small beer

Review: Lighthouse Belgian Black

2012-01-18T21:34:00.000-08:00

Lighthouse gave me a bottle of Belgian Black to review this week. This doesn't happen to me very often. I have long harboured a fantasy of utterly panning a freebie just to prove I have integrity. Maybe that's why I don't get too many. On this occasion, I'm happy to risk looking like a sell-out, because I really like this beer.

A belgian black called Belgian Black. Not much to go on here. I anticipate something like Trois Pistoles as it's the blackest belgian-style beer I regularly drink. That or a dark dark dubbel that's not actually that black once you get it out of the (attractive) matte black frosted bottle.

The beer is brewed with a Belgian Ardennes yeast strain: more evidence that Lighthouse is taking things seriously (they have a reputation for being yeast sticklers). I enjoy Keepers Stout, and I'll drink a Beacon IPA from time to time, but Lighthouse hadn't tempted me too much until they ramped up the quality and invention with the Big Flavour series. Deckhand was a lovely saison and Uncharted is practically the only "Belgian IPA" worth drinking.

So the Black comes with some pedigree, yet still puts the bar into near orbit. It has the charcoal, roasted qualities of an imperial stout — with seared walnuts and some dry cocoa. But where you'd expect a battering ram body to follow, BB is lighter, almost dainty, with a fresh plummy flavour. There's a fair bit of booziness, but it is sweet enough to carry it off. Although not of the same flavour, the mixture reminds me of blackcurrant-liquorice candies I ate as a child — a confectionary contradiction greater than the sum of its parts.

Not only is Belgian Black the best of the "Big Flavour" series (which has had high highs and middling lows), but the style strikes me as the most promising and necessary of all the North American/Belgian crossovers we are mercilessly subjected to. Lighthouse should be doubly commended for underlining that fact with some authority. Nice one.

Review Roundup

2011-12-08T12:44:00.001-08:00

Homebrewing is a form of mental illness, of that there is no doubt. My free time is currently being devoured by researching hop filters, attending yeast lectures, and watching time-lapse youtubes of fermentation. An anthropologist from Alpha Centuri would freak out trying to make sense of it all.

In order to restore some normalcy, let's drink some palatable commercial beers and write a blog post, just like the old days.

First up, fresh off of Phillips' increasingly frenetic production line, is the Michael Lewis Pilsner. Phillips' output is of such prolific mediocrity that — I must admit — I do not even get too excited to sample them anymore (do I really need to drink an India Pale Lager to know a. it's gonna make me mad and b. it's not going to be as good as Brooklyn Lager?).

But the MLPilsner is an exception. This beer is based on a recipe designed by the winner of the 2011 CAMRA Amateur Brewing Competition—Michael Lewis—who is a fellow member of Island home brewers club BrewVIC, an all-round nice guy, and a dinner guest at my house tonight. The pilsner has "that Phillips taste" to it, I'm guessing due to their house yeast. It's a decent pilsner with a somewhat green-tea bitterness and the odour of a well-leafed paperback. Pleasant, and all the more so because a mate had a hand in it.

Second is a beer I was very excited to try: La Roja from Jolly Pumpkin. JP are my favourite 'wild' beer specialists if only because of Oro de Calabaza (the "Bam" series are also fantastic). La Roja is an amber ale given the spontaneous fermentation treatment, and it is a success. The beer is a radiant reddish hue, perhaps unexpectedly so given that it is an amber. It tastes characteristically tart and vinegary, but a lot cleaner and less horsey than the Oro. A glimmer of hops manage to shine through the champagne dryness, making this a beautifully refreshing, not-so-challenging sour. Great stuff.

Third is a triptych of newer Driftwood beers. All fantastic, which rids me of the dirty feeling I've had ever since I panned their double IPA. You might argue that Fat Tug is two years old now, but not to my mind. Fat Tug was pretty stellar when it first came out, but there was always something slightly brutish and heavy-in-the-mouth about it that makes the prospect of a bomber seem quite an ordeal. I often hovered my hand over the 'Tug in the liquor store before choosing something more straightforward — like if someone offers you crazy whips'n'chains sex when all you really feel like is a quickie.

