Christmas Cheer with OCB Beer

Just in time for the holidays, the latest batch of sampler packs to media from the Ontario Craft Brewers went out a couple of weeks ago – and interestingly, rather than just sending out their latest Discovery Pack, they did up one-off samplers in handy six-bottle/can carriers from the fine folks at CRAP, along with some tasty bottle and mug shaped cookies.

My package contained six beers that I’m quite familiar with – Beau’s Lug-Tread Lagered Ale, Black Oak Nutcracker Porter, Cameron’s Auburn Ale, Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion, Muskoka Cream Ale and Wellington Special Pale Ale. All nice enough quaffers. And quaff them I have – or most of them, at least, with the last couple sitting in the fridge to be downed soon.

Given my aforementioned familiarity with them, I haven’t bothered taking any tasting notes – and honestly, most of them are beers more suited to drinking and enjoying casually rather than analytically. But thanks to the magic of RateBeer, I’m able to bring you some notes I wrote up about each of them in the past (with a few new comments & amendments as needed)…

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Catching Up

While I take some time to get things together for some posts I’ve got planned, here are links to the beery and boozy writing I did for Taste T.O. in the couple of months before we put the site on hiatus.

Nov 9th: Beers of the Week – Harviestoun Ola Dubh Series
A review feature on the five Ola Dubh versions – 12, 16, 18, 30 & 40 – that were released at the LCBO recently.

Nov 2nd: Pub Crawl – Parkdale
A virtual tour of five of the best places get a pint in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

Oct 28th: Glenfiddich – Not Just For Newbies
A re-cap of two Glenfiddich tasting events I attended in one day, one of which included the somewhat rare 21 Year Old, and the really rare 40 Year Old.

Oct 26th: Beer of the Week – Creemore Springs urBock
Review of a returning seasonal favourite.

Oct 19th: LCBO Opens The Whisky Shop
A look at the line-up of premium spirits on offer via the LCBO’s new Whisky Shop promotion.

Oct 12th: Beers of the Week – Birrificio Brùton
Some thoughts on the beers of Italy’s Birrificio Brùton, which I enjoyed in the company of brewery founder Iacopo Lenci.

Oct 5th: Pub Crawl – Downtown Yonge
The first installment in the returning Pub Crawl series, and also the first in the new multi-venue format, featuring short write-ups on five bars and pubs in the same neighbourhood.

Sep 28th: Beers of the Week – Here’s to Hallowe’en!
An advance preview of the pumpkin beers and other spooky ales brought in by the LCBO for Hallowe’en this year.

Sep 21st: Beer of the Week – Muskoka Harvest Ale
Review of one of the best seasonal ales available in Ontario this fall.

Sep 14th: Beers of the Week – The Ales of Autumn
Preview of the beers included in the LCBO’s 2010 Autumn Ales promotion.

Sep 7th: Hanging Out With Bud And Jack
Notes on a unique day where I met the men currently responsible for two of America’s most legendary alcohol brands: George F. Reisch, Brewmaster at Anheuser-Busch; and Jeff Arnett, Master Distiller at Jack Daniel’s.

Beer Review: HogsBack Vintage Lager

Yes, I know that I still owe you all several more Toronto Beer Week recaps. Although it’s starting to get to the point where I’m almost embarrassed to be writing about it so long after it happened. So we’ll see.

In the meantime – it’s been a bit of awindfall of free beer around these parts lately, so I figured I should start writing about some of it before I get a bad name for myself as that goddamn freeloading so-called “beer blogger” who never keeps up his end of the bargain.

First up: HogsBack Vintage Lager from HogsBack Brewing Company, a fairly new venture that started up in Ottawa earlier this year. Like their fellow Ottawa newcomers, Kichesippi Beer Company, HogsBack has started as a contract operation, with their single brand being brewed for them at Cool Brewery here in Toronto.

Aside from where the beer is brewed, they’ve been a steadfastly local concern, selling their beer only on tap, and only in the Ottawa area. The first of those will soon be changing, though, as they’re getting set to launch their Lager in bottles sometime in the next couple of months, with plans to sell it in six-packs at LCBOs in and around Ottawa.

A couple of weeks ago, Paige Cutland – one of the four partners behind HogsBack – dropped me a note saying that he’d be coming through Toronto and would like to drop off some bottles for me. I was expecting a couple of bottles, or maybe a sixer, so I was surprised when he showed up with a full case (fellow Toronto beer bloggers: I’ll be in touch soon to share the wealth…), but it’s given me a chance to try a few bottles to form a solid opinion of the beer.

