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.

What’s missing from that story, however, is the ubiquitous salty snack. Because let’s face it, there’s little better when television sports are on that handfuls of chips, pretzels, cheese doodles and such like. But pick wrong beer to drink alongside and – please believe me on this front – you risk ruining a perfectly good pint.

The reason for this is that salt does not play well with sweet maltiness, so if you alternate, for example, sips of a sweetish Belgian dubbel with handfuls of salt and vinegar chips, that dubbel will soon wind up tasting flat, acrid or even sour. Swap a hoppy beer for the malty one, though, and your pale ale, pilsner or IPA will not only refresh your palate between snacks, it will also hold its own against the salt. And everything will wind up tasting pretty much the way it’s supposed to.

Bouquet: Making it a six of 473 ml cans is a stroke of genius, highlighting as it does the recent efforts of Ontario brewers to enter the canned beer market.

Brickbat: With two pale and one amber lagers, plus a cream ale, variety could have been a lot better. Why Neustadt saw fit to include their Neustadt Lager rather than their highly user-friendly, award winning 10×30, for instance, is a mystery to me.

Bouquet: That said, we see here a pale ale, a dark ale, a cream ale and the aforementioned lagers, which is still more variety than we’ve seen in the past.

Bouquet: The compact cube shape of the carton is great design.

Bouquet: And including a “Craft Beer Style Guide” is an inspired bit of promotional work.

Brickbat: Regarding that “Style Guide,” what’s with the “Refreshing Thirst Quenchin’ Ales” descriptor? Is “Quenchin’” supposed to show how populist the OCB is?

Brickbat: The general public isn’t going to see this, but some of the descriptions in the press release that accompanied my sample pack are just way over the top. For Paddy’s Irish Red Lager, “…was created in the 1800`s by master brewer George Henry Lett.” Cribbing from the history notes for Killian’s Irish Red will win you no admirers, Trafalgar, and by the way, Lett’s beer was an ale, not a lager. For the Neustadt Lager, “Brewed in the Belgium country style…” Huh? What’s that when it’s at home? For Muskoka Cream Ale, “‘A great food-friendly beer,’ says beer author Jamie MacKinnon, who gave it four stars in The Great Lakes Beer Guide.” With all due respect to Jamie, that book is a dozen years old, which means the research is just that much older, and that’s the best you can do to hype your flagship brand?

Final Bouquet: Brickbats aside, I think this is another good effort from the OCB and one I would encourage people to pursue. It is available at LCBO stores for $14.95.

Why is that, you ask? I’ll tell you. It’s because tomorrow is when the brewery releases its Wild Rose Cherry Porter, available exclusively in one litre flip-top bottles and, beginning tomorrow and likely lasting not at all long, in special cask-conditioned form.

This is a beer I contributed to both the currently available “World’s Best Beers: 1000 Unmissable Brews from Portland to Prague” by Ben McFarland, for which I penned the Canadian reviews and a few stand-alone essays, and the forthcoming “1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die” by Adrian Tierney-Jones, to which I offered about 40 or so reviews. It also may be Wild Rose’s finest offering.

So go, buy, drink, enjoy. And revel in the fact that even if the weather royally sucks at present, at least you can drown your wintry woes in some pretty fine ale. (And besides, The Weather Network says it’s going to warm up soon!)

Wait, what’s that you say? It’s not abuzz? In fact, no one seems to be taking much note at all?

Can’t say I’m that surprised, really. Granville has for years been owned by Andrew Peller Limited (formerly Andres Wines), a major Canadian wine maker with but a little toe in the beer game. Molson is seeing some success with Creemore and would like to see expanded west coast distribution of its brands, even though the jury is well out on how a blatantly Ontario brand will fare outside the province. (Just as there is some question as to how such evidently Vancouver-centric brands will play in Ontario, if Molson decides to bring the Granville line-up east.) So the marriage makes a lot of sense from a structural perspective.

Far more interesting is word from the Canadian Beer News blog yesterday of a collaborative brew being planned at Canmore, Alberta’s Grizzly Paw Brewing. You can get the details over here, but basically, representatives from each of the province’s craft brewers will be getting together to brew a Dark Rye India Pale Ale (whatever that is…) with the batch being split three kegs apiece and all the proceeds going to support each individual brewery’s charity of choice.

This is the kind of initiative it would be great to see more of, and since Canada Malting is playing a prominent role by donating the ingredients, perhaps we will.

Greg was both a hero to homebrewers with his several well-written “how to” books on brewing, including the landmark Brewing Lager Beer, and a leader and familiar figure in the northeast beer scene. Most importantly, though, he was a most affable individual, equally generous with his time, knowledge and sense of humour. He was also to a degree as much a fixture on the north side of the Quebec-Vermont border as he was in his home country.

Greg will be missed by many, and my heart and sympathies go out to his family and close friends.

