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Agree with him or not, noted beer expert Stephen Beaumont is guaranteed to stimulate your enjoyment of the world's finest brews.
Happy Birthday, Alley Kat!
March 11th, 2010 by stephen_bEdmontonians have cause for celebration, as their oldest local brewery is turning 15 this year! And better still, the co-owners of the Alley Kat Brewing Company, Neil and Lavonne Herbst, have decided to celebrate with not one, but a series of limited edition anniversary beers, beginning with a Smoked Porter, to be released at the brewery tomorrow, March 12.
As much as I appreciate it when Canada’s craft breweries celebrate important anniversaries, I can’t help but feel a little old when they do. After all, when I wrote the first Great Canadian beer Guide, Alley Kat did not even exist, and their groundbreaking Old Deuteronomy Barley wine was not even a glimmer in the eye of founding brewer Neil Herbst. (Okay, maybe it was, but I’m betting he was thinking more about his soon-to-be-born breweries initial two offerings, a soon-to-be-discontinued amber lager and wheat ale, than he was about a 10% alcohol barley wine.)
Congratulations Neil and Lavonne. I won’t be in your area tomorrow, but will lift a glass in Toronto in honour of your birthday.
This Kind of Night
March 9th, 2010 by stephen_bMarch has been kind to us thus far in southern Ontario: high single or low double digit temperatures in the day, loads of sun, cool but still above freezing nights. Just the kind of weather fit for a cigar and a beer.
Okay, so maybe it’s not ideal cigar-and-beer weather, since sitting outdoors – so as to either comply with the law or not stink up the abode – would still call for a warm jacket in the evening. But the idea is not without its charms, even as just the briefest taste of spring.
Yet, what beer? It would need to be sturdy enough to stand up to cigar smoke, potent enough to warm the soul in cooling temps, and yet refreshing in the way that a good cigar beer needs be. Doppelbock, perhaps? Or better still…
If you pass by the corner of Spadina and Front in downtown Toronto this eve, look up and see the jacketed outline of a soul with a glass of something black in one hand and a smoking Cuban in the other, well, that will be me, and that will be the beer.
Thank you Canada! Thank You Olympics!
March 1st, 2010 by stephen_b
I am not a big Winter Olympics fan, never have been, but as the Vancouver Games progressed through their two-plus weeks of excitement, I found myself drawn further and further in to a wonderful, completely compelling spectacle. By the time Sid the Kid put the puck in the back of the American net in overtime, like millions of other Canadians, I had become a rabid fan of these Games.
So congratulations Vancouver! Well done, Canada!! And thank you to all the athletes, Canadian and otherwise, who put years of heart, soul, toil and effort into creating an event for the ages!!!
And just to provide a little beer content for this post, I started yesterday’s game with a Blanche de Chambly and ended it with a Czechvar.
Canadian Hockey Women Made Only One Mistake
February 26th, 2010 by stephen_bThe IOC and the COC and, for all I know, the kids from The OC are all atwitter about gold medal winning Canadian women hockey team celebrating on ice with beer and champagne and cigars an hour after the game was over and long after all the spectators had left the building. Get a grip! They won, convincingly, and had reason to celebrate. And as any athelete will know, there is something special about revisiting the place where it all went down, so why not at centre ice!?!
Apologies are unnecessary. Their lone mistake was not having more flavourful beer, but since Molson is a big sponsor at these Olympics, I’m guessing that was because Canadian was the only beer around. And as for the “controversy” over goal-scorer Marie-Philip Poulin being only 18, or in other words not of legal drinking age in BC, that serves only to cast light on how ridiculous arbitrary legal drinking ages are.
Congratulations, ladies. You won well and celebrated well.
Raasted Brewer Coming to Canada
February 20th, 2010 by stephen_bThis coming week will se the arrival in western Canada of Martin Jensen, the brewer behind, and the face on the label of, the beers of Raasted Bryghus of Denmark.
According to info culled from the website of Delancy Direct, Martin will be visiting Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Regina over the course of a one week visit, hosting events that are both trade only and open to the general public. (Please see Delancy’s website for details.)
I had a chance to sample three of Martin’s beers this past week and awarded each a most respectably scoring. The Vinter tastes to me like schwarzbier tending a bit towards a Baltic porter, with an appealing aroma reminiscent of hot chocolate left to cool and a flavour marked by notes of burnt toast, liquorice and mild dark chocolate. The Imperial Stout is a bit on the light and thin tasting side for the style, although at 9% alcohol hardly a gentle and unassuming beer. It offers a yeast nose underscored by notes of chocolate biscuits and fresh hops, followed by a palate containing roasty flavours of 90% cocoa content chocolate and espresso, with American hop characteristics rising throughout the taste. And finally, although presented as an IPA, I would characterize Grilløl instead as a very good pale ale, with 5% alcohol, a fragrantly nutty-fruity aroma and a well-integrated nutty-citrusy bitterness that rises through the taste to a dryish and bitter finish.
But you needn’t take my word for any of this. Go out to see Martin when he comes to town and taste for yourself!
Tales From the Road
February 17th, 2010 by stephen_bI’m recently returned from a California beer trip, and it was good, no doubt. Very good, in fact. And more about that in a bit (or over here and here), but first, about the flying experience these days.
I understand that we live in curious times and that some dude stuffing his underwear with explosive material is bound to have repercussions, but Pearson Airport in Toronto has taken security to new heights, or depths. It starts with US Customs, entry to which is now allowed only by flight number, so forget arriving early to the airport because it doesn’t matter, you’ll still have to cool your heels in the concourse until they call your flight number. (And Torontonians, bless ‘em, still insist on lining up, even though it makes neither sense nor difference.)
The Future of Airport Security?
