass Home Theatre System - recently picked up.

The serious craft beer aficionado in me should've been horribly offended by the fact that the film celebrates binge drinking, stupid drinking games, and the age-old connections between beer and half-naked women. But since I also have a strange and somewhat misguided appreciation for stupid and sophomoric comedies - from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure to Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle - I couldn't help but love this flick.

Oh, sure, it's got it's fair share of puerile and scatological humour (ever seen a frog being masturbated?), and some rather gratuitous sexism (although in most cases, it's played with such over-the-top gratuitousness [yes, that's really a word - Firefox spell-check told me so!] that only the most prudish would find it offensive). But it's also quite clever and self-aware in places, not to mention laugh-out-loud funny. And really, how can you not love a film that includes (A) an uncredited cameo by Donald Sutherland as a dying Bavarian patriarch who chugs several mugs of beer before pulling his own plug; (B) Cloris Leachman as a foul-mouthed great grandmother who gives a hand-job to a large sausage; and (C) Willie Nelson as Willie Nelson?

So, yeah - if you're looking to kill a couple of hours with some relatively mindless but not completely moronic entertainment, then invite over a few buddies, chill a few brewskies, and watch Beerfest.

Or alternatively, you could read the stuff that I've written for Taste T.O. and Gremolata in the past couple of weeks, including a review of last month's Brooklyn Brewing dinner at beerbistro, a report on a great food & hospitality conference called Terroir: A Sense of Place, and "Beer of the Week" features on Fuller’s London Pride, Trafalgar Celtic Pure Irish Ale and Gayant La Goudale. But you'll probably enjoy the movie more...

R.I.P. Olive 1991-2007

2007-03-22T13:54:00.000-04:00

I love dogs even more than I love beer, so I was saddened to read on Lew Bryson's blog that Olive, the lovely pooch featured on the label of Smuttynose Brewing's Old Brown Dog, passed away on March 15th. If OBD was currently available in Ontario, I'd be raising a couple in her honour, but since it's not, hopefully she won't be offended if I toast her with a different beer at tonight's session with the boys.

On another note - things are still busy at Taste T.O., and even busier at my day job, hence the lack of posts in these parts lately. I've got a couple of things half-done, though, so there may be a post or two this weekend. I'm sure you'll all be waiting with bated breath...

Post-Session Musings

2007-03-03T16:28:00.000-05:00

I spent some time today looking at some of the posts from the first Session. Very interesting to see such a wide variety of opinions on a wide variety of stouts. I think Lew Bryson summed it up best in his Session post with the following:

Storm King made me look back at the stouts I'd had, and all the stouts that are out there, and the stouts I'd read that other bloggers would be sampling. I realized that this is a continuum, that stout embraces session beers, extreme beers (Dogfish Head World Wide Stout certainly qualifies), dessert beers, hoppy beers (black IPA, anyone?), mild and malty beers... There is no definite "stout," not even Guinness can claim that, with so many different versions of itself around.

I love stouts and porters, in a large part because of this malleability of form. They're dark ales (and sometimes lagers!), yet they have enough in common to be recognizable as brethren. The Brotherhood of Stout (women welcome, too).

Right. What he said.

Continuing with the stout theme, I had a pint of Guinness with lunch today. It had been a while since I'd had one, and as always, my feelings were mixed. The nostalgic part of me always wants it to be as full and rich and flavourful as I found it the first time I had one, but the many better beers I've had over the years combined with the dumbing down of the recipe mean that I'm always a bit disappointed by the stuff.

But when you're at a place where the other draught options are several macro-brewed fizzy yellow lagers, a couple of imported fizzy yellow lagers, a flavour-challenged red ale, and a sickly honey brown, it's certainly the lesser of all the evils. And when I stopped being such a frickin' beer geek for a few minutes, it was a pleasant enough pint. Just not the world-class beer that many think it to be.

The Session #1: Five Stouts

2007-03-02T23:50:00.000-05:00

Today marks the first instalment of The Session, a new event that will see beer bloggers around the world drinking & posting about a different style of beer on the first Friday of every month. This month's theme as chosen by the founder of The Session - Stan Hieronymus of the Appellation Beer blog - is "Not your father’s Irish stout". in other words, any stout(s) besides Guinness, Murphy’s or Beamish are fair game.

First, some bitching: Ontario is a bit of a wasteland when it comes to stouts. There are only a half-dozen or so available at the LCBO on a regular basis, and just a handful more from a few local microbreweries available on tap at a few places around town. But thankfully, I had a few interesting ones in my stash from trades and travelling, so I worked through some of them over the past few nights.

I was originally going to pick one favourite to focus on, but I couldn't decide, so here's a little bit about all of them:

Garrison Martello Stout
This Halifax brewery tends to be hit-and-miss for me, but I quite enjoyed this one. The colour is on the dark brown side, and it has a good aroma with notes of roast malt, coffee and a bit of smoke. The flavour follows the aroma, with the smoke notes becoming a bit more prominent in the finish. I like a bit of smokiness in my stouts, so it's well appreciated. The body is a touch thin, but otherwise, this is one of the good ones.

Big Rock Espresso Stout
Another dark brown one, looking a lot like a glass of cola. Mild aroma with the expected roasted malt and coffee notes, although it’s more stale coffee than the fresh roasted coffee beans I was hoping for. Thin body, quite disappointing. Flavour is OK - roasted malt, coffee, a bit of bitter cocoa. Not bad, but it didn’t wow me.

Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
This is an old favourite that I don't get to enjoy nearly as often as I'd like. I've got a couple of bottles in the stash, but my most recent taste of it came at the Brooklyn Brewery dinner at beerbistro this past Tuesday, when it was served with a dessert trio that had been made using the beer. This is a world classic when it comes to Imperial Stouts - black as midnight, huge aroma of charred malt and chocolate, creamy mouthfeel, big flavour, nice alcohol warmth in the finish. Oh yeah, always a treat!

Scotch Irish Tsarina Katarina Imperial Stout (2005)
I'd been hearing some mixed messages about how this beer has been aging, so I had a bit of trepidation when I found a couple of bottles in the back of my stash recently. Thankfully, I needn't have worried, as it's still in pretty nice shape. I don't know if it's necessarily improved with age, but it's still a big and complex beer. My tasting notes from my first bottle mentioned the aroma as being "rich and roasty with notes of toffee, chocolate, smoke and alcohol", and flavours like "coffee, burnt malt, dark chocolate, dried fruit (prunes, raisins, figs), licorice, and a wonderful hit of hop bitterness in the finish." All I can add is that there's a slightly lactic end note to the flavour now - perhaps a sign of age, but I enjoyed it, so I'm not complaining.

Arcadia Imperial Stout (2005)
Another back-of-the-stash surprise - I picked this up during my trip to Ann Arbor last summer, and recently found it lingering with a few other strays. Another pitch-black beauty, it's got lots of espresso and bitter cocoa in the aroma and flavour, and a fair amount of warmth from the 8.4% alcohol. It's quite generously hopped as well, with gives it a finish that it a bit unique for the style. And I'm not sure where it came from exactly, but as it warmed, I found an interesting saltiness developing in the flavour. It was a bit strange at first, but I actually liked it.

Posted with 10 minutes to spare! Thanks for Stan for getting this thing rolling. Participating bloggers have been linking to their posts in the comments of his contributing post, and he'll be setting up a list of links to all participating blogs by Monday. Next round is on Alan at A Good Beer Blog, who should be announcing April's theme soon.

Green Beer

2007-03-01T16:40:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not getting an early start on St. Patrick's Day. (And besides, I wouldn't be caught dead drinking fizzy yellow beer with green food colouring in it on March 17th - or any other day, for that matter.)

By "Green Beer", I'm referring to beer that is produced and distributed in environmentally friendly ways, which is the focus of Beer Activist, a newish blog that I discovered this week. It's the online home of Chris O'Brien, author of a book called Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World that I got for Christmas but have yet to read. Chris looks like a pretty interesting guy - he has brewed in South Africa, worked with fair trade organisations and co-ops, and is currently part owner of a store specialising in organic brewing supplies and organic/fair trade home coffee roasting supplies. I'm looking forward to reading his blog, and (finally) reading his book as well.

Between this, and meeting/chatting with Garrett Oliver the other night, and attending a Slow Food conference earlier in the week, I'm seeing the worlds of local/organic/sustainable food and craft beer becoming more and more entwined. Very exciting stuff!

Speaking of Mr. Oliver - my encounter with him was at a fantastic Brooklyn Brewery beer dinner at beerbistro on Tuesday night. I'll be writing up a full report this weekend, and it will probably be published at Gremolata, assuming Malcom is interested. If not, I'll just post it here.

Otherwise Occupied

2007-02-28T10:41:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've been a negligent blogger lately. Or rather, I've been neglecting this blog in particular while devoting a lot of time to Taste TO, the new group-blog that my wife and I are running.

Aside from running the technical side of things, I've been doing a lot of writing over there, including:

reviews of Esplanade Bier Markt and The Rhino (the latter a slightly modified version of a review that was posted here a couple of months back)
"Beer of the Week" features on C’est What Mild Brown Ale, Brooklyn Lager, Heritage Passion Brew and Denison’s Weissbier
some thoughts on stromboli
and various news & event round-ups

Taste TO will likely continue to be a bit of a time-suck as we try and get some momentum going, so my posts here will probably continue to be less frequent over the next couple of weeks, but things should get back to normal soon.

Five From Half Pints

2007-02-17T17:24:00.000-05:00

Last fall, I got word of a new brewery starting up out in Winnipeg called Half Pints Brewing. Initially, I didn't pay much attention to the announcement. I mean, it's always good to hear about a new micro starting up, especially in Canada. But since the odds of ever seeing Half Pints beers available in Ontario are next to none, my reaction was basically "oh, that's nice, maybe I'll try some of their stuff if I ever make it out to Winnipeg".

But then I learned that the president and brewmaster of Half Pints was David Rudge, a man who is semi-legendary amongst Canadian craft brew fans. Mind you, most of us had never actually tried any of his beers, but we'd heard fantastic things about the stuff he did at Bushwakker Brewpub in Regina, Saskatchewan from those who were lucky enough to visit the pub. So I knew that I needed to get my hands on some bottles of his Half Pints offerings.

Luckily, I was able to find someone from Winnipeg on RateBeer who was willing to do a trade, and back in December, I got a nice big box packed with a bomber each of five Half Pints beers along with a few other goodies. I've made a point of sharing them at several different tastings and get-togethers over the last couple of months, and now that I've finally tried 'em all, here's what I thought:

Bulldog Amber Ale
Orange-amber colour with a small white head. The aroma holds some very nice woody hops, well balanced by some slightly grainy malt. Body is a bit light, but OK for the style. Once in the mouth, it proves to be a nice, simple, clean, balanced UK style ale with a well-hopped finish. A fantastic session ale - if the LCBO carried this (hint, hint!), it would be a regular in my fridge.

Little Scrapper IPA
Maybe all of the Double IPAs I've drunk have caused me to build up some hop resistance, 'cause I didn't find this nearly as hoppy as the description on the label promised. Oh, no doubt that there was a healthy amount in there - some great notes of orange rind and pine resin in both the aroma and flavour proved that - but I actually found it to be quite well balanced. Another one that I could drink a lot of if given the chance.

Oktoberfest Lager
I've generally found Oktoberfest beers to be pretty boring, but after having this, I think it's because most of the ones I've tried have just been mediocre beers, regardless of the style. It has a slightly hazy copper-amber colour with a medium head, and a quite malty aroma with sweet caramel and some interesting earthy/leafy notes. The flavour starts quite sweet, develops some bready notes in the middle, and finishes fairly dry with a hint of cocoa.

Stir Stick Stout
A coffee stout made with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe?!? Dude, I am SO there! Very dark brown colour with ruby hints and a couple of fingers of off-white foam. Nice aroma - very roasty with a good hit of coffee, some light woodiness and a bit of chocolate. This body is thin, which is the beer’s one main weakness. Thankfully, the flavour makes up for it - good roasted malt and coffee notes off the top, sweet in the middle, and a well bittered finish. With a bit more body, this would be a fantastic stout. As it stands, it’s just a very good one.

Sweet Nikki Brown
Brown ales are a much maligned style - somewhat deservedly, as most of them are boring as hell. But when they're done well, they're a real treat. This particular example pours a dark ruby-brown with a good sized mocha head. The aroma is great, with lots of sweet roasted malt, cereal (specifically, Honeycomb cereal), and herbal hops, all well-balanced. The flavour is roasty and nutty off the top, with a slightly watery middle, but a nice bitterness in the finish that makes up for it.

So, a big thumbs up on this first quintet from Half Pints. I have a standing order in with my new trading buddy for any of David's future releases, and there are already four more waiting to be shipped - a winter seasonal Burly Wine, and the "Holy Trinity" series of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit - plus a couple more planned for the next few months. I expect you'll see another Half Pints post here soon enough.

Sick in Seattle 2: The Nausea Continues

2007-02-13T19:41:00.000-05:00

As previously reported, I was struck down by a bug of some sort during my trip to Seattle. It started on Saturday morning, when I woke up with what I thought was a mild hangover from my Friday night outing. It seemed unlikely since I really didn't have that much to drink, but combined with a bit of jet lag, it was a possibility.

After some ibuprofen, coffee and a light breakfast, things weren't getting any better, so I decided to get out to see if some air would help. It was grey, damp and cool outside, but the fresh air still helped somewhat, so I hopped on a bus downtown to do some exploring.

My destination was Pike Place Market, a massive complex of food stalls, shops and restaurants that makes Toronto's St. Lawrence Market look like a corner store in comparison. I spent more than 2 hours wandering around, and I'm sure that I didn't see everything. I saw them throw some fish around at the Pike Place Fish Market, took a good whiff at Beecher's Handmade Cheese, had a tasty snack at Piroshky Piroshky, and avoided the bad hippy buskers in front of the original Starbucks.

Feeling a bit better after my morning constitutional, I decided that I was up for lunch at The Pike Pub & Brewery, a spacious brewpub located a block or so from the Market. I ordered up a sampler flight of a half-dozen beers, and found them all to be pretty solid examples of their respective styles. Well, except for the Weisse - it was kinda bland. But I particularly liked the XXXXX Stout, which had a lot of great coffee and chicory character, and hints of molasses and smoke.

Unfortunately, halfway through my lunch, things started rumbling around again, and I decided that it might be a good idea to head back to my hotel room and take a bit of a break before heading uptown to check out a couple more beer spots. But when things didn't get any better in the gastro-intestinal department, plans for further outings were scrapped in favour of - well, just laying around feeling generally shitty, really.

So, that was my trip to Seattle. Half great, half lousy. Meh.

Bryson Blogs

2007-02-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

Lots of pro beer/drink writers have been blogging for a while - my regular reads include blogs from the likes of Rick Lyke, Stan Hieronymus, Jay Brooks, Stephen Beaumont and, uh, Stephen Beaumont.

One hold-out, however, has been Lew Bryson. I've always enjoyed his articles in Ale Street News and elsewhere, and while I would occasionally remember to check out his website, I was hoping that he'd join the blogging fray and do some more immediate, easy-to-access writing.

Well, he's finally done so. His new blog, Seen Through a Glass, was launched just over a week ago, and he's hit the ground running with 20 posts in 10 days. And he's also come up with a unique theme many of his posts: The Session Beer Project, which will see him sharing his thoughts on the lighter, balanced brews that are often ignored by beer geeks in favour of uber-hoppy Double IPAs, massive Imperial Stouts, and other "extreme" beers. It's a great idea, I think - I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads.

Oh, yeah - in case you're wondering, I remained sick for the rest of my stay in Seattle, and didn't fully recover until a couple of days after I got home. But as mentioned previously, I did make it out for a few hours on Saturday morning, and I've got a bit to write about that when I can find a few spare minutes. This weekend, hopefully.

Sick in Seattle

2007-02-03T17:23:00.000-05:00

My body often doesn't take well to travelling, especially when it involves different time zones. Adapting to a different eating and sleeping cycle, even when it's only 2 or 3 hours difference, does a bit of a number on me, with the main symptom being, uh, "gastro-intestinal distress" (to put it politely). Normally, popping a few Pepto tablets keeps things in check, but this time it seems to be hitting me even harder than usual, and has expanded to include headaches and a generally feeling of crappiness.

As a result, I've not been enjoying my visit to Seattle as much as I would have liked. I've only visited a handful of places that I'd planned on seeing, and while it's only afternoon on Saturday, I'm honestly considering just staying in my hotel room for the rest of the day & evening. The idea of drinking more beer is actually somewhat unappealing. This is not good.

Still - I have managed to get a bit of exploring in, starting with last night when I headed out to Capitol Hill neighbourhood. This area is Seattle's version of Greenwich Village or Queen Street West, as well as the heart of the city's gay community, so needless to say there are lots of funky shops, trendy restaurants, espresso bars, high-end grocery stores and the like.

My first stop in the 'hood was the Elysian Brewpub (1221 E Pike St.), a large and inviting place that seems to be popular with the slightly aging hipster set. Several tables were taken by post-grunge couples in their mid-30s who had brought along their little Kurts & Courtneys in training. One kid in particular caught my eye - he couldn't have been more than 5 or 6, and he was dressed in faded jeans, a red plaid shirt, and had a mop of dirty blonde hair. Very cute, in an odd sort of way.

Anyway, my well-inked waitress was chipper and friendly, and the beer and food were both quite good. My dinner was grilled mahi-mahi tacos - the fish was a bit overdone, but still tasty. And on the beer side, I did a sampler flight of five of their house beers, with the Hydra Hefeweizen and Perseus Porter being my faves, and followed that up with a glass of their Spirit Fire IPA, which was a hop bomb but in a very good way.