But the last 5–6 bottles of Fat Tug have been different. More refined, richer in aromatic hops, less syrup and orange peel, a dash of melon. It could all come down to perception or fluctuation of ingredient qualities, but I find myself unbuckling at the site of it these days, which can only be good.

Sartori has always been the best fresh-hop IPA we can get. First year was incredible; consensus is that last years' was pretty good; this year's is once again awesome. For the first time, this year's Sartori is brewed solely from local maltster Mike Doehnel's (read this) malt, which is a nice way to round off the local vibe imparted by Christian Sartori's Chilliwack(ish)-born hops. Forthright, smooth and exploding with hop aroma. Wonderful.

Finally, the much-anticipated Bird of Prey series (it's a f***king SERIES!) Flanders Red Ale. I knew this was in the works a year ago. Every time I asked Jason about it he'd make mystical sounds about it being sort of ready but not quite ready. Patience has clearly paid off because this is a lovely, lovely sour ale. Not as sweet as I have come to expect from a Flanders Red (blame Duchesse), the Bird of Prey is actually not a million miles away from La Roja. It is an assertive sour, but not a mouth-gusher. The strength (7.5% apparently) is completely disguised by a beguiling palate of sour cherry, lychee and dry cider. Others have attributed "complex" and "oaky" to it, but I identify with neither description (I am curious as to what it would have tasted like were it not aged in barrels for a year). The biggest charm of this beer is its straightforward refreshment and addictiveness. No palate fatigue whatsoever, which is incredible for the style. My advice: find a falconer and invest in a decent sized aviary. Fast.

Moving over to the Dark Side

2011-11-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I haven't written much here recently is my new hobby of homebrewing. No, I am not so absorbed in improving brewhouse efficiency and mastering recipe-crafting that I have no time to write (although these are very absorbing subjects).

The main problem is that brewing makes you look at beer differently, disturbing your once-sturdy perspective as a purely "demand-side" blogger. It takes a while to acclimatize and rediscover that comfortable, blinkered self-righteousness that allowed you to inflict your views on others in the first place. I'm nearly there…

Here are a few observations gleaned from my young homebrewing career that have changed my perspective on beer.

1. It is not easy to make good beer
Most of the homebrewing books I read return to the mantra over and over that brewing might seem challenging, but it is essentially simple. In the grand scale of creative industries, brewing may well be "simple" in that it involves a few basic processes and chemical reactions, but it is still bloody tough to get right. I now feel like a douchebag for reviewing beers as "pedestrian" or "unremarkable" when I'd now consider either term to be an accolade if applied to my own offerings.

2. Someone makes beer
Well, duh. Lots of beer bloggers (me included) know personally some of the brewers behind commercial beers. But when we buy their stuff in a pub or a liquor store, it has the nice label and it's all standardized and we feel the authoritative reassurance of the brewery when we confidently pop the cap and suck. When a fellow homebrewer hands me a beer, I furtively look him over. Is he basically trustworthy? Does he look hygienic? Is she someone whose judgment and ability to do stuff properly in her general life impresses me? My first sips of that person's beer are full of trepidation and concern. I sense myself preparing to reject the beer as unacceptable at the merest hint of an off flavour — far more so, bizarrely, than if they had just made me a sandwich.

3. Drinking sessions have become episodes of CSI
Two months ago I had but the vaguest idea of what DMS, acetaldehyde, or oxidation were. I now know that those charming, mysterious notes that wafted in and out of my palate as I supped a complex beer are faults that must be remedied and resisted. Likewise, even the most desirable of intended flavours must be explained by my inquisitive mind as some product of ingredient, process or equipment. This is so much better than being able to sit and merely enjoy a beer…

I am enjoying brewing very much. I'm into my third batch now and things have come a long way since I ineptly fumbled my way through brewing a stout (which was just bottled at a ridiculously undershot 2% ABV!). Brewing is something I will be doing for a long time, I am sure of that. But I will say this: I had no idea of what I was letting myself in for.

