Yes, I know that  promised a series of Innis & Gunn review posts, and they’ll be coming soon eventually, and more as well. But I wanted to get this post up quickly while at least one of the beers is still in season.

The trigger for this was a package I got from Propeller Brewery in Halifax a couple of weeks ago with some bottles of this year’s batch of their Pumpkin Ale. It’s a beer that I liked a lot when I tried the 2006 version, so I was happy to give it another go, and even happier to find it just as good as I remembered it. In fact, based on this tasting notes from back in ‘06…

Hazy light gold with a massive rocky white head. Big pumpkin pie aroma – cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mutmeg, pumpkin – very nice! Body is quite aggressively carbonated at first, but mellows as it warms and flattens a bit. Flavour of a pleasant, well-made golden ale laced with pumpkin and spice, and a dry finish with an interesting lemon cookie note. Very refreshing brew that lacks the cloying character that taints some other pumpkin beers I’ve tried.

… it appears that it hasn’t changed much since then. Which is perfectly fine.

And since I was in a Propeller mood tonight, I reached further into the fridge for the bottle of Propeller Hefeweizen that my friends Jeremy and Karen passed on to me a couple of months ago. I really should’ve had it sooner, as it was already 4 or 5 months old by then, and hefes are always better fresh. But it was still in OK shape considering:

Cloudy golden with a medium white head that recedes to a thin film that sticks around through the whole glass. Lightly yeasty aroma with hints of lemon and pineapple. Good mouthfeel with a nice level of carbonation. Flavour is a bit muted, but what’s there is pleasant, with nice tropical and citrus fruit notes, some crispness from the wheat, and a mildly spicy and yeasty finish. Based on the label, it looks like this was bottled back in April, so drinking it six months later I’m obviously not getting it at it’s prime. It’s still a decent hefe, though.

I briefly considered making it a Halifax trio and cracking the Garrison Hop Yard I’ve got chilling in there, but it’s getting late. So I decided to hold off, and will perhaps bring it out along with a bottle of the Ol’ Fog Burner Barley Wine that I’ll be reviewing later this week for the next issue of TAPS.

I have too much beer.

Well, OK, that’s not entirely accurate. I only have about 100 bottles on hand right now, which is a small drop in a large bucket compared to a few people I know who have beer cellars that are large enough to be worth more than the GDP of a small country.

The problem, though, is that between the ol’ day job and a deluge of dinners, tastings and other things I’ve been attending recently, I’m rarely drinking any beer at home. And when I do get the chance to do so, it’s usually when I’m taking advantage of having a bit of down time to watch TV or a movie, and I don’t want to drink anything that I need to think about or take notes on.

As a result, I’m faced with a backlog of brews that I’ve received or picked up to write about. And in the case of the stuff I’ve been sent, I’m starting to feel guilty about letting the bottles sit and wait to be consumed and reviewed.

This is especially true of the assorted Innis & Gunn beers that their Canadian rep Nicol Rennie passed on to me a couple (or more accurately, a few) weeks ago. Nic was kind enough to give me a couple of bottles of their Triple-Matured version which recently hit the shelves in Ontario, as well as their upcoming holiday gift pack which has bottles of I&G Original, IPA, and Rum Cask editions along with a lovely glass. So having them sit undrunk for so long is making me feel like a bit of a schmuck.

My plan at first was to do a single post reviewing all of them, but given that they’re not exactly the sort of beers that you can polish off several of in a single session (well, you could, but it would be hard to get any useful tasting notes out of it…), I figured a better bet would be a series of posts as I get around to drinking each of them. And since I still had a bottle each of the I&G Blonde and Canadian Cask editions from earlier this year, I thought I’d throw them in to make it a sort of virtual six-pack.

My mild case of OCD directed me to start the series with Innis & Gunn Original. I’ve already told the unique story of how this beer was created in an article I wrote for Taste T.O. a couple of years ago, so I won’t rehash things here. I will, however, note my continuing amazement at how a beer that is so different from the pale lagers that dominate the sales of domestic beer has still managed to become the top selling UK beer at the LCBO based mainly on word-of-mouth promotion.

It helps that it’s a pretty good beer, of course. Better than I remembered, in fact.