Leaving Elysian, I walked a couple of blocks over to Broadway, which looked to be the main drag in the area. When I got the corner of Pike & Broadway, I saw a Bartell Drugs, and recalled that Sheryl had found out from a friend that they carried Idaho Spuds, a local candy bar that we had read about in Steve Almond's Candyfreak and wanted to try. I went in and found not only Spuds, and Sheryl's beloved Payday bars, but about a dozen other candy bars that we'd never tried. I called Sheryl to list them off, and she replied with "one of those, and two of those, and...". The somewhat embarrassing result is pictured to the right.

Next up was The Stumbling Monk (1635 E. Olive Way). Located a couple of blocks off of Broadway, this a serious blink-and-you'll-miss-it place. I ended up walking several blocks past the turn on Broadway, and then had to keep my eyes open for it once I back-tracked and found the right street. It has no sign and heavily frosted windows, so unless you know it's there, odds are you won't find it - but according to the friendly barman, that suits them fine. They have a steady local clientele who dig the laidback neighbourhood vibe of the place, as well as the impeccable beer list. After all, where else would you find a corner tavern with Duchesse De Bourgogne, Chimay White and Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux on tap, alongside some solid local micros? And I'm sure the the large, Belgian-heavy bottle list probably helps, as well as the remarkably reasonable prices. I spent an enjoyable couple of hours at the bar, and put back some of the aforementioned Duchesse along with an Imperial Stout and a Silk Lady Belgian-Style Ale from Dick's Brewing of Centralia, Washington. All nice stuff.

And then I woke up this morning with what I originally thought to be a hangover, but what has proven to be something more nefarious. I managed to get out for a couple of hours at least, and I'm still not sure about whether or not I'll head back out this evening. Whatever happens, watch this space for a summary in the next day or two. Bleh.

Seattle - Day 1

2007-02-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

I'm in Seattle, and my hotel room has a kitchen. I find this very odd.

After many hours on a very large plane, and a stop-over in Vancouver, and less than an hour on a very small plane, I got in around 7 PM local time. My schedule didn't really allow me to have a proper dinner, so after checking in at the hotel, I went out with the rest of the folks who are in from Toronto for this weekend's conference to have what felt like a midnight snack to my still-thinks-I'm-in-the-Eastern-time-zone body.

Dining options near the hotel are limited, so we ended up across the street at a horrendously overpriced seafood tourist-trap called Chandler's Crabhouse (which is, I shit you not, next door to a place called Joey's). Thankfully, I wasn't very hungry, so I didn't get tempted by any of the extravagant main courses. I went with the Tarantula Roll appetizer and a bowl of Seafood Chowder, both of which were tasty enough. And I was also glad to find some decent beers on tap - I had pints of Pyramid Hefeweizen and Alaskan Amber, and while neither of them were spectacular, they kept me happy.

Should sleep now. More later!

Like We Needed An Excuse To Drink More Stout!

2007-01-31T23:36:00.000-05:00

Stan over at Appellation Beer has come up with a grand idea indeed:

Food bloggers have their own cooking day once a month. Wine bloggers have Wine Blogging Wedesday.

It seems that beer bloggers around the world should have something similar. So let’s start one, an event that will occur on the first Friday of every month. It doesn’t have to have a name (yet) or a logo (like wine), just participants who want to have a little fun and don’t mind learning a little along the way.

On Friday, March 2nd, the first instalment of this yet-to-be-named beer blog meme will take place, and the inaugural theme will be "Not Your Father's Irish Stout". Since my father drinks Labatt Blue, pretty much any stout would do in my case, but the rules specify that we have to stay away from the Big Three: Guinness, Murphy’s or Beamish. Otherwise, anything goes.

So check back here (and here, and here, and here, and probably here, and lots of these places) in just over a month to see what we all end up drinking. Maybe I can even convince my wife to get in on the action - she likes the black stuff even more than I do.

Oh, yeah - I should mention that I'm off to Seattle tomorrow for a meeting on Friday, and I plan to indulge in beer & food geekery on Friday night and Saturday. And of course, since I'm from the land of the CN Tower, I will point at their puny Space Needle and laugh. Ha!

Five O'Hanlon's Ales

2007-01-31T22:53:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month, Ontario beer drinkers got the very good news that the latest vintage of the renowned Thomas Hardy's Ale was now available for private ordering in our province thanks to import agency Roland + Russell. Not much was known about these folks in the beer community as they previously specialized in importing wine, spirits and fine food, but their great prices and excellent customer service won them a lot of fans very quickly.

Almost lost in the Hardy's hype, however, was the fact that R+R is also carrying other beers from O'Hanlon's, the brewery that revived the Thomas Hardy's brand in 2003, a couple of years after the original brewer, Eldridge Pope, shut down their brewing operations to concentrate on their pub business. When I contacted R+R to place an order for some of the Hardy's, they replied with info on the other O'Hanlon's beers which I posted to The Bar Towel, and after exchanging a couple of more emails chatting about the beer business, they were kind enough to offer me sample bottles of the four O'Hanlon's ales that they will be carrying year round, as well as a Christmas seasonal bitter.

One interesting thing about these beers is that they are bottle-conditioned, which is rare amongst the UK ales that we usually see in Ontario. When it comes to bottle-conditioned brews, I'll often give the yeasties a swirl and pour them along with the beer, but with four of these five beers, I decided to pour slowly and leave as much of the sediment in the bottle as possible. (The exception: the wheat beer, which is a style that I prefer unfiltered.) The way I figure it, these beers are attempts to replicate cask ale in a bottle, and cask ale is always best when the publican has allowed the yeast to properly settle so the pints can be pulled as clear as possible. But if you prefer your ale with the little chunky bits, knock yourself out.

So - here's what I thought of 'em:

Yellowhammer Premium Golden Ale
Light golden colour, and a nice aroma - a bit minerally with pleasant Cascade hop notes. Light, refreshing flavour of mellow malt, with some sweet fruitiness and an expertly hopped finish with a fresh, citric character. A pretty simple beer, but quite an enjoyable one.

Royal Oak Traditional Bitter
This is another former Eldridge Pope beer that O'Hanlon's took on. It pours a deep amber-orange with a small white head that sticks around to the end of the glass. Great aroma right from the get-go - earthy, almost funky malts, some caramel, a bit of alcohol, and pungent hops. Soft, creamy mouthfeel. Lovely flavour of sweet and woody malt, a hint of honey and peach in the middle, and a well-hopped finish with notes of citrus and wood. Really nice!

Double Champion Wheat Beer
Initial slow half-glass pour is clear, bright yellow-gold with a good sized white head. The aroma, body and flavour are all sharp, with nice citrus and herbal notes, somewhat tart and quite dry in the finish. Second pour brings the yeast, turning the body cloudy and adding some dustiness to the aroma and flavour. The few UK wheat beers I’ve had before this haven’t done much for me, but I enjoyed this one.

Goodwill Christmas Bitter
Garnet colour with a wispy tan head. Nice aroma of sweet caramel, malt and orange candy. Same soft mouthfeel as the rest of the beers. Pleasant flavour, fairly sweet with mild spice notes, and a moderately dry finish with a faint medicinal tinge. I liked it, but I expected a bit more from an Xmas ale.

Original Port Stout
This interesting concoction is modelled after an old Irish tradition of starting the morning after the night before with a stout laced with a splash of Port. It has a nice, dark ruby-brown colour with a good sized light tan head. Interesting aroma that's fairly malty/roasty with notes of coffee and smoke, and a tinge of sour fruit. The body is on the thin side - decent for an ale, but light for a stout. Flavour follows on the aroma, with sweet roasty notes of the top, some mild smoke and coffee, and a dry, sourish finish. Pretty neat little beer.

In general, I was impressed by the O'Hanlon's line-up. It's too bad that attempts to get some of them into the LCBO have been rejected so far, but at least they can be found in some of Toronto's better drinking establishments, along with the Thomas Hardy's Ale.

And to prove that they're serious about this beer thing, Roland + Russell announced this week that they are now carrying a half-dozen beers and a a couple of unique beer-based distilled spirits from Austria's Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg, including the one-time strongest beer in the world, the 14% abv doppelbock Samichlaus. Between this and recent cold and snowy weather, it's like Christmas came to Ontario a month late!

Sleep is Overrated...

2007-01-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

It seems that running this blog, serving as news editor at The Bar Towel, contributing to Gremolata, and - oh, yeah - working at a full-time job just wasn't enough for me. So, my wife and I have launched Taste T.O., a website & group blog dedicated to covering Toronto's food and drink scene.

Actually, we haven't "officially" launched it yet. That will happen in February, once our other contributors have had a chance to get some stuff written and posted. But it's up now for a sneak peek.

One of my regular contributions to the site will be a Beer of the Week column, where I write a review/profile of a different locally-available beer each week. The first instalment is up today, and features my thoughts on Toronto's very own Steam Whistle Pilsner.

Beer: Snob Drink or Slob Drink?

2007-01-23T21:42:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, while taking a break from working on the Really Cool Project that my wife and I will soon be launching, I spent an hour or two catching up on a week's worth of blog reading, and I was somewhat amused by all of the attention that was being given to a fluff piece that ran in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last Wednesday. Entitled "Beer snobs forget the true meaning of beer", the article sees columnist Mike Seate lamenting the influx of bars catering to people who actually want some choice and flavour when it comes to their beer.

If you read the piece (go ahead, it's short), you'll see that Mr. Seate has two big problems with these sort of places:

The beer is too expensive; and
The people who choose to drink the type of beer served in these places don't know what beer is really supposed to be about.

His argument is summed up by the penultimate paragraph:

Is it just me, or has somebody forgotten that beer is supposed to be a workingman's drink, as free from pretensions and airs as a kielbasa smothered in sauerkraut?

As you might expect, this caused quite a flurry of commentary on the beer boards and blogs that us hoity-toity non-workingmen like to frequent. Lengthy threads sprang up on RateBeer and Beer Advocate, and most notable (and opinionated) beer-bloggers chimed in with their thoughts, including Alan at A Good Beer Blog, Stan at Appellation Beer, and Jay at Brookston Beer Bulletin.

Perhaps the best counter-argument came from Stephen Beaumont, who asks "Who defines what a workingman should drink?", and sums things up nicely in these two paragraphs:

What does bother me [...] is the idea that North American “workingmen,” as popularly defined by people such as Mr. Seate, are expected, no, required to make do with ordinary, often boring food and drink, as if the past two or three decades of gastronomic evolution have never occurred. If your collar is blue, the theory goes, you are expected to make do with a pint of pale, ice-cold lager and an order of previously frozen chicken wings and fries, and be happy for the privilege.

Now, contrast this with what I see in continental Europe, where local people of all stripes and economic classes, and both genders, tend to eat local food and drink local wines and beers. In areas like rural Wallonia in Belgium, the Provençal countryside and the hills of Tuscany, one needn’t worry about being derided for preferring the wares of the small winery or brewery down the street, or noshing on some artisanally-produced cheese or cured meat. Quite the opposite, in fact; a person might be thought too big for their boots if they went with the national, mass marketed brand.

In the aftermath of all this activity, Mr. Seate made a couple of posts to his own blog where he quoted some of the irate emails that he received from beer aficionados who took offence to his article. As expected, he doesn't take them very seriously, expressing shock that there people out here who "spend their off hours visiting Web forums where they discuss beer, worship beer, analyze brewing techniques and generally turn something as simple and refreshing as beer into a Star Trek convention nerd-fest".

Hey! I resemble that remark!

But am I upset or angry by the column? No, not really. I'm well aware that my habit of sniffing, swishing and scribbling while enjoying my beer makes me one of those "weird beer enthusiasts" that Mr. Seate refers to in one of his blog posts. I've always had mildly obsessive tendencies and a habit of collecting and cataloguing things, and I've moved from being a comic geek to a music geek to a beer geek. Most people don't get it, and I'm fine with that.

It's unfortunate, though, that so many people are ignorant of - or indifferent towards - the fact that while 90% of the beer produced in the world today may be bland, industrially-produced pale lagers, the remaining 10% consists of brews of a variety and complexity that rival the best wines and spirits. Or that so many people are content to treat beer as nothing more than a commercial product, like "cornflakes or, say, Hostess cupcakes", to use Mr. Seate's words. But if they're happy too look at beer as just another item on their grocery list, and don't have the time or interest in exploring the beer world beyond Blue, Bud or Boddingtons, then who am I to argue?

Anyway - just to add a little twist of irony to this whole episode, I thought I would mention that I spent a night in Pittsburgh about 15 years ago, a time when, according to Mr. Seate:

[...] few local bars served anything more esoteric than, say, Old Frothingslosh, and the concept of drinking a Guinness stout from a tap just like Europeans do was something of a beer-lover's revelation.

Now, while I tended to drink local microbrews at the time, I was far from being the raving beer-rating fanatic that I am today, so I wasn't on doing any beer hunting. I was just on a the road for a few days to see a couple of musician friends playing shows in some Midwestern towns, and their show in Pittsburgh happened to be at a place called the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern. It was a comfortable college-friendly place with a banner out front proclaiming that they served the "Best Perogies in Pittsburgh".

And it also had dozens of different beers from all over the world. So many of them that they ran out of room behind the bar and put the overflow on the customer's side of the bar, in fridges with lights that flashed when they were opened so the staff could make sure no-one absconded with the goods without paying. I don't remember now what I drank that night - maybe something from Russia? - but it was definitely something I'd never had before. And I liked it.

Isn't it funny that one of the milestones in my journey towards full-fledged beer geekdom happened right in Mr. Seate's backyard?

I'm Still Here...

2007-01-18T12:58:00.001-05:00

My apologies for the recent lack of activity around these parts. I've been busy with a couple of things, including a pretty exciting project that my wife and I will be launching soon, so my time has been even tighter than usual.

I do have a couple of things that I'm set to write about, so there should be some new posts coming soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a monkey drinking a beer.

Hooray For Boobies! (& Butts!)

2007-01-06T17:35:00.000-05:00

As mentioned here (and on every other damn beer blog) back in December, Massachusetts-based beer importers Shelton Brothers had several of their beers banned in Maine due to the labels being "undignified or improper". The beers included Santa's Butt Porter, which pictures a rear view of the jolly old elf enjoying a pint while checking his list; Les Sans Culottes, featuring Delacroix’s classic painting Liberty Leading the People (detail pictured); and Rose de Gambrinus, featuring a watercolor painting of the king of Flanders sitting with a bare-breasted woman.

Well, it seems that common sense prevailed, and Maine's Liquor Licensing Unit backed down after the threat of legal action from the Maine Civil Liberties Union. Unfortunately, the decision didn't get reversed until just before Christmas, and Don Shelton didn't find out until he returned from vacation this past week, so sales of Santa's Butt were still heavily impacted.

And while Shelton Brothers may be happy about the outcome, they still plan on proceeding with legal action regardless:

Shelton, whose company has challenged similar bans in other states, said Thursday he has no plans to drop his lawsuit because state law still allows officials to deny applications for beer labels that contain "undignified or improper" illustrations. About a dozen beer and wine labels, out of 10,000 to 12,000 reviewed, are rejected each year on such grounds.
"You can't have a law based on propriety and dignity. It's too vague," Shelton said.

It'll be interesting to see what impact this might have on the arcane and outdated liquor laws not only in Maine, but right across the continent.

Happy New Year? Yeah, Whatever...

2007-01-01T15:31:00.000-05:00

My wife and I are not a romantic couple. We love each other dearly, and we look forward to spending the rest of our lives together, but we don't go for all the lovey-dovey hearts-and-flowers crap that many couples thrive upon. Valentine's Day is completely ignored in the Clow-Kirby household, and birthdays are generally celebrated with a small group of friends at a comfortable restaurant rather than with some elaborate, overpriced candlelit dinner-for-two at a pretentious, overrated bistro.

As for New Year's Eve - well, not only are we not romantic, but we're also somewhat misanthropic, so the idea of joining the teeming masses and wearing stupid party hats while drinking crappy sparkling wine at midnight just isn't that appealing to us. Since NYE is also our wedding anniversary, we have gone out for dinner a couple of times to mark both occasions (yeah, we're not completely cold-hearted), but we've always stuck with early seatings in order to be home well before the ball drops.

For the past couple of years, though, we haven't even bothered with a dinner out, and instead we just order in from one of our favourite Indian restaurants and spend the night in front of the tube - this year's selection included downloaded episodes of Little Britain Abroad, Kitchen Nightmares and No Reservations.

Our one nod towards the celebratory nature of the night was opening one of the bottles of Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock that I picked up at the brewery back in August. This was my first time trying this renowned elixir, and I was actually a bit disappointed by it, especially considering how much I paid for these li'l bad boys.

It poured a murky looking ruby-brown with a very still body and a faint wisp of a tan head - not that appealing looking, to be honest. The aroma was worrisome at first - some nice chocolate & caramel, but also seeming quite stale. Whatever it was cleared after a few moments, and it became much more pleasant, developing notes of raspberry and sweet alcohol. Body is soft and smooth, very nice. The flavour is pleasant, with nice notes of chocolate, toffee, raspberry, licorice, and some slightly woodiness, but it didn’t knock my socks off. It’s a very good beer, no doubt about that, but it simply didn’t live up to the hype for me.

Anyway, cynicism and slight disappointment aside, I really did enjoy my typically atypical New Year's Eve, and I hope that you also enjoyed yours, no matter how you chose to celebrate it (or not). While it started out a little rough, 2006 ended up being a pretty good year for me, and here's to 2007 being a good one as well, for all of us.