And that opinion is: It’s good. Not OMG BEST BEER EVAR!!!!!!! good, but also not one of those so-called “premium lagers” that is really just a very small step up from macrobrew.

It pours a pale gold with a respectable white head, very much looking the part of a “European-inspired lager” as self-described. Aroma starts with some husky malt with a touch of fermented fruit sweetness and clean grassy hops. The palate is a bit sticky/oily, and the flavour is a bit sweeter off the top than what I personally prefer in a golden lager, but it balances out in the middle as some of the huskiness suggested by the aroma comes through, followed by light but fresh and zippy Saaz hops in the finish.

So, like I said – good. Not something I’d travel to Ottawa for, but if I lived there, I wouldn’t mind it being one of my hometown beers.

There Are Some Things I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You…

…and here they are:

1. My weekly column for Taste T.O. this past Tuesday was a re-review of Great Lakes Devil’s Pale Ale – “re-review” because I had previously written about it three years ago when it was first launched in cans, but the recipe has recently been tweaked to make it hoppier and much more enjoyable.
2. Speaking of re-reviews – last night I cracked open one of those lovely 750 ml ceramic swing-top bottles from Beau’s All-Natural Brewing, containing their limited edition Screaming Beaver Oak-Aged Angry IPA, which I had been sitting on since May. I tried a pint of it on cask back in the spring and didn’t care for it at all – it was boozy and sticky and just a big hot mess. But either the three months or so of sitting in my fridge took the edge off the bottled version, or it was a beer better suited for bottle format over cask – either way, I enjoyed the hell out of it this time. Big aroma with the oak, malt and hops playing very nicely off each other, and a flavour that starts sweet, with some notes of caramel and tropical fruit, before it turns dry and bitter with a wonderfully long and lingering finish of pine and grapefruit and wood. Mmmm-mmmm!
3. Not sure how I missed mentioning this before, but a few weeks back, my buddy Troy over at the Great Canadian Beer Blog did a Q&A with me as part of a series of Ontario beer blogger profiles. Seven of us have been featured so far, and as the blogroll I maintain over at Canadian Beer News shows, Troy will have plenty more to choose from if he decides to continue, especially if he expands to cover all of Canada. Hard to believe that just a few years ago, there were only 3 or 4 of us doing the beer blogging thing in the whole country.
4. Finally, I’m flattered to have been asked by George down at C’est What? to participate in one of the events they’re holding during Toronto Beer Week. Dubbed “Not Always In Good Taste – a beer writers-in-the-round“, it’s gonna feature Stephen Beaumont, Nick Pashley, Ian Coutts, Steve Cameron, Troy Burtch, Aonghus Kealy, Josh Rubin and myself sitting on stage talking about beer. And drinking some as well, I would expect. Which could be pretty boring, but given that it’s happening at 10:00 PM following several other TBW events, including what is sure to be an epic Brewdog beer dinner at beerbistro, I fully expect that most of us – and most of the audience – will be half in the bag before it even starts. So best luck to whoever is supposed to moderate the damn thing…

This Week on Taste T.O.: Wellington Silver Wheat Ale

While my “Beer of the Week” column on Taste T.O. usually features positive reviews of beers that I like – or occasionally, so-so reviews of beers that I can at least appreciate to some degree even if I don’t love them – it’s rare that I post a completely negative review.

But that’s what you’ll find there this week, as I have nothing good to say about Wellington Silver Wheat Ale, a complete mess of a beer that is made even worse by the fact that it was made to celebrate Wellington Brewery‘s 25th anniversary.

Most breweries take such milestones as an opportunity to create something really big and special and flavourful, but Wellington decided instead to go in the opposite direction, releasing a pale and light North American style wheat ale – and one afflicted with a multitude of flaws to boot.

Click here to share my pain, anger and disappointment.

Two More From Molson: Rickard’s Red & Creemore Springs Kellerbier

In my beer review column on Taste T.O. this week, I freely admit to enjoying Rickard’s White, despite the fact that they might take my Certified Beer Geek card away for liking a Molson Coors product. It’s certainly not the best Belgian-style wheat beer around – it’s too sweet for one thing, and less nuanced than better examples for another – but it’s still tasty, especially when it’s fresh, and serves as a good fallback beer in the sort of places that haven’t come around to the fact that there’s more to beer than Molson, Labatt and a few big name imports.

Because as far as we’ve come in the current Craft Beer Revolution, we’ve still got a long way to go. For a lot of Canadian beer drinkers, Rickards White may be as close as they’ve ever come to a craft beer, in much the same way that a lot of American beer drinkers view Blue Moon Belgian Wheat, the Coors-owned beer that Rickard’s White is based upon, as something really unique and out there.