Here’s what I thought about it when I had my first taste back in 2005:

Pours a bright, clear copper-amber with a creamy white head that sticks around for a while. Aroma holds a very, very faint hint of skunkiness (helllloooo, clear bottle!), but it mainly smells of a nice woody bourbon, with a bit of caramel and butterscotch. Thin body is a bit of a letdown. Flavour is quite sweet, with some strong influence from the oak barrel. Definitely a unique beer that I enjoyed for what it was, but I couldn’t help but imagine that a mild ale with a shot of whiskey dumped into it might be quite similar to this.

I’ve had it a few times since – but not recently – and I found this new bottle to be more balanced and elegant than I recall it being in the past. Perhaps my subsequent tastings of the stronger and more flavourful I&G variations had skewed my memory somewhat, but I found the sweetness to be more subdued and the oak notes to be more mellow. Vanilla is also a bigger player in the flavour than I remembered, and while the body is still light, I didn’t consider it to be as much of a negative feature as before – if anything, it just makes the beer easier to drink. And thanks to the fact that it went straight from gift box to fridge to glass, there was no chance for it to be lightstruck, so it was fresh and clean with no hint of Pepe le Pew.

So, the Innis & Gunn tasting series starts on a positive note. Here’s hoping the other five bottles offer similar enjoyment when I finally get a chance to drink them…

A few weeks back, I did a write-up for Taste T.O. on Moosehead Light Lime and Red Baron Lime, a pair of beers that hit the shelves in Ontario in the dying days of summer, attempting to ride to coattails of the incomprehensibly popular Bed Light Lime. You can click through to read the whole thing if you’d like, but the condensed version is that neither of them is especially good when judged purely as a beer, but the Red Baron was at least a drinkable and somewhat refreshing beverage.

Soon afterwards, I got an email from Adam Moffat, a rep from Molson who I’ve met a couple of times, with an offer to send me a sample of Miller Chill. While not available in Ontario, Molson has recently introduced it into the Alberta market, and Adam was curious to know what I might think of it, even given my general dislike for the lime beer gimmick. I took him up on the offer, making it clear that he shouldn’t expect a glowing review, and he followed through with a delivery a couple of days later.

In my typical fashion, I stuck a bottle in the fridge and then promptly forgot about it until this evening when I found it stashed in the back. With the temperature outside hovering down near the freezing point, it’s certainly not ideal weather for what’s supposed to be a summer quaffer, but I’ve never been one to worry about that sort of thing. So let’s get this done…

It pours a pale gold with a small white head that disappears remarkably quickly. The aroma is initially not so pleasant, offering that stale malt and wet corn husk smell that I get from many mass produced lagers, but that slowly clears and is replaced with notes of candyish lime. The body is thin and crisp, as expected from a light lager, and the flavour holds very little that can be described as “beer-like” – it’s more reminiscent of Sprite with a very, very faint wisp of malt.

Bottom line: Like the three aforementioned products, this is not a brew for serious beer drinkers. It’s for people who want to throw back a few lightly flavoured and slightly sweet alcoholic beverages on a patio, or at a party, or in other situations where people drink a lot without really thinking about what they’re drinking. Regardless of how much it may offend my pretentious beer geek sensibilities, there obviously is – and always will be – a large market for such beers, and for better or worse, Miller Chill serves that market well.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the wife and I don’t get out of the city very often, so we were glad to have the chance to take a quick day trip down to Niagara Falls earlier this month with a couple of friends (and fellow beer geeks) to check out the recently opened Niagara’s Best Brewery & Pub.

Folks familiar with the very mainstream and somewhat unexciting Blonde Ale and Logger Lager brewed by Niagara’s Best at their previous brewery-only location in St. Catharines might wonder why we would drive for a couple of hours to visit the new place, and if that’s all they had on offer, we surely wouldn’t have bothered. But brewer Ian Watson has taken full advantage of the increased flexibility offered by a brewpub operation and has developed a line-up of nine regular brews plus a rotating “Brewer’s Special” tap, so there was much more incentive to make the journey.