Sheraton Gets Serious About Beer

2006-12-30T17:00:00.000-05:00

Today's post by Jay over at Brookston Beer Bulletin reminded me that I intended to write about this topic back in November, but I never got around to it. Ah, well, better late than never...

I don't travel a lot, but when I do, I always lament the poor beer selection that I find in most hotel restaurants and mini-bars. While I understand that hotels (at least the mid-range ones that I usually stay at) generally try to cater to the average (i.e. unadventurous) person when it comes to their food and drink offerings, their boring beer lists have always seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. After all, most tourists visit new places in order to experience things that make those places unique, including the local food and drink. So why not offer them some locally made craft beer?

It seems like someone at Sheraton Four Points, one of the mid-range chains owned by hotel giant Starwood, had the same idea, as they launched a new initiative called Best Brews this past fall. According to the mid-November press release, bars and restaurants in Four Points properties around the world now feature beer lists that offer "a selection of local, regional and imported craft beers", with each location serving "a minimum of four draught beers and a selection of up to 20 bottled beers". In addition, "all Four Points lounge and restaurant staff must complete the Best Brews online training program and master all aspects of the curriculum", and each location will have a "beer champion" on staff who will be "helping guests discover new tastes and brands, as well as educating them about the differences between each beer".

Looking over the Best Brews web page, this looks to be a serious and well-researched program. Unlike some other online resources, the information presented on the site is accurate and informative without being too geeky or know-it-all-ish. And adding a but of fun to the whole thing is the "job search" for a "Chief Beer Officer" that Four Points have been running for the past few weeks. The press release claims that it is a real position that they are looking to fill, with something verging on an actual job description:

One of the primary duties of the CBO will be to document all official activities and beer learnings on a Four Points beer blog. This includes discovering new brews to feature in the program and sharing their thoughts about each beer they sample in the portfolio, as the CBO will have a sampling of the collection delivered to their door each quarter.

However, the online "application" for the position is just a series of simple multiple-choice questions related to beer, and a request for your address and phone number, suggesting that it may just be a ploy to promote the program and build a mailing list of microbrew drinkers. Whatever the aim, it's still an exciting step forward for craft beer, and one that will likely convince many beer lovers - including myself - to consider staying at Four Points hotels during any trips we may take in the future.

Pub Review: The Rhino

2006-12-28T22:48:00.000-05:00

The Rhino
1249 Queen St. W. (west of Dufferin)
(416) 535-8089
http://www.therhino.ca

One thing I've intended to include on this blog since I started it are reviews of some of my favourite (and maybe some of my not-so-favourite) bars & pubs in Toronto. So for this first in an occasional series of reviews, and it seemed fitting to start off with my local haunt, The Rhino.

For close to 13 years now I've lived in Parkdale, a neighbourhood of Toronto that used to be quite affluent but that fell on hard times a few decades back. Gentrification has started creeping into the 'hood in the last few years, but back when I first moved here, The Rhino was pretty much the only place within a reasonable walking distance of my place to get a decent beer and food that was a step or two above typical greasy spoon fare. Not that they served anything fancy - it was your basic pub grub staples like burgers, sandwiches, pizza and pasta - but it was tasty (well, usually - more on that in a moment) and cheap, and there was a selection of microbrews available to wash it down. It's a theme that they've stuck with ever since.

One big problem with The Rhino, however, has been the inconsistency of both the service and the quality of the food. The staff turnover seems to be quite high, so aside from the family members who run the place and occasionally wait tables, we've rarely been served by the same person more than once, and as a result, the service has ranged from friendly and attentive to indifferent and glacial. Once, my wife and I popped in for a beer and a quick bite. We sat down, got glasses of water, and waited fruitlessly for our waitress to return to take our order. After 30 minutes, we could only assume that she had either been kidnapped or simply chose to knock off early for the night, so we left.

The food has had similar ups and downs. While it's never been gourmet quality, we have been served some really tasty meals there. Back when we ate meat, we were both fans of the Thai Chicken Pizza, made with juicy chunks of chicken and spicy peanut sauce. The fish & chips is usually a safe bet as well. But we've also suffered through some pretty bad meals: overcooked burgers, undercooked french fries, soggy nachos, hard poached eggs under cold Hollandaise sauce.

So why do we keep going back, especially now that places like Mitzi's Sister and the Cadillac Lounge have opened in the nabe? I suppose it's partly a slightly misguided sense of loyalty. After all, they've been in Parkdale as long as we have (longer, actually), and they were there for us when our only other local options were smoke-filled dive bars serving unmarked draught (spelled "draft") to drunks that like to pick fights for no apparent reason.

And the beer selection is certainly a big asset, especially since they decided a year or so back to expand their bottle list to 200+ beers. None of them are especially rare, but the prices are amongst the cheapest in the city, and the draught selection - recently enhanced by the addition of a handpump for cask ale - features a solid line-up of a dozen or so local micros, also at dirt cheap prices.

It also doesn't hurt that the food prices have remained relatively unchanged since we started going there over a decade ago. There were hints that the menu (and presumably the prices) would be changing a year or so back when it was announced that they would be undergoing a facelift of sorts, presumably to keep up with some of the cool new kids on the block, but those renovation plans seem to have died - or at least been put on hold - and the menu and prices remain unchanged.

So while I'm well aware that it ain't perfect, it's still my local, and as long as I live a couple of blocks away, I'll still be stopping in for the cheap beer, the variable food, and the comfortable, familiar atmosphere. That's what The Rhino is all about, and that's what I love about it.

(Note: The photos for this review were taken by my lovely wife, Sheryl Kirby, for a review of Rhino that she wrote a couple of months ago for a new arts & culture website, Toronto Bits.)

So, This Is Christmas...

2006-12-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

It hasn't felt much like Christmas around these parts this year. The weather has only dipped below freezing once or twice, and there isn't a flake of snow on the ground - on the contrary, the grass is still green on most lawns in our neighbourhood. I even saw some bulbs sprouting in a neighbour's flower bed earlier today. Since I find it hard to find the Christmas spirit at the best of times, it's been especially tough to get into the holiday mood this year.

But that's not to say that I haven't been doing some celebrating. My pal Doug hosts an annual beer tasting bash at his place on a Saturday in mid-December every year, and this year's instalment was as enjoyable as ever. Everyone brought along some bottles to share (the remnants of which can be seen in the accompanying photo), Doug put on his traditional spread of chili, cheese and other munchies, and a good time was had by all.

Last Thursday, I hosted a smaller event with my usual tasting buddies. We had a fine assortment of beers from all over the damn place, most of them acquired by those mad beer traders Paul & Harry. We started the night with Bolshoi!, a potent Imperial stout from Brooklyn's Six Point Brewing, and ended it with Old Boardhead Barley Wine from Full Sail Brewing of Oregon, knocking off another dozen or so along the way.

And of course, no December would be complete without enjoying some local holiday & winter beers. Up until a couple of years ago, the selection of such beers in Ontario was quite limited, but a number of new and established breweries have started stepping up when it comes to solid seasonal releases, so there are a few more to choose from now. Here are my thoughts on the ones I've had a chance to taste so far this year:

Amsterdam Tilted Kilt Scotch Ale
I really liked the Kerstmis beer that Amsterdam used to make it each Christmas, and when I heard they were bringing back their winter seasonal, I was hoping it would be that. So I was a bit disappointed when I discovered it was a different beer, but at least this is a pretty good one as well. Pours a very nice dark copper-amber with a thin head. Nice aroma, very toasty, with notes of roasted nuts and a bit of cocoa. Body is a bit thin, but OK. Flavour is fairly sweet as promised, with more nuts and cocoa in the middle, and a fresh mellow hoppiness to finish.

Black Oak Nutcracker
One of the old-timers on the local seasonal scene, it's always a treat when the annual batch of Nutcracker is released by our friends at Black Oak. This spiced porter has a dark ruby-brown colour with a thin tan head, and a complex aroma of coffee, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom & pepper. The body is rich, smooth and slightly creamy. Roasty, toasty, nutty flavour with notes of chocolate and cinnamon and other spices - the spiciness has been ramped up a bit this year, making it better than ever. They even did a cask version with a bunch of whole cinnamon sticks thrown in à la dry hopping ("dry cinnamoning"?).

Great Lakes Brewing Winter Ale
No, this isn't a new beer from the renowned Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland, but rather a new seasonal from a Toronto brewery of the same name that is better known for producing mainstream lagers. They surprised everyone earlier this year with their Devil's Pale Ale, and now they've done it again with this enjoyable winter warmer. Aroma of malt, banana, orange zest, brown sugar and a bit of cinnamon. The flavour is sweet but not cloying, with some nice fruitcake and licorice notes. As with the Devil's Pale, it could be a little more aggressive, but it’s still another great step forward for these guys - onwards & upwards!

Over the rest of my holiday break, I'm hoping to get a chance to try Maclean's Scotch Ale, C'est What Hazelnut Coffee Porter, Nickel Brook Winter Bock, and the just announced Scotch-Irish Christmas Cake Porter. Assuming my attempts to get out and try them are successful, you can expect a Part Two post in a week or so.

In the meantime, I hope that everyone is having a Merry Christmas. May you have a well-stocked beer fridge now and into the new year, and good friends to help you enjoy it. Peace & cheers!

Sandy McTire Would Approve

2006-12-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

Like 5 AM hockey practice and the double-double, Canadian Tire money is a tradition in our fine country. Introduced nearly 50 years ago as a loyalty reward program by the Canadian Tire hardware & gas chain, these coupons featuring the visage of cheery Scotsman Sandy McTire have become so ubiquitous that they're often referred to as "Canada's second currency". Check the glove compartment of any vehicle on the road in Canada, and you're bound to find a few bucks worth of the colourful funny money.

Of course, if you only shop at CT occasionally, there's always the question of what to do with this stuff when you end up with some. Saving it until the next time you need to pick up some tools or get an oil change is an option, but if you happen to live in Edmonton and would like to buy something a bit more fun with it, you now have another option:

A west Edmonton liquor store is accepting Canadian Tire money at par as a form of payment, and its owners say the program is a hit with shoppers. "There's a liquor store on every corner nowadays, so you need to have a bit of an edge to get someone to stop by your liquor store," said Don Calder, a part owner of Liquor International.
Calder, whose store takes in about $5 worth of the stuff on a slow day and up to $200 when things are hopping, put the policy in place about a year and a half ago.

It was supposed to be a short-term gimmick but proved so popular that he's kept it up.
"We do have a fair amount starting to stock up," he said. "And, I assure you, we actually look for items now to go to Canadian Tire and buy."

Sadly, it's unlikely that such a policy will ever be implemented at Ontario's booze outlets. Not only are the stores here run by a government monopoly, but if Wikipedia is to be believed, Ontario retail tax laws state that such coupons "must be reimbursed by the franchisee". Too bad - I've got a couple of bucks worth of this stuff myself that I'd be more likely to trade in for a bottle than a lug wrench...

Where My Hosers At?

2006-12-17T11:52:00.000-05:00

Question: Are Alan, the Biergotter guys, and myself the only Canadians on the beer-blogosphere?

(Yes, I know that Stephen Beaumont has a blog, and also contributes to the group blog On The House, but he's a pro who does the blog thing on the side. I'm talking about folks whose primary writing outlet is their blog.)

Based on our respective populations, logic dictates that we should have roughly 1/10th the number of beer blogs in Canada as there are in the US. But there are certainly more than 30 (or if you want to count Beaumont, 40) American beer blogs. My guess based on RSBS and other sources is that it's well over 100 and growing.

So, where are all the Canucks? Given the importance that we place on beer in our country, you'd think that there would be more than a tiny handful of us blabbing about it on the Intarwebs. Maybe it's the fact that our craft beer culture is still lagging behind the Americans? Or maybe we're too busy drinking beer to write about it?

Whattaya think, eh?

Winter Beers

2006-12-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

My article on six UK winter/Christmas beers that are currently available at the LCBO has been posted as part of this week's issue of Gremolata. As you can see in my crappy photo montage to the right, the beers covered include Belhaven Wee Heavy, Fuller's Vintage Ale 2006, Greene King Strong Suffolk, Samuel Smith Winter Welcome Ale, St. Peter's Winter Ale & Wychwood Bah Humbug.

I might follow this up with a blog post next week reviewing a bunch of local holiday beers, assuming I get a chance to try them all between now and then.

Along the same theme: Jon at The Brew Site has been making "Advent Beer Calendar" posts to his blog since the beginning of the month, featuring a different winter/Christmas beer each day. He started with Anchor Christmas Ale on December 1st, and most recently wrote up the very tasty sounding Young's Christmas Pudding Ale. Unfortunately, very few of the beers he's covered are available in Ontario, so I've had to use my imagination to play along. Sigh.

Menu For Hope III

2006-12-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

While BB&B is mainly a beer blog, I do dabble in a bit of food-related posting (as the "Bites" in the name suggests). I've also started reading a number of food blogs recently, and many of them have featured posts in the last couple of days about a fundraising event called Menu For Hope.

The purpose of this annual event, which is being held for the third time this year, is best described by campaign director Pim Techamuanvivit on her blog Chez Pim:

To us Food Bloggers, food is a joy. On our blogs, we celebrate food as a delight or even an indulgence. Unfortunately, for many others who share our world do not share that privilege. For them, food is a matter of survival. This "Menu for Hope" is our small way to help.

The campaign involves a mass raffle that features prizes donated by dozens of food bloggers around the world, often with the participation of other culinary luminaries like bad-boy chef Anthony Bourdain and Toronto's own Susur Lee. The money raised will be donated to the UN World Food Programme, which provides hunger relief for needy people worldwide.

If you're interesting in getting involved, a full list of available prizes can be found at Chez Pim, while my fellow Canucks may be interested in seeing the list of prizes from Canadian bloggers, which is available in both English and Français at Confessions of a Cardamom Addict.

My one complaint about this thing is the complete lack of beer blogs being involved in the project. As the list hosted at Vinography attests, there are plenty of wine blogs contributing prizes, but none of my beery brethren are represented. I think we'll have to do something about this in 2007...

Review: Homebrew 4U

2006-12-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

First of all, I have to mention that this is a paid review, solicited from me via ReviewMe.com, a service that I recently registered for after seeing it mentioned by Alan at A Good Beer Blog. I am admittedly a little bit torn on the ethics of this, as after spending years as a music reviewer and DJ, I'm worried about anything that might be construed as payola. But ReviewMe has a policy that all paid reviews that are posted must be identified as such which makes the process more transparent. I guess you can therefore consider this review - and any that might follow - to be sort of like infomercials, except they may not always be glowingly positive. I might be getting paid for this, but not enough for me to lie about something if I hate it. And besides, I'll just end up spending the pittance on beer, which will mean more content for you to read and enjoy, so everybody wins!

Now, then: I've been asked to give my thoughts on Homebrew 4U, a website in the UK that sells supplies and equipment for homebrewing of beer, wine and cider. Now, I am at a bit of a disadvantage here because:

1) I've never homebrewed myself; and
2) I don't live in the UK.

That being said, I do know a bit about website design, and Homebrew 4U looks pretty nice. The front page is informational without being too busy, and the inclusion of an option to change between small and large fonts is a nice touch. The only real design turn-off for me is the use of stock photos in the top banner and the left sidebar, but that's just personal preference.

As for the contents of the site, the main area is the online shop which is well organized into logical categories (Beer Kits, Wine Kits, Cider Kits, etc.). However, the stock and selection seem to be oriented primarily towards novice homebrewers who aren't especially adventurous: for example, the only beer kits available are for lager and bitter, and they're of the "just add water & sugar" variety. Perhaps they should consider branching out into selling hops, malt and other supplies for the more serious homebrewer that prefers to create their own recipes.

The site also features a Homebrew Advice Forum, although the only post is a "welcome to the forum" message from a couple of weeks ago, so it's not that useful at the moment. Maybe it will pick up as the site gets more established, but if all they're selling is starter kits, I'm not sure how they'll be able to attract experts to give some advice to the newbies.

The final section of the site is Homebrew Resources, which features some fairly rudimentary information on how beer and wine are made, although again they are oriented towards a novice making beer or wine using a starter kit, so most if the info won't be of much use to someone looking to move up to using raw ingredients and more unique recipes. For that, they'll have to turn to some homebrewing books, which are helpfully offered for sale in this section via links to amazon.co.uk

All in all, Homebrew 4U looks to be a decent site for folks in the UK who are looking to take their first steps into homebrewing. The site is simple to navigate and the selection looks to be sufficient for beginners. But it's probably not of much interest to people outside of the UK, or more experienced homebrewers who are looking for a supplier for their next batch of Imperial Stout or Double IPA.

If you'd like some other opinions of the site, you can see what Alan had to say, as well as what Michael or Chris (I'm not sure who wrote the review) over at Hail The Ale thought of it.