The Tale of the Tape: Molson Canadian 67 is being heavily marketed as a 67 calorie per bottle brew, with just 3% alcohol by volume. John Sleeman Presents Bock is 6% alcohol, but offers no hint as to its calorie content. Both are new releases, the latter for a limited time.
The Pop: The 67 certainly announced itself more vocally than did the Bock, with a resounding POP! as the cap was pried off, relative to the Bock’s more subdued pop. Once poured, however, the Bock created and maintained a nice collar of off-white foam, while the 67 poured with a head that crackled and died almost instantly.

The Look: Very pale gold for the 67, orangey copper for the Bock.

The Smell: The 67 offers a light, sweetish aroma of fresh hay and faint caramel, along with hints of fresh lemon and barely perceptible florals. The Bock has a more robustly caramelly nose with orange blossom notes, very faint cinnamony spice a and a hint of Blackstrap molasses.

The Taste: 67 tastes like, well, not much of anything, really. Seldom have I sampled a beer with this little to offer in terms of flavour, with the front reminding me more than a bit of lemon-flavoured Perrier and the thin body tasting vaguely of raw grain and fresh lemon. The finish is almost completely AWOL, with a slightly bitter edge accounting for pretty much the whole thing. The Bock, not surprisingly, has more than a bit more in store, with a sweet, chocolate-caramel start leading in to a toffee-ish body holding notes of walnut and toasted grain. The finish has a gentle bitterness to cut the very modest sweetness of the body, and also a welcomed and warming hint of alcohol.

The Judgment: Molson has tried this kind of low alcohol brew before, with Molson Select back in the 1990`s. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. The Sleeman Bock, on the other hand, has a lot going for it, including good quaffability. It’s not the best bock I’ve ever tasted, but it is something I expect I’ll be revisiting more than a few times before supplies dry up.

The Answer: To yesterday’s question of whether I’d like the Bock twice as much as I do the 67, is yes. Three or four times as much, in fact.

The latter beer is being touted by the folks at Molson Coors as “Canada’s Lowest Calorie Beer,” with a mere 67 calories per bottle and, unique for this country, I think, a statement of Nutrition Facts on the back of every bottle. What I find interesting about these beers, however, is not their weight, but their respective alcohol contents: 3% for the Canadian 67 and precisely twice that amount, or 6%, for the Sleeman Bock.

So the question is, will the Bock hold twice the appeal of the 67? I have my suspicions, but first I’m going to chill down a couple of bottles of each and sample what’s inside. Check back with me in a day or so for the results.

I won’t expound upon what I think about the individual winners, nor will I list them. (They are over here in full.) But I will pass comment on some of the criticism that has been levelled at the Awards here and here and again over here.

The CBAs are a young awards, and as such are suffering the kind of awkward growing pains that occur during normal adolescence and pre-adolescence. It’s to be expected. Still, problems persist, as have been rightly and, at times, rather unsympathetically observed elsewhere. Here’s my take:

1. Problem one is a lack of inclusiveness, caused simply by breweries not entering their beers. Does anyone think Dieu du Ciel would not have brought home at least one medal if they had entered their beers? I thought not. This, however, will resolve itself as the CBAs grow and become more nationally important. (Memo to the CBA organizers: if you want to bring the Quebec brewers on board, look into partnering in some way with Montreal’s Mondial de la Biere.)
2. Next up is the non-awarding of medals, about which I am in agreement with those who point out its absurdity. When a race is to the finish line, the top three finishers are awarded gold, silver and bronze, period. To say that the second place finisher did not run fast enough to warrant the silver, or the second place beer did not garner enough judging points, is ridiculous.
3. Judging methods have also been called to task, and here I both agree and disagree. Judges are human and therefore fallible, but these imperfections can be regulated as much as possible with proper guidance. That Greg Nash is in possession of score sheets suggesting his 37hr Simcoe SMaSH should have been entered in the Double IPA category rather than as an IPA, when no such category existed, is indicative of, at least, misinformed judging and, at worst, lack of leadership.
4. Still, judges can only work with what they have in front of them and the instructions they have been given, plus their palates, of course. So no one is in any position to say that this beer or that one should have received any given medal. On another day in different conditions and with the beers presented in a different order, the result could very well have been quite different.
5. Finally, with respect to the judging, I highly suggest freeing those poor men and women from the dogma of the BJCP standards. Beer is about pleasure, not conformation to a given set of style standards, and while a pale ale should certainly taste like a pale ale in order to win gold, I strongly believe that the ultimate factor in what makes a beer a gold, silver or bronze medal winner should be its balance, complexity and enjoyment, not its colour or perceived IBU count.

Then I cast my eye over the sponsors and spied something curious. Amid the expected chocolate and restaurant sponsors were a mere two alcohols, Skyy Vodka and Amarula Liqueur.

Now, I’ve against either vodka or cream liqueur, but neither is the first I think of when the idea of chocolate is raised. Vodka is a clear and crisp spirit, better suited to fish or cream, I think, than rich and sweet chocolate, while cream liqueur and chocolate must surely be a case of gilding the proverbial lily.

Where is the whiskey, or whisky, for that matter? Where are the great, chocolate-friendly Belgian ales, Scotch ales and barleywines? Hello, cognac?

It looks like there’s still time to get involved in this year’s presentation, so come on, distillers, brewers and importers. Time to step up!