The brewery is located in the facility that formerly held the Niagara Falls Brewing Company (before they were bought by Moosehead and moved to the former Cool Brewing factory in Brampton), while the pub and retail shop are in a house out front. The larger-than-life version of their Blonde Ale pin-up girl tap handle above the door makes the place hard to miss, and business has been brisk since they opened, with Ian being run off his feet to keep the beer flowing. While the Blonde and Logger are brewed on a large system to produce enough to be bottled and kegged and sent out for retail and licensee sales, the rest of the beers are brewed on what is essentially a souped-up homebrew system, which means that shortages have been common.

Due to said shortages, we were unable to try the Red, Dark and Pale Ales when we were there, but I had a sampler of the rest of the line-up, and found them all to be pretty solid. Ian admits that most of the main line-up was created with a pretty conservative customer base in mind, so there’s not a ton of experimentation going on, but he’s doing full malt brewing and has found a good flavour balance in all of his recipes. I was especially pleased by the Light Lager, which had a very fresh character with a decently hopped finish, and Sheryl and I both liked the General Brock Oatmeal Stout enough to grab a growler to take home.

(And by the way, it’s fitting that they’ve named their stout after Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, as not only was he an important figure in the military history of the area, but his name was previously used by Niagara Falls Brewing for their Brock’s Extra Stout, one of the very fine beers they made in the same building back in the pre-Moosehead days, where they were actually one of Ontario’s strongest craft breweries.)

As for the food – well, it wasn’t gourmet gastropub fare by any means, but it was fine enough pub grub. My sausage-on-a-bun with potato salad was tasty, with some pretty kick-ass mustard on the side, and our friend Karen had a club sandwich so big that she took half of it home. The only real complaint we had was that one piece of fish in Sheryl’s fish & chips was undercooked, although we reckoned that the oil might not have been hot enough since we arrived literally as they opened for the day and put in the first lunch orders. But otherwise, we happily filled our bellies with what we were served.

Ian was pretty busy in the brewery while we were there, but he came out to chat with us for a bit and see what we thought of the beers. He was pretty proud of the fact that he’s managed to tweak and improve a few of the recipes, and I get the impression that he’s going to continue doing so. And while he’s only got one tap line to use for his “Brewers Specials”, the IPA that he had on while we were there was pretty damn good, and I saw on his Twitter feed tonight that he’s working on a London Porter. So despite the mainstream leanings of many of the brews, I think Niagara’s Best will be able to keep the area’s beer geeks happy as well.

And that’s good, because the other new beer spot in town, Taps Brewhouse & Grill, doesn’t seem to be going after the geek contingent (or not yet, at least). Like Niagara’s Best, they used to be a brewery-only operation in a different town (Virgil, near Niagara-on-the-Lake), but they are now also in Niagara Falls and running as a brewpub. We didn’t have time to stop for a proper visit, but still wanted to check it out, so we just popped by to have a look. It’s a big space converted warehouse feel, and four beers on tap – Charleston Lager, Premium Lager, Red Cream Ale and Vanilla Wheat – none of which are new or exclusive. Hopefully, once they’ve been running for a while, they’ll break out some new stuff.

We spent the remainder of our trip doing some sightseeing and shopping in Niagara-on-the-Lake (which I dubbed “The Quaintest Fuckin’ Town in Ontario”, ’cause it totally is!), and paying a visit to Sunnybrook Winery, Ontario’s only winery dedicated exclusively to fruit wines and cider. And then it was back home to quickly feed and walk the dogs before heading up to Black Creek Pioneer Village for a tour and tasting at Black Creek Historic Brewery, which was really damn cool, and which I wrote about for Taste T.O.. All in all, a very busy & beery day.

LEFT: One of the few reasons that Toronto's Festival of Beer doesn't completely suck - RIGHT: Two of the many, many reasons that it mostly does suck

Several years ago, I accepted that I’m not in the target market for Toronto’s Festival of Beer. Despite assurances in the program that the event caters to the “beer enthusiast” with “an astute palate”, it really is a ridiculously overpriced celebration of swill that is oriented more and more towards fratboys and douchebags every year. From the stupid “hats” made out of six-pack boxes being handed out by Steam Whistle (seriously, folks – penises and boobies? Are you all in Grade 5 or something?), to the booth girls who are hired based on their breast cleavage rather than their beer knowledge, to the massive and obnoxious “Brand Experience Areas” offering such fine beverages as Budweiser and Tecate, the Festival manages to represent pretty much everything that is offensive and embarrassing about the mainstream beer market.