Our homebrew setup

When beer gets in the way of writing about beer

2011-09-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Too often a blogger slips in from an absence with a credible excuse about being busy with real life. I have not written in close to two weeks for much better reasons, and all of them to do with beer.

1. Great Canadian Beer Festival
The GCBF took place the weekend before last. My saintlike wife encouraged me to attend both days. I obliged. It was blisteringly hot, but the quality of the beer was excellent. Unlike previous years, I was "working" for much of the festival this time round.

2. BrewVIC
I am one of the "founding members" of Victoria's new home brewers' association/guild "BrewVIC". The website is in advanced beta at the moment under the guidance of Dave S. I compiled a links page of my favourite homebrew resources, I'd welcome any additional suggestions from kind readers… You didn't know that I brewed? Well, I don't…

3. Building a homebrew setup
…Yet. For the last month I have been attacking four empty kegs with angle grinders, drills, spigots, hoses and dirty great propane burners. Dave (from beerontherock) and I have finally completed our brewing system and will give it a maiden brewage with a stout in the very near future. A future blog post is earmarked for a photo rundown of what we have done so far.

4. Campaign
Readers may remember that I recently began to look into the nature of CAMRA in Canada. This project — which began as journalistic curiosity — has morphed into something more. Part of my research involved asking local brewers and retailers "What is the biggest impediment to good beer in BC?" They gave a very consistent set of replies relating to certain regulations and practices of our dear, government Liquor Distribution Branch. This inspired me to learn more, get in touch with lots of other potential-activists, and begin a campaign to promote some changes. I collected lots of signatures for a petition at the GCBF, and there is a small Facebook group setup. If you're a BC good beer drinker, give it a look. I think we stand a chance of going somewhere with it.

Time for a beer in the last of the sun, then I'll think about writing a proper blog post.

My Favourite Beer Glass

2011-09-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ian is aroused by a variety of glassware; I am more monogamous. If I had to drink every beer from only one glass I would choose the O-Riedel Cabernet/Merlot "wine" glass. My usual drinking glass is a Unibroue standard, which falls somewhere between a tulip and a flute, and is elegant and suitable for many styles. If I am drinking while going about some task, like assembling furniture or fussing over the barbecue, I like to use a no-nonsense contoured pint glass. I was recently gifted a nice fat Duvel tulip, which is grandiose but a little much for most occasions. Even ordinary wine glasses are perfect sometimes.

But the Riedel is easy to hold and the circumference of the rim feels natural to drink from. It is capable of holding a whole pint, but looks best half or two-thirds full, which is just right for home drinking. The thin and invisibly clear glass makes for vivid, honest photographs. Washing the fragile vessels can be nerve-jangling, but aren't most of our favourite things vulnerable and fleeting?

Ales and Graces

2011-08-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

In my last post I (wrongly) suggested that a fellow blogger thought 750ml beers would have appeal because the wine-style bottle lends an air of class. Where would I get such an idea? It is surely not the case that upstart beer looks to its old money counterparts of wine, scotch and so on, for stylistic guidance as it hammers on the highfalutin door of haute cuisine acceptance. Or is it?

It is a point to ponder as I sip my "Chatoe Rogue Single Malt Ale" and eye the bottle of "Phillips Centennial single hop IPA" on the shelf. It's not that brewers have suddenly started constructing beers around the charms of individual ingredients, but they are certainly much keener on letting you know about it. A good dose of beermakers' innovative energy seems to go into emulating the mores and methods of vintners and distillers.

I have even heard talk of terroir creeping into more interviews with brewers. And what are fresh hop IPAs becoming if not the Beaujolais Nouveau for the taproom terroir-istas?