Four Things For Friday

2006-12-08T14:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sort of late to the game on this story, as many other blogs have already covered it, as well as "real" news outlets including the New York Times and the Globe & Mail. But in case you haven't heard about it yet, Massachusetts-based beer importers Shelton Brothers have been having some of their products rejected by liquor regulatory bodies in New York and Maine due to the beers' names and/or labels being unacceptable. Some, like the Santa's Butt Winter Porter pictured to the right, were snubbed due to the name and label graphics potentially being appealing to children, while Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus and Brasserie Les Choulette’s Sans Culottes were turned down because the labels feature paintings of bare-breasted women. While the civil libertarian in me finds these decisions to be pretty offensive, I can't help but be a little amused by them as well, if only because it shows that even though most American states have a much freer market for alcohol sales than we do in Ontario, their government busy-bodies can be just as ridiculous as our pink elephant banning LCBO.
I discovered a new blog this morning that I'm looking forward to keeping my eye on: Pint and a Smoke is written by fellow Torontonian Pat McLean, and it features his musings on the pubs in our fair city. His criteria for a good pub are quite similar to mine: no TVs (or maybe one, as long as it's unobtrusive), no loud music, at least one good stout on tap, etc. While we live across town from each other, I hope that our paths cross at some point soon, as he seems like a good guy to hoist a few with (even though based on his other blog, he seems to be an Oilers fan...).
Speaking of pubs: My local, The Rhino, has recently added a cask engine to their great line-up of local taps. Normally, this would be cause for celebration, but based on the experience that I and others have had there since they brought it in, I'm not especially enthused. The wife and I popped in for a pint the other night, and while our waitress knew that they had a cask ale on, she didn't know what beer it was ("Uh... I think it's an IPA?"), and when she went to the bar to ask, the barman sent her back with a sample rather than the name of the beer. The beer was in decent shape, at least, and I suspect that it was probably Durham Triple X IPA. But the lack of knowledge concerned me, as does the fact that the cask ale is not mentioned anywhere on their pre-printed beer menu. Cask ale lovers expect more care and knowledge, not to mention some assurance that they'll be served a fresh pint, and newbies could end up being served stale pints that will turn them off the stuff - assuming they are even aware that it's there.
I got together last night with my pals Paul & Harry to help them drink about a dozen mediocre beers that Harry had trucked back from his last visit to Quebec. (Yes, we are beer rating whores). But just so the night wasn't a complete swillfest, we threw in a couple of guaranteed winners, including the much-loved Struise Pannepot. The other two guys had had it before, but this was my first time trying it, and it definitely lived up to the hype. It pours a deep mahogany-brown with a small mocha head that leaves lots of lace. The aroma is big and round and inviting, with a fantastic sweet & roasty backbone supporting notes of brown sugar, caramel, and assorted dark fruits and spices. The flavour masterfully juggles notes of roasted coffee and dark sugar with hints of fruit (fig, plum, cherry) and spice (cinnamon, licorice), leading into a moderately dry and woody finish. A complex and remarkably satisfying beer that rivals the best that the Trappists have to offer.

Gourmet Food and Wine Expo

2006-11-29T23:28:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, the wife and I went down to the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo at the Toronto Convention Centre. It was our first time attending this annual event - we'd considered it in past years, but because we're cheapasses, we were scared off by the relatively high admission charge. This year, however, we were armed with a 2-for-1 coupon and decided to give it a shot.

All in all, we were pretty underwhelmed. Sheryl has given her impressions in a post to TorontoBits, and I'm pretty much in agreement with her assessment. As she notes, there was a lot about the event that wasn't particularly "gourmet" in nature. For example, the wine-in-a-bag pictured to the right certainly doesn't say "gourmet" to me. And I was especially offended to see Bright Pearl amongst the food vendors, as the food I was served at their booth at the Taste Of Toronto festival back in September was high on the lost of the worst things I've ever put into my mouth.

That being said, we did manage to find a few palatable food options, even for finicky pescetarians like ourselves. The grilled sardines and fish cakes from Cataplana weren't bad, and it's hard to go wrong with oysters from Rodney's (although the ones we were served could've been cleaned a bit better - nothing ruins a nice oyster more than grit between your teeth). But the highlight was definitely the sushi from EDO which was fresh and tasty, and one of the few food items on offer than wasn't sitting in a steam tray for hours. Speaking of which: The other item available at the EDO booth was a small Kobe beef burger, but Kobe beef or not, anyone willing to plunk down 7 bucks for a burger that was cooked hours before and kept warm in a steam tray is a frickin' idiot.

As for the liquids - well, as I've stated before, I'm really not much of a wine guy, so I walked past most of the wine booths with a mixture of confusion and fear. We did try a couple of wines that I liked, including this year's Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais nouveau and some other red wine that made Sheryl feel all melty and fluttery. I also had some fantastic scotch that I completely forgot to write down the name of, but I recall being told that it was a private label release of an 8 year old Lagavulin that sells for about half the price of the regular stuff. It had been a long time since I'd had a scotch, and this reminded me of how much I enjoy it.

On the beer side of things, I started with some Christoffel Blond, a favourite of mine that was being served up the Rubaiyat import agency. At the Embrujo Flamenco booth, I tried a sample of Ambar, a fairly standard pale lager from Spain. And at Black Oak, our pal Ken was serving up this year's batch of his seasonal Nutcracker Porter which was in fine form - rich and spicey, just how we like it.

The final verdict: This event may be great for wine lovers, but for the occasional wine drinker going more for the food and beer, it's a disappointment. Especially if you're paying the full admission price of 15 dollars, plus buying a stack of sampling coupons for a buck each and dropping 2 or 3 of them for each sample. It's definitely not a cheap way to spend an afternoon.

Newsflash: Beer Goes Well With Cheese!

2006-11-28T23:51:00.000-05:00

Many newspapers and websites across Canada that get a feed from the Canadian Press ran a fluff piece recently about a shocking new food and drink activity that is "becoming all the rage in some trendy corners": pairing cheese with beer (gasp!) rather than wine! (It also mentions scotch, but since this is ostensibly a beer blog, that's what I'm focussing on.)

Now, I've always argued that good beer is much more conducive to many food pairings than wine - but then again, I'm not much of a wine guy, so that's really just me talking out of my ass. But it seems that executive chef Lee Humphries at FigMint Restaurant and Lounge in Vancouver agrees with me:

While wine seems like a natural to have with cheese, the likelihood of a mismatch is much greater with wine than with beer and scotch, says Humphries.

"Beer and scotch work really well with cheese because the flavours are so complementary," he explains. "Many wines just overpower the delicate nature of cheese, making wine pairings that much more difficult to perfect."

And it's not just chefs who think this - the scientists are in agreement that wine & cheese don't work well together:

Bernice Madrigal-Galan and Hildegarde Heymann of the University of California, Davis, presented trained wine tasters with cheap and expensive versions of four different varieties of wine. The tasters evaluated the strength of various flavours and aromas in each wine both alone and when preceded by eight different cheeses.

They found that cheese suppressed just about everything, including berry and oak flavours, sourness and astringency. Only butter aroma was enhanced by cheese, and that is probably because cheese itself contains the molecule responsible for a buttery wine aroma, Heymann says. Strong cheeses suppressed flavours more than milder cheeses, but flavours of all wines were suppressed. In other words, there are no magical wine and cheese pairings.

It's curious to note that Humphries thinks that wine overpowers cheese, while the science-types argue the opposite. But either way, it's obvious that wine and cheese just don't get along as well as people like to think, and they should just split up now so beer and cheese can get together. I mean, they make such a cute couple. It's inevitable, really. Wine should just accept it and move on.

Anyway, this story comes along at an interesting time for me, as I've got plans afoot with a local cheese guy that may lead to some fun stuff in the new year. More on that as things develop...

The Land Of Chocolate

2006-11-25T00:47:00.000-05:00

As news editor at The Bar Towel, I occasionally receive invitations to press events and launch parties around town, but generally they have something to do with beer. So I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when I was emailed an invite to the 6th Annual "Chocs-O-Fun" event presented by Ganong, a New Brunswick based chocolate maker that is Canada's oldest candy company and one of the oldest family owned businesses in the country.

I wasn't sure if I should RSVP, as I couldn't really do much in the way of promoting Ganong via The Bar Towel. But when I mentioned it to the wife, her eyes lit up, and she immediately pitched it to Gremolata as a story idea. Helped by the fact that the event was also serving as a launch for Ganong: A Sweet History Of Chocolate - a beautiful book that documents the history of the company in words and pictures - the story was approved, so we could attend without feeling like freeloaders.

The event was held this past Thursday at the very swank Dominion Club at King & Yonge in downtown Toronto. Smartly dressed waiters floated around the room with plates of hors d'oeuvres, soothing jazz played in the background, and a large marble table was piled high with boxes and boxes of chocolates and fruit candies. Each attendee also received a swag bag on departure containing three boxes of various tasty Ganong treats.

There was also an open bar, but the beer selection was limited to the terrible trio of Blue, Canadian and Corona. Too bad, as a rich and roasty stout would've provided a great pairing for the chocolate bon-bons. In retrospect, we should've headed a block east to beerbistro afterwards and cracked open our gift bags to try a couple of pairings of our own. Ah well, I'm sure we'll be able to come up with some good ones here at home...

Beer Blogs I Like

2006-11-23T00:11:00.000-05:00

While I try to make a point of checking out the fantastic beer blog aggregator RSBS (Really Simple Beer Syndication) on a daily basis, I sometimes find it hard to keep up with the new posts from the 100+ blogs that are featured there. So there are several beer & drink blogs that I keep track of more directly via my RSS reader, and I wanted to give a shout-out to a few of them:

A Good Beer Blog
Written (mostly) by Alan McLeod who lives at the other end of Lake Ontario from me, AGBB was the first beer blog I discovered a couple of years ago, and I've been a loyal reader ever since. Part of my loyalty lies in the fact that he's also in Ontario, which means that I can relate to his occasional complaints about the LCBO. He often makes me jealous with his frequent trips south of the border to buy lots of the good stuff, and I'm also jealous of all the beer books he gets sent to review, although given the number of promo CDs I got during my years as a DJ and music writer, I can't complain too much. Anyway, I hope it won't make Alan's head get too big when I say that AGBB was one of the main inspirations for me to start this blog. So depending on how you feel about BB&B, you've got Alan to thank or blame.

Lyke 2 Drink
While it's not exclusively devoted to beer, this blog from long-time drinks journalist Rick Lyke is a well-distilled (pardon the pun) digest of news from the worlds of beer, wine and spirits. Unlike similar blogs that just cut & paste press releases and articles from other sources, Rick often adds his own observations to the news content, and has also featured reports from beer festivals and other events. And since he was a published writer well before he was a blogger, his posts are well written and judiciously edited. If you have any interest at all in the behind-the-scenes comings and goings in the beer industry, you really should be reading Lyke 2 Drink.

On The House
As with Lyke 2 Drink, this is not a beer-only blog, and it's also unique in being a group blog that features around a dozen beverage industry "insiders" posting about various topics related to beer, wine, spirits, cocktails, and the hospitality industry in general. My main reason for reason for reading it is to check out the posts from Stephen Beaumont, who writes mainly about beer as you might expect, but there are some other great writers there as well. It's also worth mentioning that in addition to his posts to On The House and the monthly updates at his World Of Beer website, Beaumont also writes a solo beer blog for the "entertaining + drink ideas" website That's The Spirit, although since it lacks an RSS feed, I don't check it as often as I should.

Brookston Beer Bulletin
When I see that there's a new post up at the Brookston Beer Bulletin, I usually wait to read it until I have a half-hour or so to spare, as writer Jay Brooks generally has a lot to say about the topics he tackles. He also writes with such style and passion that I don't mind setting aside a bit of time to digest his words. His longest and most entertaining rants are usually directed towards sloppy and uninformed beer articles from the mainstream press, as well as restrictive beer & alcohol regulations and the "Neo-Prohibitionists" who are usually behind them. If every beer lover had even half the passion that Jay does, we could take over the frickin' world, or at least make it easier to get a decent beer in every corner of it.

If you have any favourite beer blogs you'd like to share, or a blog of your own to hype, please leave a comment!

Weston's Cider (aka How Do You Like Them Apples?)

2006-11-17T17:54:00.000-05:00

While it's rarely my beverage of choice, I occasionally find myself in the mood for a good cider. Unfortunately, here in the land of the government-run alcohol monopoly, the selection of ciders available to us is generally limited to UK imports such as Strongbow and Blackthorn - mass-produced ciders that are artificially sweetened and carbonated, making them the Bud/Coors/Blue/etc. of the cider world - and similarly mainstream domestics like Growers.

The selection got a little better earlier this year when the LCBO added Stowford Press English Export Cider from Weston's Cider to their general list. While Weston's may not be a small artisanal cidery, at least they're a family owned business producing ciders that are much closer to traditional styles than the industrial muck churned out by the big boys.

So having enjoyed the Stowford Press the couple of times I'd tried it, I was happy to see a pack of three other Weston's ciders as one of this year's holiday gift box selections. The selection includes 1880 Cider (8.2% abv), a special blend created in 2005 for Weston's 125th anniversary; Henry Weston's Vintage Reserve (8.2% abv), which is aged in oak vats for six months before bottling; and Weston's Organic (6.5% abv), produced using locally grown organic apples.

I enjoyed all three of them fairly equally, and found them to be quite refreshing and, well, appley. I also thought them to be quite similar to each other in a lot of ways - perhaps too similar. In particular, there is a slight funky/cheesy note to the aroma and flavour of all three of them, as well as the Stowford Press, which I can only assume is a house characteristic shared by all Weston's ciders. I liked it, but I would've preferred a bit more variation between the three.

Anyway, I'm still a cider neophyte, and I'm sure that even the Weston's offerings would pale in comparison to a fresh local cider enjoyed in a village pub in the UK countryside. But they didn't disappoint me, and I'd happily take them over a Strongbow any day.

Me Me Me!

2006-11-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

OK, as much as I hate the word "blogosphere", I received a sign a few days ago that I'm now a part of it whether I like it or not:

This guy named Anthony left a comment on one of my NYC posts saying that he found while searching for info for a blog post of his own reviewing d.b.a., one of the bars I visited there.

So I went over to his blog - the very funny Wiseass Reviews - and found the post in question. And not only had he given me a link, but he also made me a tag!

Thanks, Anthony. I'm returning the favour.

Oh yeah - just so this post isn't completely off-topic and self-indulgent, I should mention that I drank some Black Oak Saison tonight. Review: It was yummy.

Mill Street Brewpub

2006-11-11T22:26:00.000-05:00

For a city of its size and population, Toronto has an embarrassing dearth of brewpubs. In fact, up until a couple of weeks ago, we had exactly one of them: The Granite. It's a great place, but since I'm a downtown snob who tends to get nosebleeds if I go too far north of Bloor Street, I don't make it up there very often.

(C'est What is often referred to as a brewpub, but since their house beers are brewed off-site at Durham Brewing, they don't meet the usually accepted definition of the word.)

So when word came down earlier this year that Mill Street Brewery would be relocating their main operations to a much larger brewery in the suburbs and turning their original Distillery District location into a brewpub, there was much rejoicing throughout the local beer scene.

After months of anticipation, the Mill Street Brewpub was finally opened in late October with surprisingly minimal fanfare. I made it down for my first visit earlier this week, and I can say with very little reservation that it was well worth the wait. My only disappointment was that Alan at A Good Beer Blog beat me to the reviewing punch even though he lives about 250 kms away. Plus he never lets me know when he's going to be in town. Bastard.

Anyway. Since it's located in the Distillery District, the place has great atmosphere almost by default, but they've really gone above and beyond with the renovations that they've done over the past few months. Aside from the brewing tanks in the middle of the room, it's almost unrecognisable from its time as a regular brewery, and it strikes the perfect balance between being spacious and cozy.

It pretty much goes without saying that the beer is excellent, but I'll say it anyway: The beer is excellent. In addition to their core line-up of Tankhouse Ale, Organic Lager, Coffee Porter and Stock Ale, they've promoted their Oktoberfest, Wit and Helles Bock from seasonal to year-round status, revived their Cobblestone Stout which hadn't been available for a couple of years, and added an IPA and an ESB to the roster. A Kriek is coming soon, as well as some one-offs/seasonals, and the bar will soon be outfitted with a hand-pump for some cask ale action. Oh, and they found a keg or two of their 2004 Barley Wine that they're serving up as well.

Lots to choose from, but I was in the mood for some new stuff, so I went with the two that I hadn't tried before. The ESB was excellent - fresh, earthy & fruity with an appealing graininess and a moderately dry, herbal finish. I was less enthralled with the IPA - it was pleasant enough, with a nice, well-balanced flavour, but when they've already got the hoppy pale ale bases covered with Tankhouse, this one almost seems like an afterthought.

As for the food side of things, since pubs tend to cater strongly to the carnivore set, the wife and I were expecting a lack of vegetarian options, and our expectations were pretty well met in that regard. There are only two completely veg options in the main courses - a veggie pizza and the ubiquitous roasted vegetable sandwich - although the appetizers and salads are a bit friendlier to the meat-avoiders. Since we also eat seafood, we had a few more options than if we were complete veg-heads.

To start off, we snacked on a generous basket of kick-ass sweet potato fries. For my main, I ordered a Caesar salad and sprung an additional $3.99 to get some calamari added. At that price I expected maybe a handful of calamari thrown on top, but was pleasantly surprised to find the salad so covered in tasty golden-brown squidy goodness that I could barely see the green stuff underneath. Sheryl went with the veggie sandwich which she proclaimed to be fairly average, and our carnivorous dining companions both decided on the pulled pork sandwich which was declared good but "unusual" due to the inclusion of cheese.

Final verdict: Amazing space, great beer, decent food. It's a bit out of the way for me to visit often, but I'll happily return for new beers and other events.

Shufflin' Off To Buffalo

2006-11-09T23:32:00.000-05:00

My friend Jeff is expecting his first kid in a few weeks (well, I guess his wife Kelly is officially the expectant one...), and since the new addition will likely put a bit of a kibosh on any out-of-town beer-related adventures for a while, he decided to gather up some buddies take a quick overnight trip down to Buffalo for a good old-fashioned piss-up.

I must admit that my memory of most of the night is somewhat hazy, and the dark & blurry photos I took with my phone (like the one on the right) certainly didn't help any. All I can really tell you is that we started at Cole's, went next door to Mr. Goodbar, staggered back to Cole's, and somehow made it back to our pal Rudy's place when we were done. Along the way, I enjoyed...