That said, I still take up the offer of a media pass every year and go check it out, and I always manage to find at least a couple of things that save my visit from being a complete waste of time. Here, then, are my five reasons why this year’s Festival wasn’t a total write-off…

1) Great Lakes Caskapalooza!
Truth be told, I was considering skipping the Festival entirely this year, even with a free pass being available. But when Great Lakes Brewery announced a few days ago that they’d be bringing 20(!) one-off casks, I knew I had to be there. Their fancy refrigerated wall o’ casks allowed them to have up to eight on tap at a time, and I went through most of the wall when I was there on Thursday, with all of them impressing me in one way or another. Simon Says Stout might be a little light for some, but it was a good sessionable stout; Neutron Bomb Double IPA was one of the hoppiest Ontario brewed beers I’ve tried, although it was decently balanced as well; and the Up In Smoke Rauchbier was like liquid bacon. (Mmmm, bacon…)

2) The New Venue
Pretty much everyone agreed that the Festival had outgrown their old location at Fort York, and in many ways, it was never a great place to hold it anyway. The venue suffered from a severe lack of shade, and the main entrance was always a bit of a pain to get to. So while the word on the street is that they didn’t leave Fort York completely voluntarily, the move to Bandshell Park at Exhibition Place was a good one (and I’m not saying that just because I live about a 10 minute walk away). There’s a lot more space, more shade, and more seating, and just an all-around more pleasant vibe (even despite the completely overwhelming number of security guards and alcohol enforcement agents wandering the grounds).

3) The (Dwindling) Craft Brewer Contingent
I remember a time when almost every small brewer in the province would be at the Festival, but that is no longer the case, even though the website falsely claims that “more than 250 brands” and “over 95% of Ontario brands” are available. Even as the number of craft breweries on had has dwindled, there are still some stalwarts who have stuck it out, meaning that there are at least a handful of decent drinking options available. Aside from the aforementioned Great Lakes, Ontario micros on hand included Amsterdam, Black Oak, Cameron’s, Flying Monkeys, Mill Street, Niagara’s Best, Nickel Brook, Old Credit, Steelback, Trafalgar, True North and Wellington. And thanks to Esprit Agency’s “Beers of the World” booth and representation from McClelland Premium Imports, Innis & Gunn and Palm, there were a few worthwhile imports available as well.

4) Cheese of Canada and Oyster Boy Booths
Conveniently located right next to each other, these booths were the food highlights for us. At his Cheese of Canada booth, Gurth Pretty and crew were selling small bags of incredibly fresh curds that were perfect for snacking on with the beer, and Oyster Boy – well, ’nuff said.

5) …
Uhh… OK, so it appears that there were only four reasons for the Festival to be at least a little bit non-sucky this year. But that’s better than nothing, I guess.

For a somewhat less generous view on the event, check out my wife Sheryl’s blog post on the topic, where she explains why last week’s Craft Beer Festival at Hart House was so much better, a stance that I can’t really argue with. You might also enjoy Troy’s very thorough review over on his blog, while the write-ups at BlogTO and The Appetizer provide a couple of non-beer-geek perspectives.

If you want to check out the Festival yourself, it runs until Sunday, although Saturday is completely sold out. (What’s that old saying about fools and their money again…?)

Due to the unique (or in less politically correct terms, fucked up) nature of alcohol legislation in Ontario, there are several different ways for beer to enter the marketplace. There are two retail chains – the government-owned LCBO, and the Molson & Labatt owned Beer Store – but getting on the shelves of the former requires approval by the powers-that-be, while listings at the latter are quite expensive.

Because of the time, money and/or red tape involved in getting beers into the province’s retail market, much of the beer imported into Ontario, especially from smaller breweries, is sold straight to bars, restaurants and individuals by import agents via the LCBO’s Private Order and Consignment programs. The result of this is a larger selection of beers being available than store stock suggests, but beer hunters often have to be intrepid to track them down, especially the lesser known beers that are brought in for specific ethnic communities, and that end up at bars and restaurants that aren’t necessarily known for having varied beer selections.