Beer drinkers and writers are just as keen to associate themselves with the snobbier aspects of wine and spirits. Take the growing interest in cellaring, aging and pairing beer. For centuries the battle was to get ale drunk as quick as possible. Aging was an unfortunate necessity that was offset by the addition of preservative ingredients. And pairing? In my own lifetime, before pubs turned into casino-eateries, the closest you'd get to a pairing option in your everyday beer-drinking life would be a packet of KP roasted nuts or some flayed pig skin.

Of course, the critical question is this: Is it that an appreciation for the contribution of single ingredients, the one-off styles permitted by seasonal quirks, the varied development of flavour through aging, the culinary counterpoints of grog-meets-grub, and all the other things we associate with wine and scotch culture, are in fact part of the natural enjoyment of any refined sustenance-stuff — beer being long overdue similar status?

Or is beer becoming the nouveau-riche, seeking gentrification through emulation, buying a new BMW instead of waxing the Beetle, slinging Christian Dior handbags round its neck, attempting to disguise its proletarian accent while shielding its bad teeth as it signs up for membership at the golf club?

Size matters: Why 750ml beer bottles don't convince restaurant-goers

2011-08-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

I said "order the Yellow Tail," Ulysses. But no, you had to go and show off…

The Beer Nut thinks that the 750ml bottle might be the answer to encourage mainstream restaurant-goers to embrace beer. The 750ml bottle (or "standard" as it's known in wine) is familiar, has an air of class, and lends itself perfectly to sharing with food, argues the 'Nut. Sounds reasonable.

However, I think that the 750ml bottle is both a solution and an obstacle in the quest to increase the status of beer as a "serious" food accompaniment.

Wine works in 750ml bottle for at least two reasons:

1. It is presumed to be a consistent strength (generally 12–14%)
2. It is usually not carbonated

Beer faces problems in the restaurant setting on both these fronts.

1. Beer ranges from 3-14%. It's a whole different undertaking to share 750ml of barley wine as opposed to a bottle of Lindeman's lambik. Restaurant-goers unfamiliar with beer would be doing blood-alcohol maths, wondering if they could finish a whole one, or — worse — ending up drunker than they expected. This all introduces anxiety where a simple bottle of wine would not.

Plus, if you're interested in trying a new wine, most restaurants serve by the glass. Not an option for beer: you can hardly crack a magnum of Karmeliet and expect it to pour ok an hour later.

2. If you've ever worked in a restaurant, you'll know that most customers live in fear of doing the wrong thing or being faced with a culinary challenge they are not up to. You might love crab at home, but you don't want to have to rip one out of its shell with a set of nutcrackers in a room full of strangers. Even the "how do you like your steak" question fills some people with existential angst. 750ml means customers will be pouring each others beers. Many will think there is a "correct" amount of head, not know how much to pour, get nervous about that murky bottom inch of sludge — in short, another level of anxiety.

Bottom line: beer is more complex than wine, it doesn't conform to expectations, it behaves in weird ways. Beer geeks and adventurous patrons might appreciate the larger format, but ordinary restaurant goers are likely to be too intimidated to become accustomed.

The best way to promote beer in restaurants, for me, is to accentuate its variety, suggest pairings on the menu, and serve it in single serving sizes — preferably in specialized glassware. Servers should offer to pour your glass and leave you the empty bottle to examine at your leisure. Removes all anxiety and ensures a better experience all round.

Some Unexpected Beery Gifts

2011-08-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

Beer drinkers are by far the easiest people to buy for. As with all hobbyists, the gift-buyer has a helpful theme to guide their purchases. But with crime fiction geeks, stamp collecters, and the like, you're always gripped with the same anxiety "Wonder if he already has this…"

This is not a problem with beer drinkers.

"Happy birthday. The guy at the store said it was a good one. You haven't drank it before, have you?"
"Several times. Got three in the cellar. Split one with Jeff this morning as a matter of fact. Ooh it's cold. It's perfect I LOVE IT!"

Recently two lovely people surprised me with beer gifts of remarkable quality. I want to say thank you.

