Man do I love a good IPA: Appendix

One final note on yesterday's IPA post. I don't want anyone to think that Southern Tier 2xIPA isn't good. All the elements were there for a good beer, I just didn't like the taste of alcohol-that I'm assuming is the whole point of a 2xIPA.

SO, it was more of a warning against the style than the specific beer, which I'm sure is quite good (for the style). In particular, I think it's not a great choice in the heat. Knowing how the taste of beer changes depending on the circumstances, I may end up quite liking it in the fall, when it's a bit chillier and the warming effect of the alcohol is welcome, and doesn't make me feel like I'm drinking the fire spewing from the gates of hell. In fact, to be fair, I may buy their regular IPA and give it a try, just to see.

A note on this site as a whole, I don't think I WILL be posting my tasting notes for beers I don't like, I think it's much better that I recommend things. I'm not here to slag any brewers whose tastes may not align with mine. So, if it's posted, I generally recommend it.

But what the hell do I know anyway?

Man do I love a good IPA II: The Tasting Notes

In yesterday's post, I promised some tasting notes for some IPAs, which I didn't include. There was a great article in the Globe and Mail today about IPAs, the link to which I tweeted out. They mention Red Racer in the article - They had some at the LCBO one weekend (special shipment), but it sold out in hours, so I couldn't get my hands on it :( So I still haven't tried it, but from what I've heard it's the Canadian gold standard for a good IPA. If you find it, I recommend you buy it.

Here are the eagerly awaited tasting notes:

In my neighbourhood, there are two widely known local craft IPAs available: Muskoka Brewery's Mad Tom IPA, which I've mentioned before, and Ontario craft darling Flying Monkey's Smashbomb Atomic IPA. I recomment them both. The Mad Tom IPA seems much more widely available than the smashbomb (I even found it on tap at the Duke of Kent pub at Yonge and Eglinton). Flying Monkey's Hoptical Illusion (their "almost" pale ale) is much more easily found, and is pretty good, but, in my humble opinion, not quite as delicious as smashbomb.

Flying Monkey's Smashbomb Atomic IPA:

Dark copper color, small head/Subdued hops aroma/Snap! hops blast, then a lingering taste of alcohol/Raspberry? Some fruit?/nice, subtle coffee, roasty backbone adds some depth/really interesting/which it was easier to find this beer/Packaging is pretty wacky.

Muskoka Mad Tom IPA:
Great head/beautiful bitterness, but a nice malt base/I love this beer/slight taste of bubblegum/This is probably my favourite widely available beer right now/I'm a big fan of Muskoka's style and packaging.

A quick note on 2xIPA

A quick note on 2xIPA: this is an IPA with twice the bang for the buck. More alcohol per volume, and more hops! At this point, for me, it starts to get a little bit too much. For example, I tried the Southern Tier 2xIPA this Summer, when it was REALLY hot out, and found it just didn't do it for me. I couldn't even finish it, which never happens with me... I tried it again later, to give it a better chance, but the same thing happened. I think it's the taste of alcohol that rubs me the wrong way.

Southern Tier 2XIPA:

Small head/little yellow/light carbonation/smell of citrus hops/good hops plus some other nicely balanced subtlety/not THAT hoppy/can taste alcohol/Malt: cake? vanilla?/Taste of alcohol overpowers everything else going on/I think I'd like their IPA, but this is too much.

Man do I love a good IPA - tasting notes for Mad Tom and Southern Tier 2 x IPA

Man, do I love a good IPA.

For those who don't know, an IPA (India Pale Ale) is like an American Pale Ale (APA), but supercharged. Generally (in America), it has that citrus/grapefruit hops flavour that American hops have (and that are characteristic to APAs), but cranked up a notch. It also generally has a higher alcohol per volume than an APA.

Fun fact: It is the way it is because, in the past, they used to ship it off to soldiers in India. Hops being a natural preservative, they had to really hops it up to survive the boat ride. Eventually, the folks back home found a case, opened it, and discovered the deliciousness. (edit note: this might be wrong, but I don't think so.)

Tasting Notes for some IPAs to come...

I'm back! please comment!

Good to be home - and glad to see this site was a hub of activity while I was away.

I was out in the Kawarthas and was surprised to see that Kawartha Lakes beer was NOT plentiful up there. I DID see some flying monkeys, and lake of bays pale ale was everywhere. I was also able to scrounge up some mad tom ipa, and got to try another of Muskoka's offerings for the first time: Muskoka Craft Lager. It was pretty good, but I tended to alternate between creemore (of course, available everywhere) and Mad Tom. I was pleased by the craft beer availability in such small towns, particularly compared to my earlier trip this summer to the Land O'Lakes area in Ontario (where DI was reduced to some pretty gnarly beer).

Anyway, I'm back, please comment!