It helps, of course, when the importers do some outreach to try and spread the word about their goods. An example of this is an email I received a few weeks ago from James Tubaro of Oxford Imports, an agency that usually deals with wine, but that recently started carrying Urpiner Ležiak Svetlý, a pilsner from Slovakia’s Banskobystricky Brewery. He dropped off a few bottles for me soon after, and while drinking the final one tonight, I thought I should share some thoughts on it.

My main thought is that it’s a pretty nice beer, comparable to many of the European pilsners that are easily available at the LCBO. It has a beautiful golden colour and a snow white head, and an aroma that’s a touch too sweet for the style, but with a nice bready character and a herbal hop edge. The flavour is very pleasant – fresh bread, some toasted grain, a hint of honey, and very nice, lingering herbal hops in the finish. Again, it’s a bit on the sweet side for a pils, but still a nice little brew.

Tubaro tells me that he’s submitted the beer to the LCBO for retail consideration, so perhaps it will some day join Golden Pheasant on the shelves to make a grand total of two Slovakian beers easily available to Ontario drinkers. For now, though, he’s got it in a number of bars and restaurants around Toronto. So be alert, beer hunters.

(PS: For those who are curious, the “12%” on the label isn’t the alcohol percentage. It represents 12° on the Plato scale, a measurement that I don’t completely understand, but which seems to be commonly used by Eastern European breweries. As far as ABV does, it’s a perfectly reasonable 5%.)

Since being prominently mentioned on two of the world’s most popular beer blogs has drawn in literally hundreds of visits in the last couple of days, I was thinking it might be a good idea to get some new stuff posted to try and impress my new readers. But as usual, I’m too busy to sit down and write something new that would actually be worth reading (although that reminds me that I really should get the second part of my Montreal/Mondial trip report written before it’s completely irrelevant).

However – I do have a stockpile of material written for the last few issues of TAPS Magazine that I figured I could “reprint” – or to use some entertainment industry lingo, “repurpose” – in order to keep things from getting too stale.

Here, then, are my contributions to “Tasting Notes”, a beer review feature that started running in the mag as of the Fall 2008 issue. In a format that was shamelessly nicked from All About Beer, each beer is reviewed by two different writers, although we only do two beers each rather than the four covered in AAB’s “Beer Talk“, and the focus is exclusively on Canadian beers. My counterpart for these reviews has been Stephen Beaumont, and it’s been interesting to see which beers we agree on and which we don’t.

From the Fall 2008 issue:

Propeller IPA
Propeller Brewing Company, Halifax, NS
This treat from the east pours a deep golden-orange with a large snow-white head that shrinks to a thin layer, which congenially sticks around to the bottom of the glass. The aroma is pleasantly fruity, with strong notes of sweetened citrus (grapefruit & orange) and pineapple, and an undertone of caramel malt. Moderately full bodied, with a good level of carbonation. The sweet fruit notes come through off the top of the flavour, followed by the anticipated bitterness from the generous but not overpowering hops, finishing with lingering notes of grapefruit and a hint of spruce. That other so-called IPA might call itself “The Pride of Nova Scotia”, but this is a beer that Bluenosers can really be proud of.

Dernière Volonté
Dieu du Ciel!, Montreal, QC
With the gothic looking label and a name that translates to “Last Will”, you might expect this beer to be an Imperial Stout or some other dark, demonic ale. Instead, this dry-hopped Belgian ale has a slightly hazy golden-orange colour with a large white head that leaves some beautiful lacing as it recedes. The aroma is fantastic, big and fruity (peach, apricot, pineapple) and slightly spicy, with a building floral & tea-like hop character. The body is full and a bit creamy. The flavour starts like a standard but solid Belgian golden ale – yeast, fruit and a bit of spice – but then the hops kick in and take it to the next level with lingering notes of orange zest.

From the Winter 2008/09 issue:

Wild Rose Cherry Porter
Wild Rose Brewery, Calgary, AB
To make a worthy cherry porter, brewers have to tread a fine line. Too much cherry flavour can create a beer version of a sickly sweet Black Forest cake, and not enough can cause the cherry notes to be pretty much lost. Wild Rose Cherry Porter manages to strike a balance between those two extremes, with excellent results. Poured from the hefty 1 L swing-top bottle, it reveals a deep ruby-brown colour with a tan head that leaves nice lacing on the glass. The aroma has inviting smoky roasted malt off the top, with hints of charred espresso beans and cherry juice. The body is soft and moderately full, and the flavour balances dark malt, coffee and cocoa notes with tart cherry and a hint of wood smoke. Goes great with chocolate desserts, and the mild boozy warmth in the finish makes it equally satisfying on its own.