At a recent kid's party I took my daughter to, I got chatting to the grandmother of the birthday boy — a gifted potter who had made some great clay beer mugs so that the dads could drink beer at a child's party with impunity. I mentioned my own preference for a handled mug like a Stein or a Tankard. Two weeks later a shoebox turns up at my daughter's daycare, addressed to me:

Each mug holds 600ml, was fired to 2200 ºF (making it "mid-range", a very durable pot), and both are coloured with varying combinations of the colours "Brown Sugar" and "Roses are Red" (inspiration came from here). These details will mean more to potters. Most important for me is that, aside from looking quite beautiful, these mugs are great drinkers. The tankard especially has a pleasing plumpness, and I enjoy feeling the fine grain of the clay warming as I slowly swill a mild ale. Thanks so much, Sharon!

Next up is this lovely tray, bought for me by Ian the "beer prick". It features five offerings from the Northern Club's Federation Brewery Ltd (Newcastle on Tyne).

Now, there is a bittersweet end to this tale of generosity. While researching the Federation Brewery in order to write this post, a thought occurred to me: Could this be the same Federation Brewery responsible for Federation Ace Lager? A.K.A 8Ace — also the name of my beloved Viz cartoon character of the same name, who has a truly special fondness for "th' ace"?

It is. This tray was made by the same people who made 8 Ace. A more perfect gift (except 8 cans of Ace) I could not imagine.

Unfortunately, I also learned that the Northern Federation Brewery went out of business this year after 82 years of brewing (most of it superior to Ace, I happily report). But now they have been unceremoniously ousted by owners Heineken UK.

Gone.

Sniff.

Review: Driftwood Twenty Pounder Double IPA

2011-08-16T21:50:00.000-07:00

I had only recently finished typing a comment on someone else's blog about how to deal with bad beer experiences as a beer blogger when I found myself — like a character in a Charlie Kaufman movie — intimately enmeshed in the very world I was describing.

I am drinking Twenty Pounder IPA, which is a much-awaited beer from my absolute favourite local brewery. It was released today. It is one of my favourite styles. And I'm not enjoying it at all really.

The blog post I alluded to earlier was one of a series, really. A few British beer bloggers have been tossing back and forth about how to deal with bad beers. Should you be honest? Should you even review them? Is it fair to say bad things about good people who have crafted a beer that you just happen to hate? That sort of thing.

I have no answers to those fundamental questions. I focused on what I consider to be the blogger's duty to his reader(s?). This is my bit:

One overlooked variable in the quandary of how to approach negative criticism is the nature of your blog itself. No one is a mere "blogger" — our blogs are driven by different aims and angles. A blogger identifying as a straight reviewer or appraiser absolutely has the responsibility to be frank about poor experience, whereas the philosopher or geek of beer minutae can dodge even having to think about how to handle it.

Bloggers who consider themselves more generic or personal in their approach are obliged in other ways. You build up a relationship with your reader who — in turn — trusts you and expects things of you. If you have spoken candidly on poor experiences in the past, or made gestures at cutting through the crap, then you would serve your reader best by spilling the beans. But if your tone is overtly sympathetic and your readers view you as a convivial proponent of the whole good beer scene — then you would not be misleading anyone if you were to damn with feint praise now and then…

SO where does that leave me with the Driftwood beer? Well, I've always screamed at the top of my lungs about how much I love them, and I've always been honest. I feel I have no choice.

The beer pours a mid orange, with a chunky head that leaves some persistent, patchy lacing. It is a crystal clear DIPA, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that Driftwood have begun to filter a little.* The aroma is very reminiscent of the Fat Tug IPA, which isn't my favourite Driftwood beer, nor is it my favourite local IPA, but it is a worthy brew that I often order and enjoy.