Brooklyn Blast
Rogue Monk Madness
Arbor Super Snapper
Stone Imperial Russian Stout
Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald
North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
Stone Arrogant Bastard

Good times, good times...

Volo Cask Day: A Belated Review

2006-11-05T17:41:00.000-05:00

One of the great mysteries of the Toronto beer scene is how a cozy family-run Italian restaurant called Volo has become a go-to destination for all serious beer aficionados. One of these days I'm going to have to do an interview with owner Ralph Morana to get the full story, but for now, we can just enjoy the fruits of his tireless labours to bring the best of the beer world to thirsty Torontonians.

The latest example was Volo's second annual Cask Days festival, where Ralph invited over 20 Ontario craft brewers - as well as a couple of homebrewers and a special guest from Quebec - to provide cask ales that were served up over the course of two sessions on Saturday, October 21st. In a city where the number of bars that serve cask ale on a regular basis can be counted on two hands, the idea of having somewhere around 30 casks available for sampling in a single location is like beer heaven, even if it only lasts for a few hours.

Of course, as previous Volo events have proven, Ralph and his wife, Aina, and the rest of the Volo crew never do things by half measures. In addition to bringing together an outstanding line-up of beer, they also provided complimentary cheese from a variety of Ontario artisan cheese producers. And throughout the day, Ralph and staff walked through the crowd with baskets of sandwiches, pasties, and other tasty treats to help our tummies absorb all the beer we were downing.

And as for the beer itself, the brewers really stepped up with a selection that included lots of one-offs, ranging from variations to existing beers (lots of barrel-aging and wet- & dry-hopping) to brand new beers brewed exclusively for the event. I tried a dozen or so over the course of the day, and all of them pleased me in some way, but I had a few favourites:

Biergotter Hopocalypse
This IPA from the Biergotter Homebrew Club was definitely the buzz beer of the festival, and with good reason. It was a big, ballsy beer that was heavily influenced by West Coast IPAs, with a huge hop aroma and flavour, but enough malt in there to keep it from being completely ridiculous. More than one person was heard to say that someone needs to give these guys some cash to open a brewpub or brewery. Check out their extensive blog post about the day, as well as the recipe for Hopocalypse.

Dieu Du Ciel! Péché Mortel, Corne Du Diable & Vaisseau des Songes
Ralph scored quite a coup when he convinced the folks at Montreal's venerable Dieu Du Ciel! brewpub to participate in this event. Due to the vagaries of Ontario liquor laws, the DDC beers (as well as the homebrews) could not be served as part of the regular admission price and had to be separately purchased with all money going to charity, but that didn't stop them from being amongst the most popular beers of the day. Péché Mortel is an absolutely decadent coffee-laced Imperial Stout that I'd previously tried in bottled form, but having it on cask was a real treat - and it was the only beer of the day that had me going back for seconds. The Corne Du Diable is described as an American-style IPA, which means a big whack of hops upside your head. The Vaisseau des Songes was a surprise addition to the fest, and while it was in keg rather than cask form, it was still very nice - I'd describe it as the little brother of Corne Du Diable, as it's also an IPA, but much more restrained in flavour and lower in alcohol.

Black Oak H&H Overkill
According to Ken at Black Oak, the H&H stood for "Hops & Jalapeños (pronounced: Halapeñooooo!!!!)", which had me worried as I'm generally not a fan of chili beers. Not because I have an aversion to the hot stuff, but because most of the ones I've tried have simply been crappy lagers or bland golden ales with an assload of chilies thrown in. When I took my first whiff of this one, I thought it would go down the same road, as there was nothin' but jalapeños going on in the aroma. But the flavour was surprisingly good, with the heat of the peppers taking on an almost sweet character to balance the fresh hops. Not something I'd drink every day, but still a pretty successful experiment.

Scotch Irish Admiral Perry Imperial IPA
Yeah, it's another big honkin' IPA. But nobody makes these suckers like Perry at Scotch Irish does. This one had so much spruce and pine on the nose that I thought I was sniffing a Christmas tree, and the hops in the flavour were absolutely ass-kicking. I wrote in my notes: "Stupidly over the top, but I liked it." That pretty much sums it up.

According to Ralph, he had to turn away both brewers and attendees this year due to the lack of space, so there's a germ of an idea to move it to a bigger venue next year. While it may never grow to the size and prestige of the Great British Beer Festival, it could certainly become of the premier cask ale events in North America if he sticks with it. Here's hoping!

(PS: All of the crappy photos above were taken with my newfangled cameraphone. You can see more of them, as well as much nicer photos by people who presumably used real cameras, or perhaps cameraphones that take better photos than mine does, at the Volo Cask Days Flickr Group.)

New York City - Night 6: Midtown

2006-10-31T23:56:00.000-05:00

[A month after I got home, and I'm finally getting the last part of my trip report posted. Ah well, better late than never...]

NYC - Night 6 - Friday, September 29th:

For my last night in the Big Apple, I decided to stick fairly close to my hotel and hit a few Midtown locations that I hadn't visited yet (and ultimately, one that I already had).

First up was the renowned beer emporium The Ginger Man (11 E. 36th St. between 5th Ave. & Madison). I'd first tried to visit on Monday night and found it packed from wall-to-wall, but this time I made it down early enough to beat the crowds. With high ceilings and lots of well-polished wood, this place gives off an elegant but comfortable vibe, and the combination of an astounding tap line-up of 60+ beers and a small but well-selected menu of sandwiches, salads and cheeses seemed to make it a popular place with the after-work crowd. I enjoyed a pint of Erdinger Festweiße and considered following it up with something else, but the Friday night rush was starting in earnest, so I decided to try and find some place a little quieter.

I'd hoped that place might be Stout NYC (133 W. 33rd St. near 7th), but thanks to Eric Clapton, it wasn't to be. It seemed that his concert at the nearby Madison Square Garden was being celebrated with a pre-show party at Stout being thrown by a local classic rock radio station, and as a result the place was jammed beyond belief. However, I did get a look at the tap list, and based on what I saw, I had no problem leaving without a drink: aside from Guinness and Murphy's, there wasn't a stout to be had, and the remaining taps were a couple of Brooklyn Brewing beers, a bunch of mainstream lagers, and and assortment of the usual overrated imports that are available pretty much everywhere. Apparently their bottle list does a better job of living up to the promising name of the place, but I wasn't ready to fight my way through the crowds to find out.

So I hit the road again and headed north to The House of Brews (363 W. 46th St. between 8th & 9th Ave.), a cozy lower level pub along the touristy Restaurant Row strip. I really liked the atmosphere in this place - very comfortable and laid-back, with friendly staff and a nice selection of over a dozen beers on tap and 80 or so in bottles. Based on the bartender's recommendation, I started with a pint of their cask ale selection, Chelsea Catskill Hop Harvest Ale, which was a very nice & hoppy little number that was in fantastic condition. I followed it with Harpoon Octoberfest which isn't the most exciting beer around, but still a pleasant one with a good maltiness. My only real complaint about this place was the food, as my dinner was a lacklustre order of fish & chips that featured limp french fries and soggy, over-battered fish filets. I also shared some nachos with my neighbour at the bar, and we both agreed that they were far from the best we'd ever had. Still, the vibe and the beer selection made this a great place to hang out and watch some of the ball game (I don't even like baseball, but the Jays were playing the Yankees, so I felt some obligation to my hometown team to cheer them on while sitting on enemy turf).

To cap my evening & my week in the city, I decided to head around the corner and revisit the place where I had started back on Sunday night, The Collins Bar (735 8th Ave. at 46th St.). It was a bit busier than my first visit, but I managed to find a spot at the back near the jukebox, which I proceeded to feed most of my remaining US currency in order to annoy the rest of the patrons with my eclectic musical tastes. I got excited when I saw the rare Sierra Nevada 20th Street Green Hop Ale on a list of special beers they had on tap from a Union Beer tasting event a couple of nights before, but was disappointed to find out that the keg had kicked just minutes before I walked into the bar. Combined with Sunday's Schlenkerla situation, I was definitely having some bad luck with the place, but that didn't change my opinion of The Collins as being a quintessential NYC watering hole - tons of history, a classic look that hasn't changed in decades, and needless to say, a brilliant selection of libations to choose from. Their feature beer for the night was Magic Hat #9, an interesting apricot pale ale that I'd enjoyed in the past, so I went for a pint of that before moving on to the Southampton Imperial Porter, a dark & luscious brew that was much better on tap than the bottled version I'd tried a few months previous.

With that, I woozily toddled back to my hotel, and flew home the next morning. All in all, it was a fantastic trip that proved to me that New York is an essential city for beer travellers to visit. It's only big deficiency would seem to be a lack of quality bottle shops, but since I wasn't doing much shopping on this trip, that was a minor quibble for me. Otherwise, it was remarkably easy to fill my free time with beer-related pursuits, and I hope to make it back there sooner than later to revisit a few places, as well as pay first visits to a few places I managed to miss.

Keepin' It Real

2006-10-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

The latest in my occassional series of beer articles for Toronto food & drink website Gremolata was posted today. It's a brief introduction to cask/real ale, including a preview of tomorrow's Cask Days 2006 event at Volo, as well as a list of establishments in Toronto that serve cask ale on a regular basis. Not a lot of new info for beer geeks, but hopefully it'll convince some of the foodies & wine drinkers who make up most of Gremolata's readership to try a pint or two of the good stuff.

Speaking of Cask Days (which should really be called "Cask Day" without the pluralizing "s" this year, since both sessions are happening on Saturday), I will be there, and assuming I remember to bring my camera and notebook, I'll post some photos and a festival report next week. Right after I finally get the last report from my NYC trip written and posted...

New York City - Night 5: Brooklyn

2006-10-15T23:50:00.000-04:00

[Yeah, I'm still really busy - maybe I'll get these NYC posts finished before the next time I travel down there...]

NYC - Night 5 - Thursday, September 28th:

The trade tasting event that I attended on Tuesday had brought brewers from around the world into NYC, and several of them set up other events during their visit to give their beers some more exposure to the public at large, such as the sadly cancelled Schlenkerla night that I tried to attend on Sunday at The Collins Bar. The one that I was really excited about, though, was the Rogue night at Barcade in Brooklyn, which was set to feature 20 Rogue beers on tap - including a few rarities - and brewmaster John Maier in attendance.

HopStop maps in hand, I caught the subway out to the wilds of Williamsburg for a mini barhop. Before the drinking began, I satisfied my craving for something tasty and slightly greasy with a mock-meatball sandwich at Foodswings (295 Grand St.), a vegan fast food joint that even a carnivore could love. No tofu & spouts, hippie-dippie, peace & love shit at this place - the staff is pierced and tattooed, the music is down and dirty, and the menu features vegan versions of all your greasy spoon and pub grub faves, including chili con soya, "fish" & chips, nachos and "chicken" drumsticks.

It's also conveniently located just a couple of blocks from Spuyten Duyvil (359 Metropolitan Ave.), an unassuming looking place that has been voted the #4 Beer Bar in the U.S. on RateBeer and has been named the Best NYC Beer Bar by both New York Magazine and TimeOut New York. Like many of the bars I visited during my trip, Spuyten is a small place with a friendly neighbourhood vibe and tons of quirky character. The food menu is limited to plates of cheese and cold cuts, but patrons are welcome to bring in other food if desired. The tap list is small in size (6 draughts and a single cask) but big in quality, and the bottle list is astoundingly good, featuring an impeccably chosen selection of brews from around the world, including a good number of Belgians and more than a few rare and obscure treats. Since I was visiting solo, it was hard to justify dropping the big bucks on a 750 ml bottle of Cantillon or Fantome, so I stuck with a pint of Lagunitas Pils, a lean & well-balanced Bohemian pilsner, and a bottle of Kerkom Bink Blond, a surprisingly hoppy Belgian ale.

After that, it was off to Barcade (388 Union Ave.), which is one of the few "concept" bars I've been to that I actually enjoyed. A lot. Located in what seems to be a renovated garage or warehouse space of some sort, Barcade combines two of the best things in the world: great beer and classic video games. For someone who spent most of the early 80s converting my paper route earnings to quarters in order to get my fix of Robotron 2084 and Time Pilot, this place was like heaven. I arrived with a pocket full of quarters to find the place packed to the gills, and after fighting my way to the bar for a pint of Rogue Chocolate Stout on cask, I headed to the machines and started feeding them. The Chocolate was so good that it just had to be followed by another, during which I briefly met John Maier who was being mobbed like a rock star. Second pint of Chocolate drained, I considered having a third, but then realised that of the 20 Rogue beers on tap, there were probably at least a half-dozen that I would never have a chance to try again unless I visited the brewery in person. So I went for a glass of Rogue Love & Hoppiness, a robust pilsner that Maier and his wife, Stacey Wacker, originally brewed last year on Valentine's Day to be served at their wedding on April 9th, 2005. It was a very pleasant surprise from a brewer better known for his ales, and a great choice for my last beer of the night.

Then it was back to the subway and off to my hotel in Manhattan, with one more day and night left ahead if me to enjoy the city. I'll try to get the report of my last night on the town posted in less than a week this time, but I make no promises...

New York City - Night 4: The East Village

2006-10-08T16:01:00.000-04:00

[Sorry for falling behind on these, folks. Work has been busy since I got back, and the new hockey season started this week...]

NYC - Night 4 - Wednesday, September 27th:

If you only have one night to spend in New York and want to hit a few beer-friendly establishments, the East Village is the perfect neighbourhood to do so. There are about a half-dozen great bars within staggering distance of each other, not to mention plenty of restaurants to fortify yourself before, during or after your pub crawling.

My original plan for Wednesday night was to start with dinner somewhere and then hit several bars, but class let out early, so I had more time to myself than expected. I decided to start with a late afternoon snack at a non-beer location: Teany (90 Rivington St.), an aptly named (i.e. it's really teeny!) vegetarian cafe and tea house owned by Moby. (I'm semi-vegetarian, by the way - pescetarian, to be exact - so I spent as much time researching veggie restaurants before my trip as I did cataloguing beer destinations.) The tea menu in this place is as intimidating as the beer menus in some of my favourite bars - 98 different teas sorted by style, all with detailed tasting notes. I ended up with a white tea flavoured with chrysanthemum and a slice of very tasty vegan pumpkin "cheese"cake.

Sweet tooth satiated, I made the short walk to d.b.a. (41 1st Ave. between 2nd & 3rd St.). Located on the lower edge of the East Village, d.b.a. was one of the first beer specialty bars to open in Manhattan, and it still has a pretty solid reputation - it was voted 34th in RateBeer's list of Best U.S. Beer Bars for 2006 - although a couple of locals I spoke to later in the week have said that the selection and service have taken a downturn in the past year or two. Personally, the only complaint I had about the place was the horrendous state of the tiny washroom, although I guess it was no worse than the ones in the divey bars I used to frequent in my wayward youth. Still, I expected something a little more sanitary from this otherwise clean and comfortable place.

No complaints about the beer, though. They had a good selection of micros and imports on tap, including a couple of handpumps, and a chalkboard which not only listed their draught and cask selections, but included the dates that they'd all been tapped - a really nice touch that I'd like to see in more places. The bottle selection was also quite impressive, with lots of US micros and imports from Belgium, Germany, the UK, and even several Unibroue beers. And for those who like the hard stuff, they stock plenty of premium bourbon, tequila, whisky and other spirits. I stuck with the beer myself, and since I couldn't decide between malty or hoppy, I went both ways and had a very nice pint of Blue Point Hoptical Illusion on dry-hopped cask, and a glass of Brooklyn Oktoberfest on draught.

At my next stop, I was also offered a choice - not between malty or hoppy, but between "light or dark". Yes, I stopped in at McSorley's Old Ale House (15 E. 7th St. near 3rd Ave.), a NYC institution where they've been slinging suds for over 150 years. There's sawdust on the well-trod floor, white-aproned servers behind the weathered bar, and two types of beer, the aforementioned light and dark, served at a minimum of two mugs at a time. Brewed for the bar by Pabst/Miller, these are not hoity-toity craft beers, just simple brews that are easy to pound back. If you'd like to have a quick visit and try them both, ask the bartender for a "one & one" to get a single mug of each.

After the old-timey diversion of McSorley's, I wanted to get back to the fancy stuff, so I headed a block east and found myself faced with yet another choice: should I visit Burp Castle (41 E. 7th St. near 2nd Ave.) or Jimmy's No. 43 (43 E. 7th St. near 2nd Ave.)? OK, to be honest, I already knew that I was going to choose Jimmy's as I'd read about their Wednesday night beer & cheese tastings, as well as their menu of local and organic food. Located below street level, it looks like a tiny hole-in-the-wall on arrival, but it's actually a rather spacious place with several interconnected rooms and a very monastic decor. I stayed in the front room and grabbed a spot at the bar near the friendly rep from Merchant du Vin who was pouring small samples of Orval, Westmalle Tripel and Samuel Smith's Organic Lager to be enjoyed along with a complimentary cheese plate. Those served as a nice appetizer for a main course of their excellent mac & cheese and a pint of Six Point Bengali Tiger IPA, a wonderfully hoppy beer from a fairly new brewery in Brooklyn. I enjoyed it so much that I had their Smoked Baltic Porter for dessert - and yes, it was just as good as the name suggests. And I had a chance to meet the namesake owner of the place, Jimmy Carbone, who not only remembered me from an email I'd sent him a couple of weeks beforehand to ask about the beer & cheese night, but who also emailed me a couple of days after my visit to say thanks for stopping by. Who says New Yorkers aren't friendly?