Gone fishin'

and like my dad always taught me, step one of fishing is "go grab daddy a beer."

But now I'm the daddy.

Be back in a week.

Lagers for Lawnbowling: The thrilling conclusion of the cottage trilogy!

I made a few last minute buys, I couldn't help myself. I got a sixer of Garrison's Hop Yard Ale, which I've never tried but have had my little eye on for a few weeks. I also got a bottle of Grand River Brewing's Galt Knife Old Style (a pre-prohibition style lager), which I've tried once before and is one of my favourite discoveries to date.





So, that said, I'm off for a week. Those thinking of raiding my house - there is a girthy man house sitting, and an alarm system, so no luck for you. Also: I dreamed I was fending off lions with a shotgun last night-I am not a man to be trifled with.





I leave you with my tasting notes for Galt Knife Old Style:





I've walked by this bottle so many times. It's so unassuming, I didn't expect much. I was VERY surprised by this beer./nice fizz/nice crisp and bitter finish./very bitter for a lager/i like this beer a lot/It is, I think, above my Creemore line for delicious lagers, it's certainly more bitter/Taste ends abruptly, leaving just a little bitterness and a desire to keep drinking/I wouldn't guess from packaging it would be this good-I guess that's what craft beer is all about./So much going on here, my taste buds aren't good enough to decipher it yet, I just know it's delicious.

A beer for Bocce, a pilsner for petanque [part 2]

by the way, I'm off to another cottage soon.

I've been told, due to space in the car, and the fact that my daughter doesn't travel light (sigh...) that there's room for 12 beers. Afterwards, I'll be hitting up the local beer store/lcbo and its probably limited selection. (Don't tell anybody, but I may stuff a few extra one offs or tall boys in my man purse).

Anyway, thought I'd report what I've bought so far: 6 bottles of Creemore (risky business since this needs to be kept refrigerated and the fridge will probably be packed with "food" for the "kids." sigh...) I also have 6 bottles of Lake of Bays Pale Ale. I like this one since it's a very subtle and easy drinking pale ale that won't be too much in the heat. I also have one lug tread left that I'll substitute a Lake of Bays for.

At the risk of humiliating myself and bringing to attention the glaring lack of comments to this blog, I'll ask a question:

What two beers would you (do you) bring to a cottage in the summer?

I'll tweet this out too, I think people are chattier out there than in here anyway. (please comment)

A beer for Bocce, a pilsner for petanque

I spent a week at a cottage earlier this summer, and obsessed over what kind of beer to bring. I ended up with some Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion and some Mad Tom IPA, both beers I like very much. I'll admit I also wanted to wow my family with my hip and astute beer selections.

We got there, I cracked one open, and we started to play petanque (really bocce, but we call it petanque because we're french canadian and bocce is what the "english" play.)



It was boiling hot outside and sunny. In fact, it was that way all day, every day for the whole week.

The beers I'd brought did not do. They were bitter. They had too much character. They had too much personality for that heat. They stuck out like a sore, bitter thumb, fish hooking the inside of my cheek.

My beer sampling conditions (at my house, on my back deck) differed greatly from the conditions at the cottage.

The next day, we hit up the local beer store. The selection was small (nothing craft out there!) and we chose two lawnmower beers: OV (Old Vienna) and Red Cap.

The idea behind the OV was that it has a close association with the O'Keefe, which you'll see from the first post in this blog (Brau: The Origin Story) is something I've been looking for. I wanted to see if OV had the same taste, or "brau" as O'Keefe (editor's note: it did not).

I took these two beers back to the cottage and stuffed them into the freezer until they were nearly frozen. At that point, they were finally drinkable.

I'd found the perfect refreshing bocce beers (the red cap more than the OV).

I then fell into a routine. During the scorching days, I'd drink one of these lawnmower beers. Once the heat had died down and I was relaxing after a long day of petoncle, sitting and swimming, I'd pop one of my delicious hand picked beers. In that situation, they were a delight.

Funny thing was, once I got back home, I tried a Red Cap and couldn't finish it. It was too sweet. I poured it out.

It taught me a lesson, though: Beer is situational. I think it's impossible to have a favourite beer, just the right beer at the right time. There's a beer for every season, and a beer for every taste. That's part of the beauty of it.

There's even a right time for lawnmower beer. I'm no beer snob, nor do I want to be.

And there's still Red Cap left in the fridge for my next cottage week.

*Illustration: True to life graphical representation of us playing Petanque at the cottage.

BEER 101: Lager, ale and lagered ale + tasting notes for Beau's Lug Tread

There are two main families of beer: lager and ale.

Lager uses bottom fermenting yeast and is aged at very cold temperatures.

Ales use top fermenting yeast and are aged at room or "cellar" temperature.

