A couple of high-traffic, high-controversy posts on my World of Beer site this week, all centred around innovation in brewing, its merits and detriments, got me thinking about Canadian brewing innovation. As in, has there been any, and what’s the biggest?
The first that came to mind was eisbock, which rattled the perceptions of Ontario beer drinkers when Niagara Falls Brewing first brought it out way back in the early 1990’s. But that wasn’t an innovation so much as a (very capable) revisiting of an old and almost obsolete brewing style. There was dry beer, of course, but Molson simply ripped that off from the Japanese, who in turn had taken the idea from the German diät pils, so no laurels there.
Hemp beer started in Fredericksburg, Maryland, before it arrived in BC, so that’s not on, and while Blanche de Chambly was indeed the first Belgian-style wheat beer brewed in North America, it was hardly anything new in the world view of things. (Same for Unibroue’s mulling beer, Quelque Chose, which was both predated and inspired by Liefmans Glühkriek.) Likewise, spelt and buckwheat beers were more revivalist brews than innovative ones.
That leaves what? Labatt’s patented ice brewing process? Please, don’t get me started. Nope, so far as I can figure, the one true Canadian brewing innovation thus far has been coffee beer, of all things, which was born at Toronto’s C’est What before migrating to Durham Brewing in Pickering, Ontario, and taking off as one of the first flagship brands of Ontario’s Mill Street Brewing. I do believe that the C’est What Coffee Porter predated all other coffee beers in North America, and I think also the one in Prague, and so might be claimed as a real Canadian brewing innovation.
What do you think? Any innovative beers that I’ve missed? Let me know through the comments section.