Once past customs and immigration, you must now contend with security, where you’ll be met by a huge line-up and well-meaning agents attempting to comply with rules that, one security officer told me, change almost daily. You will step on some sort of rubber pad and an arrow will light telling you what direction to go. (Lord knows what happens if it doesn’t light; I’ve never seen it.) Then you will go through the normal scans before being subject to a possible second scan and a mandatory secondary inspection of every bag you have with you. Yes, that’s right, absolutely every single bag is opened and rifled through. Every…stinking…one.
Now, I could understand this as an appeasement of our cranky southern neighbours if they were performing anything near the same measures, but they’re not. In San Francisco, in San Diego, in Chicago, it was business as usual: off with the shoes, out with the computer, through the machines and thank you very much. So why the chaos on this side of the border and not the other?
Believe me, I am about the most tolerant frequent flier you could imagine, but there are limits! And I haven’t flown domestically yet this year, so I’ve no idea if the security for Canadian flights is as bad, or if other Canadian airports have instituted the same measures. Anyone else? Tell me your experiences, folks.
Can You Get More Canadian Than This?
February 10th, 2010 by stephen_bRather quietly last year, a new pub opened up in the Leslieville area of Toronto, the district we laughingly called the “West Beaches” back when I lived there many moons ago. It’s called the Ceili Cottage, which is pronounced “Cay-lee Cottage” for the Irish-challenged amongst ye.
Run by my friend Patrick McMurray, who also oversees the Starfish Oyster Bed & Grill, it’s not a beer joint in the sense that Paddy keeps a massive range of ales and lagers from which to choose. But if you’re looking for a neighbourhood local kind of place with a handful of fine beers, decent food and the lingering scent of peat smoke hanging in the air, well, this is the place.
The Cottage also has a little patio out front, lovely in the summer but obviously rather superfluous in winter. So what does Patrick do? In an inspired bit of lunacy, he puts up boards and floods the thing, making a little skating rink that’s free for locals to use almost any time. Canadian to the max, says I.
But Patrick isn’t finished even there. Not only can you skate on the rink, but as you’ll see from this blog post, you can also drop by and partake of some curling, complete with instruction every Wednesday night! With beers inside afterwards, of course. Like a proper Canadian.
About That Barley Wine
February 2nd, 2010 by stephen_bI mentioned last week that I’d be writing more about a particular 15 year old barley wine I recently sampled, and here it is.
Tall Ship Ales of Squamish, British Columbia, was a sadly short-lived enterprise, but when it was around it was responsible for some of the finest ales brewed in western Canada during the 1990’s. My notes on their brands have been sadly lost to the computer melt-downs and bust-ups I have endured through the years, but I still bear fond memories of their IPA and Imperial Stout, the latter brewed long before others even contemplated such an effort, and their barley wine.
No. 1 Barley Wine, it was called, an homage, I’m sure, to the infamous Bass No. 1 Barley Wine, reputed to have been the first commercially bottled version of the style. It was then a wonderful beer, and although I knew much less fifteen years ago than I do now about aging beers, I was pretty sure it would store nicely for some time to come.
My second to last bottle was tasted earlier this decade and it was a beauty, with still acres of character and plentiful appeal. The final bottle I trotted out in January, however, was considerably older than even that well-aged version and, frankly, I wondered how it would handle the extra years.
Turns out, it did so fairly well. There was a slight acidic edge to it and a distinct thinness of malt, but at the same time there was plenty still going on, like dark fruits and black liquorice in the nose and black currant, prune, raisin, herbals and clove notes in the body. Although obviously a few years past it, I was impressed with the stature it retained and more than happy with the results of a decade and a half of patient aging.
Afterwards, I tasted one of Canada’s new classic barley wines, from one province over and a whole lot fresher. More about that in a day or two.
Coming Face-to-Face With Loki
January 29th, 2010 by stephen_bTim Kramer, the young brewer at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan’s Paddock Wood Brewing, passed through Toronto lately laden down with bottles of his most recent creations, including the Loki Double IPA. Never one to pass up the chance to sample something new, I met up with him at Toronto’s Bar Volo and swapped a taste of a 15 year old barleywine – and more about that next week! – for a couple of bottles of his cargo.
Bottle-conditioned with a fair amount of sediment laying on the bottom – thus requiring careful decanting – Loki is brownish copper in colour and offers a good degree of fruitiness in the nose, like candied orange and peach, alongside notes of grapefruit and butterscotch. On the palate, though, the beer shifts course rather dramatically, hitting with but a whisper of fruity sweetness before coming forward with a great deal of hoppiness. Brewer Kramer says that he is an unapologetic hophead and it shows here, with rampaging flavours of spicy, green hop and citrus peel held in check by, well, practically nothing.
The finish mellows out so the palate doesn’t feel quite so assaulted, but more maltiness would make this a much more balanced and considerably less harsh ale. What Kramer does quite well, however, is hide Loki’s considerable strength, so perhaps the aggressive hoppiness is more a warning not to get too carried away with this beer!
Infiniti Essence of Elegance
January 20th, 2010 by stephen_bI could hardly miss the 1/3 page ad in the Life section of today’s Globe and Mail: “Infiniti presents The Essence of Elegance.” Sounds like a Big Night out, yes?
If you enjoy the sounds of Matt Dusk and the food of Mark McEwan, then yes, I suppose it is a quintessentially Big Night out. But for $150 per ticket and no full meal included, it’s worth looking down the page a ways to see exactly what you’re getting, too.
And here they are, the details following the price: “Includes Matt Dusk performance, appetizers created by Mark McEwan, fine wines, Corona, as well as a special parting gift.”
Wait a minute, Corona? It’s a popular beer, no doubt, but “the essence of elegance”?
Yep, nothing says elegant more than chugging pale Mexican lager from a bottle with a wedge of lime stuck in its neck.