As a result of these differences:

Lagers tend to be smoother and better served at colder temperatures.

Ales tend to be fruitier. This is a result of the esters released through the brewing process.

*Please note the use of the word "tend." There are really no hard and fast rules, just tendencies. Some lagers are fruity, some ales are smooth. It is true, though, that more esters tend to be created when using top-fermenting yeast.

Today's tasting notes are for Beau's Lug Tread Lagered Ale from Vankleek, Ontario. What's a lagered ale, you ask? It's more commonly known as a Kolsch, but not in this case because Kolsch is a term that can only be used when the beer is made in Cologne, Germany. So, when made here, it's a lagered ale.

Kolsch (or lagered ale) is a beer that is made with top-fermenting yeast, like an ale, but aged at near-freezing temperatures like a lager. It's very refreshing.

Here are the tasting notes:

Nice head, lots of fizz/nutty smell/A little bit of spice/It's 30 degree weather out, and this is the perfect beer/One of the most refreshing beers I've had/I love this beer/Very clean/Strong peanut butter aroma, with slight peanut butter taste. (I've only ever tasted this peanut butter aroma/taste in one other beer: Black Oak Pale Ale. Can anyone identify what gives the beer this taste?)/I could drink a lot of this beer, good thing it comes in such large bottles/taste ends abruptly, leaves you hurrying for the next sip.

BEER 101: The ingredients of beer

This new feature will attempt to cover the basics of beer. The information may be self evident to many but, hopefully, may open the eyes a little bit of those who have been taking beer for granted (like me!).

Beer is usually made up of a few simple ingredients:

malt (barley that has been allowed to sprout, then heated)

water

hops (little cone on a climbing vine that adds bitterness to beer and acts as a preservative)

yeast

Sometimes, for different reasons, “adjunct” grains are added, such as: rice (to bring the cost down), and wheat (for flavour and for a nicer head.

In the past, an occasionally now, beer was often made of grains other than these, and were flavoured with things other than hops. This doesn't happen so much anymore, though belgian (and belgian-style) beers are often flavoured with coriander, orange, flowers, etc. The belgians are much more liberal in their use of such ingredients. The germans, on the other hand, tend to use only malt, water, hops, and yeast, unless it's a hefeweizen or weissbier (in that case-and only in that case-wheat is permitted). Anyway, more on regional differences in a future blog post, I'm sure...

Tasting notes: The Creemore family

ok, so Creemore is my fallback beer, partly because it's so widely available here (and it tends to be the only good thing on tap), and partly because it's delicious.




I started drinking Creemore around the turn of the century, mainly because, at the time, it was the "house beer" at Chez Piggy in Kingston and, at the time, Chez Piggy was the be-all-and-end-all of all things delicious in my life (such is life growing up in Kingston). Needless to say, I may have an emotional bond with the beer that you don't have. For me, it's an Ontario beer, with a Kingston connection, and those associations give this beer a head up to begin with.




Creemore does lose a few "cool points" with many for having been bought by Molson in 2005 but, to be honest, I haven't much noticed a difference since then. Has anyone else? Would be interested inhearing if you have... I'm not so opposed to this, especially when the mega-corp respects the recipes and the brewers. It doesn't seem like such a bad thing having good beer more widely available, no?




Anyway, I decided to pit the three Creemore's against each other in some head-to-head action.




Creemore Springs Lager


This is the original, and the beer I was referring to earlier when I said Creemore is my fallback beer. You can get this one almost anywhere here in Ontario/Easy to drink/nice malt-hops balance/enough personality to keep me interested, but not so much I get tired of it (thus a perfect fallback beer./Almost a root beer taste in the front (for lack of a better descriptor)/Slight tinge of hops bitterness, but not too much.




Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner


I'll start this off by saying I'm not a huge pilsner fan - I find it generally a bit boring./Nice head, nice golden colour/nice slight bitterness at the end/very refreshing/not very fizzy/Not crazy about this beer/Maybe it's not hoppy enough? I'm not sure what it is about it... Maybe I just don't much care for Pilsners?/Little bit of caramel, little bit of spiciness




Creemore Springs Kellerbier


Nice hops smell/dry taste/little bitterness/tastes of cereal, coffee, and roasty and toasty malts/Fruity aroma that doesn't extend to the taste/clean finish/Good, but not enough character for my taste.



*disclaimer: These are the tasting notes of an unsophisticated (so far) and newly mindful palate. Me not liking a beer is not necessarily a reflection of a bad beer, but is rather the consequence of a disagreement between my taste in beer and the brewmaster's taste in beer. Where noted, however, the beer is just plain bad.

Fun fact

Carlsberg is brewed in Canada, despite the "imported" label and unlike most other "imported" beers that are actually "imported."

So... there is a measure of supporting local beer when buying Carlsberg (and added freshness!).