My final stop of the night was the Hop Devil Grill (129 St. Marks Place at Ave. A), a funky hang-out with around 30 taps (mostly US micros, with a few well-selected imports) and a slew of bottles to choose from. I felt like something light to finish off my evening, so I had a pint of Brooklyner Weisse while watching the tail end of a Rangers pre-season game on the big screen. I was tempted to have another when I noticed a poster advertising their $3 Wednesday night "Kill The Keg" special, but I also noticed the time on my watch, which made me think better of it. No need to push things too far, as there would be more beer to enjoy tomorrow night. Oh yes, indeed...

New York City - Night 3: Union Beer Trade Tasting

2006-09-29T22:17:00.000-04:00

NYC - Night 3 - Tuesday, September 26th:

A couple of weeks before my trip, I was poking around for info about any beer events that might be happening in NYC during the week of my visit, and I stumbled across a short announcement about a free tasting event for the bar and restaurant trade that Brooklyn's Union Beer Distributors would be hosting at The Puck Building in downtown Manhattan. I figured it would probably be a small event with some local brewers on hand, and maybe a few imports being sampled as well - a nice way to spend a few hours and try some new beers, assuming I could get in.

I dropped them a line mentioning my "credentials" as news editor at The Bar Towel and writer of this blog, but wasn't holding out a lot of hope as it seemed to be a NYC-centric event based on the description. After a week with no response, I pretty much wrote it off as a "not gonna happen", but then I got the following email:

Dear Greg:

On behalf of Union Beer Distributors, I cordially extend the invitation for you to attend the most extensive craft beer Trade Tasting in New York City history. On Tuesday, September 26 from 5 until 10 PM at the historic Puck Building on Lafayette and Houston, 85 breweries from around the world will serve their libations to an exclusive audience in an intimate setting. Complete with live jazz music, hors d’oeuvres, and speeches from some of the industry’s most influential figures, this will be an event not to miss.

Among the dozens of internationally acclaimed brewers in attendance will be:

Matthias Trum – Owner, Head Brewmaster, Aecht Schlenkerla, Bamberg, Germany
The sixth generation brewer of the world renowned Brauerei Heller Trum produces the world’s most popular rauchbier (smoke beer) style.

Etienne Dupont – Owner, Cidermaster, Domaine Dupont, Normandy, France
The fifth generation Cidermaster from Normandy is one of the world’s foremost calvados producers, however he earned his place in the world of craft cider when the New York Times voted his cider as the best in the world in a 2004 blind tasting.

Hans Peter Drexler – Head Brewmaster, Schneider Weisse, Kelheim, Germany

Toshiyuki Kiuchi – Owner, Brewmaster, Hitachino Nest, Kounsosu, Naka-shi, Ibaraki, Japan

Chris Beauwarts – Owner, Brewmaster, Brasserie d’Achouffe, Achouffe, Belgium

And many, many more.

Looked like it was going to be a little larger than I'd expected.

I arrived at the Puck Building soon after 5:00 PM and was ushered into a good sized room with beer being poured by a variety of brewers both familiar (Rogue, Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Ommegang) and not-so-much (Mercury, Cape Ann, Butternuts). A fantastic selection - but all American micros. What happened to the imports?

Then I noticed the passageway to the other room. The spacious, ornate, gorgeous ballroom with dozens and dozens of brewers and beers from Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Japan and beyond. Not to mention a spread of bread, cheese & dried fruit, countless wait staff serving hors d'oeuvres, and a live jazz trio providing some elegant ambiance.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I almost wept a little.

Seriously, this was the most refined and well-organized beer event I've ever attended. Seeing beer being presented in such a civilised and respectful environment was a great thing indeed. Although since the event was being held by a distributor trying to flog their wares in one of the most competative bar and restaurant markets on earth, I suppose I should've expected it. I guess it's hard to shake the jaded nature I've developed from living amongst the backwards beer culture of Ontario for so long.

So after walking around with my mouth hanging open in disbelief for a few minutes, I started in on the tasting. I haven't gone through my notes to do a full count, but I'm sure I sampled somewhere around two dozen beers over the course of the evening, and enjoyed almost all of them. Here are a few highlights:

Hitachino Nest Espresso Stout
A new beer from Japan's Hitachino Nest brewery that they were pilot testing at the event. It has a still, deep brown body with no head, and an amazing aroma of freshly roasted and ground coffee. The body is a little thin, but the flavour is fantastic, with lots of coffee backed-up with some cocoa and malt notes. Hopefully, it'll be added to their official line-up soon.

Troubadour Blond & Troubadour Obscura
These beers from Belgium's Brouwerij The Musketeers were completely new to me, but I'm glad I stopped at their small table, as both of them are very good. The Blond is described on RateBeer as a saison, which seems to be an appropriate style, as it has a bright golden colour and aromas & flavours that encompass yeasty, fruity and spicey notes. The Obscura is self-described as a stout, although it's also undeniably Belgian, so it holds a very interesting combination of sweet roastiness and tangy spice that I really enjoyed.

Aecht Schlenkerla Helles Lagerbier
I was very happy to have a chance to try this rare treat from smoked beer specialists Aecht Schlenkerla, as I'm a big fan of their more commonly available Märzen. Unlike the other Schlenkerla beers, there is no smoked malt used in this golden lager, but it picks up a delicious smokiness from the brewery's filters. And it helps that even without the smokiness, this is a very nice lager, with well-balanced malt and hop flavours and a crisp, subtle body.

Thomas Hardy's Ale
This famous vintage ale is descibed by the brewer, O'Hanlons, as "the beer enthusiast’s equivalent of rare cognac". A little hoity-toity, perhaps, but having finally tried it, I'd say that it's a pretty apt description. I sampled the 2004 vintage, which is considered somewhat young - it's said to improve with age for 25 years or more - but I still enjoyed it. It has a huge, sweet aroma of toffee, fruit cake and whiskey, and a complex flavour of port, whiskey, sweet orange, chocolate and much more, all leading to a warm, tingly, lingering finish.

Aventinus Edelbrand
One of my favourite beers is Aventinus, the standard-bearing Weizenbock from Germany's G. Schneider & Sohn. So when I walked by their table and saw a smaller version of the distinctive purple Aventinus label on what looked like bottles of icewine, I was intrigued. I asked and discovered that it was Aventinus Edelbrand, a brandy-like spirit with 42% abv that is created by distilling Aventinus rather than water. This rarity is generally available only in Germany, but several bottles of a special barrel-aged version were brought over especially for this event. The samples being doled out were understandably small, given the potency and scarcity of the beverage, but I got enough of a taste to appreciate the flavours of oak, port, whiskey and grapeseed. Not the best hard booze I've tried, but good enough that I'd be happy to own a bottle of it.

There were lots more, but that's a good sample. Full notes and ratings for the whole night will end up on RateBeer soon.

Syndication Blues

2006-09-26T23:26:00.000-04:00

It seems that Blogger has been making some changes recently, and the old RSS and Atom syndication feeds that I had linked over in the sidebar are now dead. The Atom feed is now here, and the RSS feed seems to be completely gone, although I think it was "experimental" to begin with.

Not that this will do much good, as anyone who has been reading via one of the old feeds probably won't see this anyway. But just in case...

In other news - NYC continues to be spectacular. Further updates in the next day or two.

EDIT: Thanks to the comments, I checked the old feeds again, and found that they're back, but pointing to the new feed mentioned above (including an RSS version I wasn't aware of). So - never mind!

New York City - Night 2: Heartland Brewing and (almost) The Ginger Man

2006-09-26T14:54:00.000-04:00

NYC - Night 2 - Monday, September 25th:

First of all, I should mention that due to my knowledge of the location and appearance of NYC landmarks being completely pathetic, I was wrong about being able to see the Empire State Building from my hotel window. It's actually the Chrysler Building. D'oh.

I did, however, walk over to the ESB last night to visit one of the locations of Heartland Brewery (350 5th Ave. at 34th St.), a brewpub chain with several spots around Manhattan. The atmosphere of the place is an interesting mixture of comfortable elegance and kitsch, with dark wooden tables and leather chairs & benches surrounded by beer posters and paraphernalia from around the world. As you might expect from the location, it attracts a lot of tourists, and the prices definately reflect that: a pint of beer will run you around US$6, and the food is equally pricey, i.e. US$17 for three crab cakes and a slightly wilted green salad. At least the crab cakes were tasty, with a high crabmeat-to-filler ratio, and a nice homemade tartar sauce on the side.

As for their beers, they have a half-dozen regular offerings - including the expected light lager, pale ale, wheat & stout - as well as several seasonals. I had a taste of everything on offer, and found my favourites to be Farmer Jon's Oatmeal Stout, Smiling Pumpkin Ale and Indiana Pale Ale. The stout was a little thin on the palate, but the aroma and flavour made up for it, with notes of toffee, treacle, cocoa and smoke, and a nicely bittered finish. Smiling Pumpkin is a flavourful autumn seasonal made with honey-roasted pumpkin and a load of spices, giving it that "liquid pumpkin pie" vibe that I really like. And the Indiana PA is simply a well-made, hoppy pale ale, with a lot of citrus and spruce in the flavour.

I was also planning on downing a pint or two at The Ginger Man (11 E. 36th St. near 5th Ave.), but when I passed by both before and after my Heartland visit, I found it packed to the gills. I'd been warned that this is a popular spot, but I didn't expect such a crowd on a Monday night. It appears to be a great place, though - beautiful decor, an appetizing looking food menu, and a fantastic selection of beer on tap and in bottles. If my course lets out early enough on Friday, I may give it another shot and hope that it's not as insane in the afternoons.

In the meantime, the course is going very well, and I'm looking forward to an event tonight that will likely be the highlight of my visit to NYC. More about that tomorrow...

New York City - Night 1: The Collins Bar

2006-09-25T13:08:00.000-04:00

NYC - Night 1 - Sunday, September 24th:

So, I'm down in NYC this week on business, taking an advanced course on Informatica, a suite of software that only database geeks know or care about. I could thrill you all with everything I'm learning about data loaders and transformations and such, but since the last word in the name of this blog is "Bites" and not "Bytes", I'll stick with the stuff you really care about.

I flew into town last night, and after an afternoon and evening of airport line-ups, a flight delay, and other travel annoyances, I definately needed a beer. Late last week, I found out that Matthias Trum, the owner and brewmaster of Bamberg, Germany's Aecht Schlenkerla brewery would tapping a wooden cask of their renowned Marzen rauchbier at a place called The Collins Bar (735 8th Ave. at 46th) on the night of my arrival. Unfortunately, the tapping was to take place at 6 PM, and due to the flight delay it was around 9 PM by the time I checked into my hotel. So while I didn't have high hopes of there being any of the cask left by the time I got there, it as a nice enough night that I decided to walk the mile or so over to The Collins in order to get some air and see some sights.

Located just a couple of blocks from Times Square, The Collins feels like a throwback to a time before the surrounding area had become cleaned-up and Disneyfied. The location has been operating as a bar since the late 19th century - including a stint as a speakeasy during Prohibition - and it exudes that unique combination of comfort, warmth and slight grottiness that you expect from a favourite neighbourhood watering hole. It also has friendly staff (if bartender Steve is any indication), a great jukebox, and free popcorn - not to mention a fantastic selection of beer, whisky, bourbon, tequila and other spirits.

I arrived around 9:45 to find a nearly empty bar and no sign of the Schlenkerla cask. I asked to confirm that it wasn't hidden away somewhere, and found out that I wasn't the only one to miss out that night - apparently when the cask was tapped, it was discovered the beer had gone sour, so it had to be dumped. I consoled myself with a glass of Brooklyn Blast, a fantastic limited release beer that the bar called a Strong IPA while RateBeer calls it an American Strong Ale. Whatever style it is, it was mighty good.

I considered either sticking around at The Collins for another pint, or walking the block or so to House Of Brews, but the day started catching up with me. So I thought better of it and headed back to the hotel, where I enjoyed my 32nd floor view which includes the Empire State Building just a couple of blocks away. That's where I plan to be tonight to visit Heartland Brewing...

(PS: I left my camera at home, so all photos this week will be borrowed/stolen from other sources. Which is probably a good thing, as I'm a crap photographer.)

We've Got The Funk

2006-09-19T23:34:00.001-04:00

Work has been kicking my ass lately, so posts here have been few and far between. This should soon change - at least temporarily - as I'm heading down to New York City next week for a course, and I plan to spend my evenings doing some beer-hunting with daily reports to follow.

But in the meantime, I thought I'd give a quick mention about a tasting that I had with the usual crew a couple of weeks ago, where we sampled the wares of two of the most unique breweries on earth: Cantillon and Jolly Pumpkin.

Cantillon are a family-owned concern in Brussels, Belgium that has been brewing traditional lambics for over 100 years. They're one of the few breweries still producing true, unadultrated lambics and as such they've become renowned amongst beer connoisseurs. Their beers are admittedly an aquired taste, as they are remarkably tart and dry, with strong flavours that get tagged with names like "funk" and "barnyard" and "horse-blanket". Yeah, they may not sound very appealing, but once you get a taste for 'em, there's really nothing like 'em.

As for Jolly Pumpkin, they're a much newer brewery that started up a few years ago in Dexter, Michigan. Unlike a lot of craft breweries that start out with a couple of popular styles - like pale ale or pilsner or stout - before starting on the weird shit, these guys went straight to the weird shit and never looked back. According to their website, they specialize in "open fermentation, oak barrel aging, and bottle conditioning", but that only begins to describe the wonderful and wacky beers that they produce. They only comperable brewery I can think of is Fantome, a Belgian farmhouse brewery that offers a similarly eclectic line-up of beers, many of which fall into the nebulous bière de garde category.

Along with a few other things, we managed to make it through eight of the nine pictured bottles. I didn't take notes on all of them as I'd tasted & reviewed a few of them before, but my thoughts on all of them, whether reviewed at this tasting or previously, can be found on their RateBeer pages linked here:

Jolly Pumpkin Luciernaga (The Firefly) Belgian Ale
Jolly Pumpkin Bière de Mars Bière de Garde
Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza Bière de Garde
Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca Witbier
Jolly Pumpkin La Roja Bière de Garde
Cantillon Saint Lamvinus Fruit (Grape) Lambic
Cantillon Lou Pepe Framboise Fruit (Raspberry) Lambic
Cantillon Iris Lambic

¡Viva Vienna!

2006-09-08T12:45:00.000-04:00

Like wine, many classic beer styles - especially those from Europe - are named after the area where they were first produced. Pilsner was born in Pilsen, Czech Republic; Kölsch in Köln, Germany; Dortmunder in Dortmund, Germany; and Vienna Lager in... well, that one should be pretty obvious.

But unlike the others, Vienna Lager had a pretty short history of being brewed in its hometown. It was first brewed sometime around 1840 by Viennese brewmaster Anton Dreher, who found that the city's soft water allowed him to use lighter malts in his beer, lending it a mellow amber colour that was unique for the time. His methods and recipes ending up being borrowed and refined by brewers in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), leading to the creation of Pilsner, which in turn led to the creation of pretty much every pale lager beer in existence today.

Despite the popularity of the beers that the style spawned, the original Vienna style dwindled in popularity by the late 19th century, and probably would've died off completely were it not for its revival at the hands of a group of Austrians who had emigrated to Mexico. Even today, the most popular examples of the style - Dos Equis Amber and Negra Modelo - are Mexican, and while more and more North American microbreweries are crafting their own versions of this crisp and malty lager (including Ontario's Ste. Andre), it's rare to find a Vienna that is actually brewed in Vienna - or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter.

I recently met up with a fellow RateBeerian who had a weekend stopover in Toronto on his way from Mexico to Scotland where he goes to school, and he was kind enough to bring me a couple of beers from his home country that happened to be Viennas: Noche Buena from the large national brewery Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma/FEMSA (also the producer of Sol and Tecate), and Santa Fé from the Beer Factory brewpub chain. I thought it would be interesting to sample them alongside the aforementioned Dos Equis Amber (Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma/FEMSA) and Negra Modelo (Grupo Modelo), so I brought them all along to a tasting with my usual crew the other night, and here's what we thought...

Dos Equis Amber
This one is almost as ubiquitous as Corona and Sol at most Mexican restaurants, so we all knew what to expect. It has a light caramel-amber colour with a small white head. The aroma holds sugary malt with some stale vegetal and cardboard notes - not very appealing. The body is watery, and the flavour is mild, tasting mainly of light caramel & sugar. Bland and inoffensive, just like a mass produced beer should be.

Negra Modelo
This beer is new to Ontario, but I first tried it when visiting San Diego last fall. It pours a dark, clear ruby-brown colour with a small tan head. The aroma is a bit stale, but still nice, with inviting malt and cocoa notes. The flavour is quite sweet, but also a bit roasty, with more hints of cocoa and a bit of caramel. Thin body, but it's otherwise more enjoyable than I expected, and certainly a step up from Dos Equis.

Noche Buena
This is a Christmas beer from the same mega-brewer that produces Dos Equis. It has a higher alcohol percentage than its more mainstream cousin (6% vs. 4.7%), and a slightly darker colour as well. The aroma has the expected sweet malt notes, along with an interesting herbal edge. The flavour starts quite sweet as well, but has a quickly appearing herbal bitterness, followed by a very short finish. Not bad, but the finish in particular is disappointing.

Santa Fé
Mexico is a country that is not exactly known as having much of a micro/craft beer culture, but the Beer Factory brewpub chain is one of a few brewers who seem to be trying to change that. Based on their take on the Vienna style, it appears that they're at least doing a better job at making beer than Mexico's big two. Santa Fé has a clear, dark amber colour with a small off-white head. The aroma isn't as sweet as the macros, but still has good hints of caramel and malt, with a faint smokiness as well. The flavour is very clean and fresh, with some bready malt and herbal hops. Simple, but enjoyable, and the unanimous favourite of the quartet.