Yukon Lead Dog Ale
Yukon Brewing, Whitehorse, YK
As a dog lover with an especially strong affinity for huskies, the label alone was enough to hook me on this beer. Luckily, the stuff on the inside of the bottle is pretty good as well. Mahogany-brown in colour with a large mocha head, it has a complex and appealing aroma of dry cocoa, dark malt, treacle and anise. The flavour follows with the same notes as the aroma off the top, combined with some dried dark fruit, followed by a hint of smoke and a nicely layered hoppiness that builds in the finish. They call it an English Strong Ale, but to me it brings to mind a robust and warming Porter. Whatever you choose to call it, it’s a fantastic winter treat.

From the Spring 2009 issue:

La Messagère Rousse
Les Bières de la Nouvelle-France, Saint-Alexis-des-Monts, QC
Given the increasing number of gluten-free food products available for those who suffer from celiac disease, it’s a bit surprising that Nouvelle-France is the only brewery in Canada brewing gluten-free beer, using rice and buckwheat instead of barley malt. Their first, the original La Messagère, is an extremely light golden ale with little aroma or flavour, so I was hoping for more from their new Rousse. It certainly looks better than its sibling, with a nice bright copper colour and a thin cap of white foam. With the aroma, however, things start to go downhill: a faint whiff of caramel is overpowered by surprisingly prominent alcohol notes and a slightly medicinal edge. The flavour is similarly medicinal and herbal, vaguely reminiscent of Brio soda, with a quick and sharp hit of tart citrus combined with cherry cough syrup in the finish. It’s laudable for the brewery to be catering to a portion of the population who wouldn’t be able to drink beer otherwise, but personally, this beverage just reminds me that there’s a good reason why most beer is made with barley.

Nickel Brook Cuvée ‘08
Better Bitters Brewing, Burlington, ON
Normally, a single bottle is all it takes for me to put together a review for this feature, but I’m glad I was given three bottles of this beer to sample, as it took me that many to really wrap my head around it. The first bottle of this turbid mahogany ale struck me as being a bit unbalanced and one-dimensional, with not much beer coming through the strong woodiness imparted by the oak aging. But bottles two and three enjoyed over the next couple of nights revealed much more complexity, with notes of caramel, exotic herbs, sour cherry, a well-integrated spiciness, and a tannic quality from the oak that is just on the pleasant side of being astringent. Not something for everyday drinking, but a real sleeper that deserves return visits and careful consideration.

Earlier this evening, I visited beerbistro, and I purchased and drank the beer in the photograph that accompanies this post. It was Cantillon Zwanze 2008, a limited edition lambic from the renowned Belgian brewery that was made with rhubarb.

Like every other Cantillon beer I’ve had, it was excellent, full of tart and funky goodness, with an interesting hint of rhubarb in the finish. A perfect beer to enjoy on a warm early summer evening.

Oh, and it cost me $25 (+ tax and tip) for a 375 ml bottle, which I believe is the most I’ve ever spent on a single serving of beer.

I’m sure there are a lot of people – including many craft beer drinkers – who will think me crazy for dropping so much on a single beer. Hell, for the money I spent on the Zwanze, I could’ve had three pints of something or other at beerbistro, or even more at someplace a little more down market.

So, why did I buy it? Well, a friend mentioned on a private chat forum today that he’d tried it, and since I love Cantillon beers and really like rhubarb, I decided to treat myself and splurge a little. (The fact that I came into a bit of extra money this week kinda helped me make my decision as well…)

And, was it worth it? Tonight, yes, it was. I thoroughly enjoyed the 45 minutes or so I spent drinking the beer, and given it’s scarcity, I felt the price was justified. Beerbistro is probably the only place in Canada, and perhaps in all of North America, to have Zwanze in stock. When I think what a wine of similar quality and rarity would cost in a restaurant, $25 almost seems like a bargain.

I’m curious to know what other people think, though. Is $25 (or more) ever a justifiable price for a bottle of beer, no matter how rare it might be? Does the “just imagine what a comparable wine would cost!” argument hold any weight, or is it a just a way for suckers to justify things to themselves when they drop too much money on a beer? And like the subject line above says, how much is too much when to comes to the price of beer?