This is something I can relate to, as I had a similar reaction to another Rickard’s beer around 20 years ago. While I was already familiar with the craft beer of the time from breweries like Brick, Formosa and Upper Canada, the beers I was drinking from them were mainly pale lagers. So the first time I saw Rickard’s Red, I was confused and intrigued. A red beer? Who had ever HEARD of such a thing? And since the Molson connection wasn’t well publicized at the time, I assumed that it was from some other small brewery like those others I’d been discovering.

This Week on Taste T.O.: Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew

My weekly column for Taste T.O. went up a little while ago, featuring a review of Hitachino Nest Real Ginger Brew.

As the review notes, I nearly gave up on this beer after having two pretty awful samples a couple of months ago. But good buzz about it once it showed up as a late arrival in the LCBO’s Summer seasonal beer release convinced me to give it another shot, and I had a much more positive experience.

And speaking of seasonal beer releases – very nice looking lists have been announced for the LCBO’s upcoming Autumn Ales and Hallowe’en Beers promotions. Combined with the Dieu du Ciel! brewery spotlight release launching next week, it looks like it’s going to be a happy (and expensive) couple of months for Ontario beer geeks…

Into The Light: A Molson Quartet

Over on Taste T.O. this week, I’ve got a review of Muskoka Pilsner Light, a newish beer from Muskoka Cottage Brewery that is “Light” due to being 4% alcohol, but is otherwise a solid and flavourful German-style pilsner. In the piece, I make the point that the name – which I assume was chosen at least partially to get the beer noticed by drinkers of Coors/Bud/Blue/etc. Light who may be willing to experiment a bit – might end up alienating Muskoka’s core customer base of craft beer drinkers who would sooner drink water than a typical North American Light Lager.

I have hope that the quality of the beer – which is quite high – will win it fans regardless of the name. But there’s still a big reason why so few small breweries call their beers “Light” even if they happen to be lower alcohol lagers, and that reason is that most mainstream light lagers simply aren’t very good. Not that they’re completely undrinkable (well, some of them, at least), but they inevitably lack some or all of the elements that craft beer drinkers look for in a beer – elements like colour, body, aroma and flavour.

I recently had a chance to reconfirm my opinion about macrobrewed light lagers when I received a promo shipment from Molson Coors Canada containing a selection of beers from their portfolio, ranging from light and ultra-light lagers to craft and pseudo-craft brews. I’ll give some thoughts on the beers in the latter category in a subsequent post, but for this one, I’ll be concentrating on the quartet of cans in the former group.

This Week on Taste T.O.: Amsterdam Boneshaker IPA

For this week’s “Beer of the Week” column over on Taste T.O., I review Boneshaker IPA, a rather excellent new(ish) beer from Amsterdam Brewery.

Great to see brewmaster Jamie Mistry continuing to brew interesting seasonal and one-off beers – he’s really turned things around at Amsterdam since joining a year or two back.

The column also touches on the debate regarding small beer samples – i.e. the little plastic cups you tend to get at festivals – and how valid they are for writing up proper tasting notes. I’m interested in hear other opinions on this, so feel free to comment there or here if you have something to say.

This Week on Taste T.O.: The Beers of MicroBrasserie Charlevoix

In order to start giving this blog some semblance of regular content, I’m going to try and post a link to my column on Taste T.O. each week. If I’m on the ball (which I am this week, surprisingly), I can even write it up and schedule it at the same time as I schedule the Taste T.O. post so they’ll go up simultaneously. Mmmmm, technology!

This week, it’s a review round-up of nine beers from MicroBrasserie Charlevoix that were launched in Ontario this past weekend via the fine folks at HMH Negotiants import agents.

(Note to non-Canadian readers: Yes, beer from Quebec – or any other Canadian province – needs to be “imported” in order to be sold in Ontario. It’s all very silly.)

In addition to the beers brought in by HMH for the launch, I also recently had the chance to try Charlevoix Dominus Vobiscum Brut, a limited edition beer created in the Champenoise style; i.e. with champagne yeast used for fermentation, and the traditional steps of “remuage” and “dégorgement” following. The result is a sparkling and effervescent golden ale with a very complex character, combining aromas and flavours of sweet fruit (notably peach and lychee), florals (rose and lavender), mild spice and yeast, and mellow herbal hops. Really nice stuff, and one of the better examples I’ve tried of this still rare beer style.