Canada Strikes Back!

2006-08-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

With the recent Sapporo buy-out of Sleeman, there's been lots of hand-wringing about Canada's three largest breweries being owned by foreigners. So it was nice to see the news today that some of my countrymen are doing some deals in the other direction:

Montreal's ICBS Ltd. said Wednesday it is buying New York`s Lake Placid Craft Brewing Co.
The 10-year-old Lake Placid Craft Brewing Co. has created a market demand for their Craft beers, such as UBU and Frostbite ales, ICBS said in a statement.

The story also notes the ICBS also owns Ramapo Valley Brewery of Hillburn, NY, and Alan posts at A Good Beer Blog to let us know that they recently bought Maska Laboratories, a Quebec-based lab that does work for the beer, wine & food industries. Could be some interesting things afoot...

An Award For Beau's Lug-Tread (Sort Of...)

2006-08-26T16:09:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I headed on down to beerbistro for the 4th annual Golden Tap Awards, a beer awards event arranged and presented by Cass Enright of The Bar Towel. Unlike other Canadian and Ontario beer awards, the GTAs are chosen via online voting by beer drinkers, not industry insiders or "expert" tasting panels, and there are no outside sponsors, so there are no token awards like "Best Selling Beer: Coors Light". As a result, they've quickly gained the respect of breweries and bar owners from across Toronto (where the awards were focused for the first three years) and Ontario (where they expanded this year).

Adding to the democratic nature of the awards is the Best Of The Fest prize, which is awarded based on votes cast for the beers that are being served on tap and in bottles during the event. This year's nod went to Lug-Tread Lagered Ale, a Kölsch style beer from Beau's All Natural Brewing, a new brewery up near Ottawa.

Well - more accurately, it went to an odd variation on Lug-Tread that Beau's Steve Beauchesne has dubbed the world's first "Kölsch-Bock". The birth of this mutant hybrid is described in a blog post about what happened when they kegged their first commercial batch:

Our Lug Tread is a tribute to the very subtle Kölsch style from Cologne, Germany. This batch, while very tasty, was anything but subtle. Assertive bitterness and mouth-filling maltiness were the dominant traits, with a notable alcohol flavour. In fact, it tasted more like a Bock or a Bière de Garde than a Kölsch.

While we stood there perplexed, back at the brewery Matt was discovering the secret of what we would later christen our Kölsch-Bock. Our double-jacketed unitank, with icy kosher propylene glycol coursing through its veins, apparently worked a little too well. A 150 litre "iceberg" had formed, effectively concentrating the remaining wort and giving the yeast little opportunity to settle.

As this discovery was made during weekend of their official launch in Ottawa, with kegs ready to tap and media ready to hype them up, they felt that they had no choice but to release the beer under the Lug-Tread name, and hoped that they could spread the word about the beer-sicle accident so people would understand why the beer was the way it was. And according to a later blog post from Steve:

[I]t looks like our initial gamble to release the high-octane version of Lug Tread was the right decision. It seems that most people get the fact that we’re new and that one batch is going to taste different from the next for the first few rounds through (insert huge sigh of relief, wipe sweat from brow).

Of course, it hasn't been completely smooth sailing. Response from the folks on RateBeer has been far from kind, although some of that can be chalked up to the fact that style sticklers may take some objection to this very non-Kölsch-like beer, even after the reasons are explained by the brewer.

I've also seen comments that since the beer didn't come out as expected due to a mechanical malfunction, Beau's should have chucked the batch and started over, even though they thought the resulting product was quite tasty, and pitching it would have caused the last-minute cancellation of a long-planned Canada Day launch event.

Or maybe some people simply don't like the beer.

Whatever the case - even though they were generally happy with the reception their Kölsch-Bock garnered in Ottawa, Steve and co. still took these criticisms to heart, especially when they were planning what to bring to the GTAs:

Instead of bringing a keg from batch 2 – still not exactly where we want the final product to rest, but a much smoother beer, definitely moving in the right direction - I had an idea which I ran by Matt (our brewer): “What if we brought the bathtub beer?” This was a nickname we had given the last remaining keg of our Kölsch Bock.

You see, en route to deliver the keg to Pub Italia, we found out they were not able to put us on tap right away and asked if we could deliver it the following week. What to do with the keg??? We had a walk-in cooler that was not operational yet, and, desperate to save the beer, we put it in Jamie’s bathtub, filled the tub with ice, and hoped it would survive.

Knowing that the Golden Tap crowd would a) recognize good beer and b) be interested in something different and new I thought to myself, what a great way to use up the rest of this keg. A week before the event Matt and I tapped the keg to give it a test. I was convinced that the beer was fabulous, but Matt was worried. Would these aficionados forgive the beer for not being what it had originally intended to be and judge it simply on what it was? Or would they write it off as a pitiful attempt at a very specific beer style? Matt reminded me that the brewery’s fortunes aside, his reputation as a brewer was at stake, something I had not considered up to that point.

After sampling the beer with a few more friends and fellow brewers, they went with their guts and stuck with the Kölsch-Bock. Based on the audience response, it looks like this was another gamble which paid off big.

Oh, I guess I should mention what I thought of the beer. First of all, it probably goes without saying that it doesn't resemble a Kölsch in the least, aside from the bright golden hue. And given its high octane alcohol level, it definately has some boozy notes in the nose and flavour. But it also has a very nice sweet, fruit and slightly floral character that I quite enjoyed. It actually reminded me somewhat of King PilsBock, a similar - but intentional - hybrid that came out from King Brewery back in the spring. It wasn't my favourite beer of the fest - that honour goes to the fantastic Ste. Andre Great Eastern IPA - but it's an interesting, flavourful and enjoyable beer, style be damned. And isn't that the most important thing?

Best. Tasting. Ever.

2006-08-18T16:34:00.000-04:00

My usual crew came by this week for a tasting, and Jeff brought along a disc of photos from our Michigan trip and our last couple of tastings - including a monumetal one from earlier this summer:

From left to right, the beers (and their current rating on RateBeer) are:

Panil Barriquée (Sour) - #67
Three Floyds Dreadnaught Imperial IPA - #9
AleSmith YuleSmith India Pale Ale - #20
AleSmith J.P. Grays Wee Heavy Scotch Ale - #64
AleSmith Speedway Stout - #5
Dieu du Ciel Péché Mortel - #30
Stone Imperial Russian Stout - #14
Stone 06.06.06 Vertical Epic Ale - the only one not in the Top 100
Bells Expedition Stout - #7
Dogfish Head World Wide Stout - #15
Founders Breakfast Stout - #31
Avery Mephistopheles Stout - #55
Victory Storm King Imperial Stout - #39
Abbaye des Rocs Grand Cru - #49

Like the subject line says: Best. Tasting. Ever.

Michigan Festival & Road-Trip Report: Part Three

2006-08-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

Yes, here it is, the long-awaited third part in my bloated Michigan Road-Trip Trilogy. If you haven't done so already, you might want to read Parts One and Two first.

Saturday was the main event - the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival. The festival actually started the night before with an evening session that we decided to skip in favour of checking out the scene in Ann Arbor, although as the previous instalment in this series showed, we'd probably been better off going to the fest. But no matter, we had a good day ahead of us.

Now, I can hardly call myself a beer festival expert. I go to Toronto's Festival of Beer every year, and have been to other smaller fests and events here in town, but my only out-town-festival experiences have been Montreal's Mondial de la Biere a few years ago, and the Michigan fest in 2003 and this year. But I think I can safely say that the folks in MI put on one of the best beer events in North America. First of all, it's held in the absolutely gorgeous Riverside Park - which is, fittingly enough, a big park beside a river - located in the picturesque town of Ypsilanti. And more importantly, it features astoundingly good beer from a range of breweries and brewpubs that is just mind-boggling, especially for those of us who live in a province where antiquated liquor laws and government red tape have led to a somewhat stunted - but thankfully improving - craft beer culture.

Soon after arriving with my crew (Jeff, Paul, Jeremy & Harry), we met up with fellow Canucks Mike & Derek, and a few American pals who we knew from RateBeer - they have real names, but we know them best as 11026, Styles and BBB63. We were soon joined by Quebec RateBeerian beerbuzzmontreal and his pal, and then the drinking began.

As much as I would have loved to try every beer available at the fest, the fact that there were something like 200 of them made it a little difficult. But by sharing some samples, I was able to get at least a taste of about 3 dozen or so, and some of my favourites included:

Livery Cask Aged Belgian Cherry Wheat
This Flemish Sour from The Livery brewpub of Benton Harbor was my first beer of the day, and it was so good I was worried that the day might go downhill from there. It featured a strong, inviting aroma of sour cherry and oaked whiskey, and a very nice flavour with tart cherry and wood notes. It was also dangerously smooth for such a strong beer (8.5%) - a theme that continued for much of the day.

Founders Blushing Monk Belgian Razz
Another wickedly strong fruit beer (10.3%), this one from the always reliable Founders Brewing of Grand Rapids. It poured a dark ruby-pink with a tiny white head, and had lots of fresh, tart raspberry in the aroma with some mild funkiness in the background. Sharp raspberry flavour, with enough tartness to keep it in line - some of the others at the table found it cloying, but I really dug it.

Bonfire Kristallweizen
This lovely beer from Northville's Bonfire Bistro and Brewery was my first ever Kristallweizen, and I'm glad to have tried a fresh, locally brewed sample rather than a potentially stale bottle from Germany. It had a golden yellow colour with a very faint haze. Nice weisse aroma, a bit yeasty and tart with mellow banana notes. Very clean flavour with a bit of spiciness and wheat, and mild banana to finish. Excellent!

Fort Street Farmers Tan
I was going to call Lincoln Park's Fort Street Brewery the dark horse of the festival, but since Dark Horse Brewing was there, that might get confusing. So I'll just say that they surprised all of us with the quality of their beers, especially since we'd never heard of them before the festival, as this Brown Ale was the highlight of their beers that we tried. It was dark brown with a nice creamy tan head, and looked really nice for a festival sample. The aroma was roasty and a bit smoky, almost like a porter. It had a soft mouthfeel, and a mellow flavour of roasted malt with notes of yeast and cocoa.

Bo's Solar Eclipse Imperial Stout
The folks from Bo's Brewery and Bistro claim that this beer is 22.5%. All who tried it at our table were skeptical of this claim, but if it's true, then they've discovered the secret to hiding the alcohol burn 'cause godDAMN this beer was smooth! It poured pitch black, of course, sitting in the glass like motor oil, and smelling sweet and smoky with notes of coffee with cream, molasses, vanilla - yum! The flavour was absolutely fantastic - roasted coffee & nuts, bourbon, wood, sweet malt - just completely luscious stuff.

Grand Rapids Bourbon Barrel Scotch Ale
Schmohz Kiss My Scottish Arse Scotch Ale
Livery Cask-Aged Kilt Tilter
If it's nae Scottish, it's CRAP!

Towards the end of the day, a few guys from Beer Advocate stopped by our table, and while we briefly considered starting a beer-rating-site rumble, we instead decided to enjoy our last beers together and have a few laughs. I was especially glad to meet up with Jonathan Surratt, the guy behind the absolutely indespensible RSBS, an aggregator of RSS feeds from around 100 (and growing) beer blogs and news sites. I gave him mad props, and promised a pint or two if he ever makes it up north for a visit.

Sadly, the festival came to an end at 6 PM, and tentative plans to do something or other with our American pals were scuttled when they found their car had been towed. We briefly considered another attempt to hit some of the Ann Arbor hot spots, but remembering the near disaster of the night before, decided it might be best to stay at the hotel for the evening. After all, with the goodies we'd purchased the day before at Bello Vino, it wasn't like we were wanting for beer.

I don't think I mentioned previously that we were staying at the Best Western Executive Plaza, a bizarre hotel/motel hybrid that seemed to be stuck in some sort of time warp, particularly when it came to Bedrock's Eats & Beats, the hotel bar/restaurant where we had our dinner on Saturday. As the name suggests, the place had a weird Flintstones theme going on, and based on the size of the place and the large dancefloor and DJ booth, it looked as if it might've been a very happening place at one point. But on this particular Saturday, we pretty much had the place to ourselves aside from two other patrons who sat and smoked and drank Bud at the bar. At least the food was decent in a bar food sort of way - although Harry's Bronto-Burger frightened the rest of us a little bit.

Hunger satisfied, we spent the rest of the evening hopping from room to room and sampling stuff from each of our stashes. Dead soldiers that night included HeBrew Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A, Avery Twelve, Arcadia Scotch Ale, Sprecher Generation Porter, Baltika 6 Porter and Arcadia Hopmouth Double IPA. You can click the links to see my notes and ratings at RateBeer.

The next morning, we hit the road bright and (fairly) early for our trip back to Toronto. He had a quick stop outside of Detroit to trade a few things with our American RateBeer buds (who thankfully got their car out of the pound the night before), had the easiest border crossing ever, and hit Windsor just in time to have lunch at our last stop for the weekend, Charly's Brew Pub.

Walking into Charly's is like walking into any roadhouse sports bar in any small North American town - lots of TVs; a group of regulars holding up the bar; a faint hint of cigarette smoke still lingering even though smoking has been banned for months; and a slightly surly but efficient waitress; and greasy but tasty food. But in addition to all of this, Charly's has a beer list of 100+ bottles from around the world (mostly LCBO general list, but still impressive for this sort of place), as well as a small brewery where they brew their house beer, Time Out. In fitting with the atmosphere, Time Out is a pale lager designed to appeal to Blue and Bud drinkers, but unlike those industrial lagers, it has a fresh character and some recognizable malt and hop notes. It certainly wasn't in the same league as any of the beers we'd enjoyed in the previous two days, but we still enjoyed our pitcher, and found it amusing to note that they also sell a bottled version called Buck Off Beer in honour of the fact that it's priced at a dollar less than bottles of Blue and other domestic swill.

A few hours later, and we were back home again. All in all, it was a great weekend of good beer and even better company. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again sometime.

Movin' On Up...

2006-08-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

I've just upgraded this blog to the beta version of the new Blogger. This gives me lots of funky new features like labels (or if you prefer, tags) that will make it easier to sort and search for posts, new templates to play around with, and other stuff that I haven't had a chance to dig into yet.

For the two or three of you who have been leaving comments, you may have to port your Blogger account over to the new beta to continue doing so. If you notice anything weird going on, let me know.

And apologies to any of you who are reading this via RSBS - I didn't realise that porting the blog to the new format would cause all of my previous posts to be republished to the RSS feed. Thankfully there were only 12 of them...

The Sleeman-Sapporo Thing

2006-08-15T12:08:00.000-04:00

Back when I started this blog, I promised myself that it wouldn't be one of those blogs that just posts links to other blogs without adding any commentary.

(I also promised myself that I wouldn't use the word "blog" too much, but based on the paragraph above, I guess I've pretty much blown that one...)

However, as I was getting ready to post some thoughts about this past weekend's takeover of Sleeman by Japan's Sapporo Breweries - with a specific focus on what it might mean for Sleeman-owned Unibroue - I realised that a couple of other people had already said pretty much everything I was planning to say about it.

People like Stephen Beaumont, who posted his thoughts to On The House, a group-blog on the drinks industry that he contributes to occassionally:

Unibroue’s brands are both highly profitable and well-regarded, and yet at the same time they are also utterly foreign to Sapporo, who have no experience marketing anything like them. This, it seems to me, would indicate that the Japanese brewery might go in one of two directions.

Although the Japanese market for Belgian-style luxury beers is small, it is enthusiastic, which could mean that Sapporo might very well try to use Unibroue brands such as Maudite, Fin du Monde and Terrible as flagships for the super-premium segment there. Or they might decide that they want nothing to do with the brands and sell off the Quebec brewery, perhaps even returning it to local interests. The point in between, that being allowing the brands to languish, is to me the least likely scenario.

And hey, look, it's Mr. Beaumont again, this time posting to his beer blog at That's The Spirit:

What I view as the jewel in the Sleeman crown, Quebec’s Unibroue, may also be divested, as it represents a facet of the market – luxury brands crafted in the Belgian style – with which the Japanese have no experience. Conversely, I could also envision Sapporo embracing the profitable Unibroue line and expanding it both domestically and internationally, even making it an ultra-high end flagship in Japan. Either scenario I think signals a positive future for what is arguably Canada’s best-known craft brewery.

(Beaumont talks about some non-Unibroue factors in both of those posts as well, so I recommend you go and check them out.)

And course, our good friend Alan at A Good Beer Blog chimed in with some good observations:

[I]t is a little sad to note that no one is recognizing that there were a few factors that created the strain forcing the sale. The only one cited is the buck-a-beer discount phenomena. No one is discussing the move into the US which has not apparently gone well as Sleeman is placing its product next to quality micros and coming up short. No one is mentioning the challenge of buying up any number of larger micros across Canada and whether that project played out well. And no one is asking whether what is in the bottle is the issue. The way Sleeman is talked about you would think you were dealing with innovators like Dogfish Head or masters of quality like Brooklyn Brewery or even a micro brewery.

Thanks for the content, guys. I promise not to rip you off too often. You've just helped me fill some space until I can get around to finishing the last part of that damn Michigan festival report that no-one is waiting for...

News From Toronto's Festival Of Beer

2006-08-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

The wife and I checked out Toronto's Festival of Beer yesterday, and I put together a news item for The Bar Towel on the new beers and other announcements made at the fest. I'll be editing and expanding the piece into a full festival report that I will probably submit to Gremolata (and link here, of course) - but first, I need to finish my bloated three-part report on the Michigan festival before it becomes completely outdated and redundant...