Still would go for craft brew whenever possible though. More to come on that...

Tasting notes

Brooklyn Lager:

Good lager with character/In the same vein as Creemore (my fall back beer) but slightly less to my taste/Good and hoppy/nice bitterness, maybe not malty enough? Slightly off balance?

Schofferhofer Hefeweizen:

So, I did the whole hefeweizen song and dance where you place the glass on top and slowly turn it over. BIG MESS! Then, with a little bit left, I placed the bottle on it's side and rolled it back and forth to get the yeast, and poured that on top. It was a fun production, but I didn't really see the benefit.../Sweet smell/Cloudy/Smooth/Malty (bready? Caramel?)/A little bland for my taste, but refreshing nonetheless/Kind of a chalky taste to it (minerally? Tonic water?)/nice fizz.

Crazy Canuck Pale Ale (Great Lakes Brewery):

Nice lacing. Smells like crazy american hops (that bitter, grapefruit smell)/Nice head, good carbonation. Great bitterness, lingering hops/Very bitter, good example of a west coast pale ale/Not crazy about the malt flavour/Not enough subtlety, but a good hops wallop if that's what you're in the mood for/Tasted once before I knew anything about hops and found it too bitter, now I crave that bitterness.

*disclaimer: These are the tasting notes of an unsophisticated (so far) and newly mindful palate. Me not liking a beer is not necessarily a reflection of a bad beer, but is rather the consequence of a disagreement between my taste in beer and the brewmaster's taste in beer. Where noted, however, the beer is just plain bad.

Braü: The Origin Story

Picture this: Kingston, Ontario. The early 80s.

A young boy—golden blond locks resting gingerly on his velour sweater vest—stares up adoringly at his dad, who is putting on quite a show. His arms are flailing. The music is blasting.

The boy is entranced.

On the coffee table, fuelling this spectacle, sits a glass. This glass is filled with a beautiful golden liquid. The boy asks for a taste. The father looks towards the kitchen furtively. No sign of the mother.

“This will put hair on your chest,” he says, as he passes the drink to his son.

“This is beer,” he says, as the son tastes the sweet nectar. It’s like nothing he’s tasted before. He finds it strange. Odd. He loves it and hates it all at once. He is revulsed and drawn back for more.

It’s the pungency he’ll remember. And a certain taste. A taste he can’t describe, and that he’ll probably never be able to describe.

Fast forward to 2011. That boy is a wonderfully handsome and respectably tall man.

That boy, you’ll be flabbergasted to know, was me.

It turns out that my dad used to drink O’Keefe Ale. It had a taste that still haunts me. There was something about it that I can’t describe, but I know it when I taste it. You can’t get O’Keefe around here. In fact, I’m not even sure you can still get it, though I’ve heard rumblings it’s still around in rural Quebec.

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to find this taste.

(Tangent: In fact, I found this taste one other time in my life:

Picture this (I promise this picture this will be shorter than the last): Tucson, Arizona. Around the turn of the century.

I drank a bottle of Pacifico. A Mexican beer. It had the taste. I verified with my brother, who I was visiting. IT HAD THE TASTE!!

Alas, there is no Pacifico in Ontario.)

***
Sidebar:
For future reference, and to explain the name of this blog, I call this taste Braü.

When I was growing up, every so often, my dad would make this very guttural sound that can’t be spelled but that I’m approximating as “Braü.” He’d usually be in the basement, which I’ve since learned, is absolutely the best place to Braü. The room, suddenly, would be engulfed in the smell version of that indescribable beer taste mentioned earlier. The room would SMELL like O’Keefe TASTED!

Without fail, no matter where she was in the house, and I have no idea why other than it was hilarious, my mom would, without skipping a beat and no matter what she would be doing, say “Bra-woo’s back in town.” (Bra-woo is an alternate spelling I agonized with, but decided on Braü since it kind of looks like “Brew” and I thought it would make a cooler title for the blog.)

As kids, we didn’t pick up the disdain in our mom’s voice until much later…
***

OK – back to the present. Long story short: I’m on a beer quest. An odyssey. I’m obsessed.

Maybe this is happening to me now because I became a dad for the first time last December. Maybe “Dad” and “beer” are so twisted together in my brain that, in some mixed up way, it feels you can’t have one without the other.

Maybe I’m trying to reach out to my dad through beer.

Maybe a home isn’t complete without Braü wafting through the air.

Maybe I’m just really stressed out because I haven’t slept since December and I need a drink…

Braü represents something to me. Fatherhood perhaps… Maybe I’m searching for something authentic, going back to my childhood...

Whatever the reason, I’ve started tasting all the beers I can get my hands on. I’ve started reading. I’ve started learning.

This blog will chronicle my odyssey in beer.