Any thoughts?

(PS: While I was sorely tempted, I didn’t steal the glass. While I’m not a regular at beerbistro, I’m there often enough and know enough of the staff that it would’ve made my next visit a bit awkward. Plus, stealing is bad, ‘mkay? But man, that’s a cool glass, isn’t it?)

As my 5 or 6 regular readers will know, I’m not exactly known for brevity or timeliness when it comes to posts on this blog. A perfect example of this is my report on my trip to NYC a couple of years ago, a bloated series of six meandering posts, the last of which wasn’t posted until a month after I got home. So for this report on my trip to Montreal for Mondial de la Bière, I promised myself that I’d be both punctual and somewhat brief.

Well, it’s a bit over a week since I got home, so I’m not doing so great on the “punctual” part. So let’s see how I can do on the “somewhat brief” part…

This year was actually my second Mondial experience, although the first one that was planned. My previous visit took place way back in 2000 when I was in Montreal for the first edition of the MUTEK electronic music festival and stumbled across that year’s Mondial when looking for something to do one afternoon. The festival was in a different location back then, and much smaller as well, but it was still a landmark moment in my craft beer education as I discovered a good number of beers that I’d never heard of before.

I’d been hoping to make it back for another Mondial ever since, but this was the first year that I was able to make it work. Plans were made with some of my local beer pals months ago, and bright and early on Wednesday morning, five of us met up at Union Station to catch the train to Montreal. After arriving mid-afternoon and checking in at our sort-of-but-not-quite-a-hotel, Les Appartements Touristiques du Centre-Ville, we hit the festival for our first session.

From the moment we got there, it was obvious that we were in for an enjoyable few days. The venue, Windsor Station (pictured above in a photo by my friend Alan), is a near-perfect place to hold this sort of event, with a large and airy inside concourse that opens to an equally spacious courtyard. And after dealing with the overbearing security and ridiculous regulations at the swill-soaked frat party that Toronto’s Festival of Beer has become, it was a joy to attend a large-scale beer event that was so laid back. There were no bag or body searches at the door (seriously, folks – they do this at the Toronto festival!); outside food and drink wasn’t confiscated (they do this as well!); and the free admission meant that people could come and go as they pleased and buy as many or as few tasting tickets as they wanted, which in turn made it less likely for attendees to over-indulge. Sure, there some folks who went a bit past their limit, and the sound of a glass being drunkenly dropped echoed through the hall occasionally. But in general, it was remarkably civilized experience.

As you’d expect, a good percentage of the booths were occupied by Quebec breweries and brewpubs, from the large ones like Unibroue, McAuslan and RJ, to some that even we hardcore beer geeks knew little or nothing about. A few importers were also on hand with the beers they represent in Quebec, and two large booths called Le Petit Pub featured a wide assortment of beers from around the world, including some great US product, unique offerings from Italy, Japan and Scandinavia, and thanks to the efforts of Mirella Amato and the Ontario Craft Brewers, a nice selection of brews from Ontario.

We spent a few hours at the festival each day Wednesday to Friday, and a good number of beers were sampled, with very few of them disappointing us, and a number of them being quite outstanding. Like Stephen Beaumont, I was really impressed by the cask version of Hopfenstark’s Post-Colonial IPA (but then again, I am a bit of a Hopfenstark fanboy). I also quite enjoyed the special festival beer from Brasseurs de Montreal, the very refreshing Blanche au Thé Rouge Rooibos, as well as their equally refreshing Chi Orientale, another Blanche with a sharp hit of ginger.

And as it’s now becoming obvious that my attempts to keep this report to a reasonable length are failing miserably, I’m going to cut things off here for now, and save the rest for Part Two. Oh, the anticipation…!

I’m sitting on a train about an hour outside of Montreal on my way to Mondial, clumsily typing away on my new iPhone using the WordPress app. I know I’m about the 57 millionth person to do this sort of thing, but it’s still really fucking cool.

I don’t know if I’ll be doing much live blogging while I’m at the festival, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ll probably be doing some Twittering (@beerbeatsbites). For those who are doing the same, use hash tag #mondial2009