Lech Premium

2006-08-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

Since it is a government agency, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario - a.k.a. the province's alcohol retail & wholesale overlords - has to be as politically correct as possible when it comes to selecting what products will appear on the shelves. It's therefore quite easy to correlate Ontario's immigration patterns with the LCBO's stocking patterns.

For example, I live in an area of Toronto that is quite close to a neighbourhood full of Polish shops and restaurants. As a result, my local outlet always has plenty of Polish brews on hand, including Tyskie, Okocim Lager and Strong (although sadly, they no longer carry the fantastic Okocim Porter), Zywiec Lager, EB Premium, Lezajsk Lager, Warka Strong, and Dojlidy Zubr.

The newest addition to this line-up of generally middling Polish imports is Lech Premium, which has the distinction of being the first of the bunch to be offered in cans (more evidence of the LCBO's somewhat questionable new policy to give preference to cans over bottles when selecting new beers for their general list - a topic for a future blog post, perhaps...). Like Dojlidy Zubr and Tyskie, Lech comes to us from Kompania Piwowarska, the Polish arm of SABMiller that stirred up controversy a while back when it took on some of the brewing of Pilsner Urquell, the classic Czech beer that defined the Pilsner style. But that's just the sort of thing that happens when multinational brewing behemoths keep chomping up the little guys...

Anyway... even though it's produced by an evil conglomerate, this Lech Premium is a decent little beer. It pours a pale, bright yellow-gold with large white head that disappears pretty quickly. The aroma holds soft herbal hops and a bready maltiness - quite nice. The flavour is fairly sweet off the top, with lemon cookie notes in the middle, and a good balance of herbal, grassy hops and biscuity malt in the finish. This will be a good option in the future when I'm in the mood for something light and refreshing, especially since cans tend to keep beers like this in better shape than bottles.

Michigan Festival & Road-Trip Report: Part Two

2006-08-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

In the first part of this report, I wrote about our stops on the way down to Ann Arbor on the day before the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival, and left off with our visit to the Bello Vino Marketplace where we did some serious bottle shopping. From there, we returned to our hotel for a quick rest and some freshening up before hitting downtown Ann Arbor for some bar and brewpub hopping.

Or that was the plan, at least. Our intentions were to get a quick cab ride into town, have dinner and beer at Arbor Brewing, make a quick stop at Grizzly Peak Brewing for a taste or two, and then head over to Ashley's to finish off the evening. However, we didn't account for two factors:

1) The concept of a "quick cab ride" does not seem to exist in Ann Arbor. Instead, when you call a cab, it will take roughly 45 minutes to arrive, and will end up being a dilapilated wreck driven by a guy who looks like he should be living in the mountains with a stockpile of guns & ammo plotting to take over the government.

2) The weekend of the MBG fest corresponded with the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a group of four concurrent outdoor art exhibitions which close down most of the downtown core to traffic and draw a reported 500,000 people into a city that has a population of only 114,000.

As a result, once we finally got downtown, we found that both Arbor Brewing and Grizzly Peak were packed to the gills. So we slogged our way through the crowds and headed to Ashley's, which was - of course - packed to the gills. However, the door girl assured us that there would soon be some space available as they were going to be opening up the downstairs, so we hit the sub shop on the corner for a quick bite, and got back in time to score some seats in the downstairs bar (The Underground), a dark, cave-like space that reminded me a lot of the sort of places I used to hang out in when I was younger and wore black all the time - except with a better beer list. While the selection in the basement was limited, it still boasted several taps from Bell's as well as a couple of other local breweries and some well chosen imports.

However, being a bunch of old fogeys - well, except for Jeremy, but we're working on him! - the loud music and cigarette smoke started to get to us, so we made our escape to the less claustrophobic main floor where we things had started to clear out a bit. While the beer selection downstairs had been nice, the upstairs bar had a tap and bottle list that I believe more than one of us described rather enthusiatically as "fucking awesome!". The tap selection features 70 brews with a good balance of locals and imports, including some that we could only dream of ever seeing on tap in Ontario (Young's Oatmeal Stout, Spaten Optimator, Duchesse de Bourgogne, Gulden Draak...). Not to mention the three handpumps (including Dogfish Head 90 Minute!) and the rotating, often exclusive selections from Jolly Pumpkin, Kuhnhenn, New Holland, Rogue, Victory and Short's. And let's not forget the 70+ bottles...

Needless to say, we were all feeling pretty good by the time we left Ashley's. But we felt a little less good when we remembered the problems we had getting a cab down there, and even worse when a local informed us that even if we saw a cab driving by, trying to hail it would be futile since people just don't hail cabs in Ann Arbor. Our waitress had given us the number of one of the cab companies, but their estimate to get a cab sent to pick us up was "around 20 minutes". Considering that our earlier pick-up had been promised to be "around 10 minutes" but had taken over 45, we eventually decided that it might be better to walk the 2.5 miles back to the hotel rather than wait around for a taxi that might never show up.

Somehow, at least one of us managed to retain some semblance of direction in our beer addled brain, and we actually made it back to the hotel unharmed. And thanks to the brisk walk and copious sweating, relatively sober as well. And as indicated by the photo to the right, our trek seemed to take us through the liberal part of town, which allowed my buddy Jeff to make a fine political statement...

To Be Continued

Scissor Sisters - "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"

2006-08-04T08:51:00.000-04:00

Those familiar with my past music-related activities might be surprised to see the Scissor Sisters as my first music recommendation on this blog, but they've actually been a a guilty pleasure of mine ever since I first heard their wonderfully over-the-top cover of "Comfortably Numb".

I've been anxiously awaiting their upcoming second album, Ta Dah, and I recently stumbled across a leak of the first single, "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'". Like much of the first album, this track is an unabashed throwback to the heyday of disco when it crossed into the mainstream and cross-bred with rock and pop. Elton John participates on this track in some way, and his influence definitely shows - imagine a late 70s collaboration between John and the Bee Gees, and you'll have some idea what this sounds like. It's campy, cheesy, and catchy as hell, and I'm loving it!

The big question, though, is what beer goes best with the Scissor Sisters? Well, you'll probably want something fruity and fun, but with a bit of a bite to it as well. From stuff I've tasted recently, I'd have to suggest St. Louis Premium Kriek, which has the candy and cough drop notes that you'd expect from a sweetened cherry lambic, but with a mild & pleasant tart funkiness in the finish. Sweet and funky - a perfect match!

Samuel Adams Brewer Patriot Collection

2006-08-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

I know that it's not cool to admit this amongst serious beer geeks, but I've always had a fair bit of admiration for the Boston Beer Company, aka Samuel Adams. They were indisputably one of the main impetuses behind the American craft beer movement, and their Boston Lager was probably the first American beer I tried that didn't completely suck. In fact, I still consider it a benchmark in the Premium Lager category, a stance that some people still agree with, even if others don't.

Even though they've grown to become the largest craft brewer in the US (so large that some argue they no longer fit the "craft beer" definition), they still have the balls to produce some really crazy, out-there beers. Not all of them have been successful, of course - helloooo, so-called Cranberry Lambic - but at the very least they deserve props for redefining what a beer can be with their Triple Bock, Millenium and Utopias.

Their latest laudable experiment is the Brewer Patriot Collection, a set of 4 beers that I will lazily describe by taking an excerpt from the press release:

"The Samuel Adams Brewer Patriot Collection honors our fine American brewing tradition by bringing back historical beer recipes and by using many of the same authentic ingredients the founders used," said Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Samuel Adams beers. "Brewing beers that the founding fathers would have brewed and enjoyed themselves is a one-of-a-kind experience. It gave me a true sense of connection not only to our country’s heritage, but also to these first American brewers."

When I heard about these back in June, I knew I wanted to try them, and thanks to my buddy Harry's sister who called him from a bottle shop on her way through Ohio to ask if he wanted her to pick up anything, I was recently able to do so. Here's what I thought:

Traditional Ginger Honey Ale
Ginger beer was quite common in the 1700s, and according to the label of this beer, "records show that Thomas Jefferson and his wife brewed 15 gallons of ginger beer with fresh lemons and honey every two weeks for daily consumption". It pours a hazy yellow-gold with a small head. There's lots of honey in the aroma, along with some fresh ginger notes, and a bit of maltiness. The flavour has a nice hit of ginger off the top, followed by smooth honey notes, and a floral/lemony finish. A nice one to start with.

1790 Root Beer Brew
Being a big fan of root beer, I was really looking forward to this one. It ended up being not what I expected at all. My tasting notes started "wow, this is some weird-ass shit!" and went from there. Colour is a hazy ruby-orange with a tiny tan head. Aroma is very herbal and medicinal - smells like some old timey snake oil remedy or something - with notes of dark sugar and vanilla as well. Flavour of bitter herbs, wintergreen, anise, licorice, vanilla, and some stuff I just don’t recognize. I wanted to love this beer, but sadly, I didn’t. It’s an interesting experiment, and I’m glad to have tried it, but I’m also glad to have shared it with my friend Jeremy who came by to split the pack with me - and I’m really glad that my wife liked it, 'cause Jer didn't much like it either, so at least the rest of the bottle didn’t go to waste.

James Madison Dark Wheat Ale
Appearance - hazy dark amber-brown with a small white head. Aroma is quite muted, with a hint of sweet malt and a faint smokiness - my wife says "It smells old, with an e on the end". Soft mouthfeel, and flavour of toasted malt and brown sugar. Seems like it could be a good beer if the flavour were pumped up a bit more.

George Washington Porter
I expected this to be the highlight of the pack, and I was right. Clear dark brown appearance with a strong tan head. Very nice aroma: dark malt, coffee, a bit of molasses, and some sour herbal notes. Body is thin, but active. Flavour has a nice roasty quality, complimented by notes of licorice, coffee and molasses, and finishing with more licorice and a slightly acidic bitterness. A really nice offering that is comparable to some of the better old style porters I've had from the UK.

So all in all, this pack ran about 50/50 for me, but even the ones I didn't like were interesting in their way. That's more than I can say for a lot of beers that I've tried. It just makes me sad that SA's Canadian distributor, Sleeman, is so worried about these superior south of the border brews making their line-up of bland "premium" beers look bad that they will only import the Boston Lager for sales in Canada. Thank god for good beer stores just across the border...

Michigan Festival & Road-Trip Report: Part One

2006-07-30T16:23:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has spoken to me about beer for more than five minutes or so is quite familiar with my rant about the pitiful selection of American craft beer here in Ontario. The only American microbrew available to us on a year-round basis is Anchor Liberty Ale, and the only other even halfway decent US beer on our shelves is Sam Adams Boston Lager. This despite the fact that some of the best beers in North America - if not the world – are being brewed just across the border.

I learned just how much we're missing back in 2003 when I joined a couple of friends on a road trip to the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival. At the time, I only knew about one or two Michigan breweries, so it was quite an adventure to be exposed to several dozen new breweries and their 200+ beers. I ploughed through as many of them as I could in the few short hours of the festival, but there were so many more that I didn't try, so a return trip had been on my mind ever since.

Back in the spring, my four regular beer tasting buddies and I decided to take the trip to this summer's edition of the Festival, and hit a few other beer destinations on the way. Thanks to beermapping.com and the Places & Metros sections on RateBeer, we were able to put together a nice itinerary for ourselves, and on July 21st we were on our way.

We all crawled out of our respective beds bright and early, and after some zig-zagging around town to do the pick-ups and the obligatory stop at Timmy's, we hit the highway. The morning passed quickly, and the border crossing at Sarnia/Port Huron was uneventful. We made it to Royal Oak by noon, just in time for lunch at our first destination.

Bastone (419 South Main St., Royal Oak, MI) is a slightly upscale but unpretentious Belgian-themed brewpub. The room is large and high-ceilinged, but made to feel cozy with strategically placed booths and dividers, and the service is attentive and friendly. Their food menu features Belgian favourites alongside such pub-friendly selections as burgers, sandwiches, pizzas and pastas – if you happen to visit, I highly recommend the oven-baked macaroni & cheese with truffled breadcrumb topping.

Most importantly, they make some mighty fine beer, drawing influence not only from Belgian brewing traditions, but from other European classic styles as well. Their regular line-up features Blonde, Pilsener, Belgian Wit, Pale Ale and Dubbel, and they also dedicate two taps to seasonal offerings, with Dortmunder and Hefeweizen being the selections when we visited. The only real disappointment in their line-up is the Blonde – it's a 4% pale lager, obviously brewed to appease any Coors Light drinkers who may dine there – but the rest ranged from enjoyable to very good. I especially liked their Pale Ale, which struck a perfect balance between sweet caramel malts and sharp, citric hops; and their Pilsener, a refreshing and well-hopped take on the style. Good beer, good food, good atmosphere - it was a promising first stop for the weekend.

It was only a few miles from Bastone to our next stop: Kuhnhenn Brewing (5919 Chicago Road, Warren, MI). Kuhnhenn is one of the most creative and adventurous breweries around, as illustrated by their brewery page at RateBeer that lists over 100 different beers, ciders and meads they've brewed since 1998. Our primary purpose for this visit was to pick up some bottles of their revered Raspberry Eisbock, and between the five of us we cleared them out of all but a few bottles from their last couple of cases. And since we were there, we couldn't resist getting a few sampler trays to try the beers they were serving in their rustic looking taproom.

As at Bastone, the most disappointing offering was their pale lager which they dub Classic American Lager and fittingly describe on the menu as "light in color, some sweetness, no hop aroma, very low bitterness" – i.e. one for the mainstream lager drinkers. Thankfully, the rest of their line-up is much more creative, with some highlights from our visit being their perfectly on-style Hefeweizen, their fruity and hoppy IPA, their astoundingly decadent Crème Brûlée Java Stout, and their unique Tangerine Wit that we all agreed would make a perfect breakfast beer. We also sampled their Nine Belgian Ale, Loonie Kuhnie Pale Ale, Scotch Ale, Maibock and ESB.

From there, it was an hour or so to our hotel near Ann Arbor where we checked in, dumped our gear, and then headed out on our main shopping expedition of the weekend to Bello Vino Marketplace (2789 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, MI). These sort of upscale grocery stores that also house a great selection of beer & wine are quite commonplace in a lot of American cities, but to Ontarians who are at the mercy of the LCBO and The Beer Store, they're like a little bit of heaven on earth. Bello Vino reminded us a lot of Premier Gourmet, a fine food & drink emporium in Buffalo that is a favourite spot for Toronto beer geeks making border runs. But being in a different state, we found a much different selection of beer, including lots of stuff from Michigan mainstays like Bells, Jolly Pumpkin & Founders (although alas, they were out of the latter's mindblowing Breakfast Stout); goodies from other Midwestern faves such as Great Lakes and Goose Island; and a fantastic array of imports that we could normally only dream about. Thanks to a very helpful staffer who was willing to split up a bunch of six-packs for us, we were all able to put together a new assortment of local and not-so-local beers, and we headed back to the hotel with a much heavier back-end than we'd arrived with.

To Be Continued...

Michigan Brewing Celis Grand Cru

2006-07-26T22:33:00.000-04:00

About 10 years ago, when my interest in trying new and different beers was really kicking in, I read about a beer called Celis White that Waterloo's Brick Brewery had just started brewing in Ontario under contract. This was a Belgian Witbier, a style I had never heard of, and the idea of a beer being brewed with orange and coriander seemed to foreign and exciting. I couldn't wait to try it, and once I did it became a quick favourite.

It wasn't until a couple of years later when the beer suddenly disappeared from Ontario stores that I did a bit of research and discovered that the father of this fine beverage, one Pierre Celis, had actually rescued the Belgian Witbier style from near extinction back in the 1960s when he founded the Brouwerij de Kluis in his hometown of Hoegaarden and created the now ubiquitous Hoegaarden Wit. In the late 1980s, Celis retired and sold his brewery to Interbrew - now part of the massive brewing conglomerate InBev - and moved to the unlikely location of Austin, Texas, where he soon caught the brewing bug again and opened Celis Brewery, with the flagship beer being Celis White.

A few years down the road, Celis retired again and sold the brewery to Miller, who basically had no idea what to do with it. After letting it flounder for a few years, they shut it down in 2001 - which is around the same time that Brick stopped brewing it for Ontario - and sold the Celis brands to Michigan Brewing the following year. Ever since then, I've wanted to try some of the other Celis brands, so I made a point of checking for them during my recent trip to Michigan (yes, the road trip & festival report is still coming soon!) and picked up a bottle of Celis Grand Cru.

This beer poured a clear bright golden colour with a pillowy white head that quickly dissipated. The clarity of the beer surprised me as I was expecting something similar to the pale yellow milkiness of the Celis White, but the connection between the beers is obvious in the aroma, which holds notes of yeast, spice and orange zest. The orange comes through strong in the flavour as well - sweet off the top, tart and dry in the finish - alongside some tingly spiciness and a pleasant alcohol warmth (it's an 8%er, so I was expecting that). The body is a bit on the sticky side, and it's not quite as assertive as the Hoegaarden Grand Cru I tried recently, but it certainly holds up well against it. The folks at RateBeer consider it fairly average - 3.2 out of 5 rating, 55.1 style percentile - but I'd rank it higher than that personally.

And in case you're wondering what Mr. Celis is up to now: he moved back to Belgium after the Miller sale, but has now at least partially unretired once again and is teaming up with Real Ale Brewing in Blanco, Texas to launch a new wheat beer called Brussels Grand Cru. Even at the age of 81, it's obvious that he's got a lot of brewing left in him yet.