The nose is powerful, orangey, thick, tropical, somewhat cloying, but pleasant. Initially it tastes like a barley wine: syrupy and luscious, but with fairly sharp hop notes. The hops never really get going for me; they are excessive in no particular direction, lending to a rather characterless effect. Stewed apricots come through, but that's about it. I think that malt-lovers would be disappointed, hop-heads alienated.

Then the worst bit: a brutally astringent, chemically finish with all the grace and élan of a nail varnish jell-o-shot. Bad enough to be called flawed; so much so that I'd chalk this off as a bad bottle had it not only just come off the line. If this is 20lb-er as intended, it definitely falls somewhere between "not-for-me" and plain old "gross".

………

*I don't know why I wrote that Driftwood have begun to filter their beer. I think I got my wires crossed somehow based on the fact they have recently introduced an "unfiltered" sticker to some of their beers. Pure confabulation. AFAIK they do not and never have filtered.

Canadian CAMRA Studies #1: Fraser Valley CAMRA

2011-08-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

Recent debates about the relevance of CAMRA UK gave me pause to muse on Canada's growing number of CAMRA chapters. On the face of it, the original aims of CAMRA do not seem to apply to Canada where there has never been a tradition of cask beer nor any particular threats to it. If Canadian CAMRAs are just Canadian Beer Appreciation Clubs, why not call them that and be done with it? Musings turn into obsessions pretty quick in chez smallbeer…

This is the first in a series of blogs in which I excavate the murky tar-sands of CanCAMRA and emerge, triumphant, with oily fists full of truth.

………

The best place to start seems to be with the most recent chapter in Canada: Fraser Valley CAMRA located east of Vancouver in British Columbia. As far as I can tell, the only chapters in Canada are in British Columbia: Ottawa had one that died, rumours of one in Toronto failed the Google test, and apparently someone absconded with Calgary CAMRAs funds, ending that venture.

I spoke with Vice President Jonny Tyson and communications guru Jason (~~whose position I regretfully failed to confirm~~) today to find out what their chapter is all about. I will be publishing information about what seems to be a thriving beer scene in Fraser Valley on our BeerOnTheRock blog. Right now I'm only interested in the "why CAMRA"? question.

Upon calling Jonny I get the sense my question is already answered, as a familiar London accent meets my ear. It turns out that Jonny's love for cask beer and subsequent interest in CAMRA do indeed stem from a youth spent supping bitter in London pubs — an experience whose virtues were only truly appreciated upon Jonny's arrival in Canada.

"That taste and experience of real ale is something most Canadians don't even know exists. I think it's important to keep that going and to introduce it to people," says Jonny.

Fraser Valley's chapter was started by Mike Victory, Jonny, and a handful of other real ale converts whose passion for good beer was strained by the commute to Vancouver CAMRA meetings and the riches of the urban beer scene. They quickly realized that if they pooled their local member base they could stimulate the local scene and avoid the interminable #YVR traffic jams. Fraser Valley CAMRA was born in January 2011 and has grown from a core of 40 members to around 75 — aiming at 100 by Christmas.

Nice, but what have they achieved?

"Fraser Valley now has regular cask events. We've held two at Kingfishers and there will be one at Billy Miner — their first cask event ever. Kingfishers have given us massive support, they're a real hub for us. Our core members are very active and the scene is responding. The Billy Miner pub used to have one craft beer tap, they're installing something like fifteen now. Mission Springs brewery is supplying casks, Central City sponsor us, and local beer stores are filling up with craft beer."

OK so they love cask ale, but surely an organized Fraser Valley beer collective could have put the same pressure on local pubs and stores. Why borrow the CAMRA epithet?

"Cache. Maybe we could have nudged the scene, but the CAMRA name brings weight. It attracts more members. It's recognizable."

In other words it's a "brand" — a word I'm instinctively hostile toward, but I can see that I need to reconsider my prejudices based on the indisputable good the CAMRA name has done for Fraser Valley. Some of the grumpier Canadian drinkers you find moaning on BeerAdvocate forums about their miserable local scenes would do well to take a leaf out of Fraser Valley's book and get organized — it really can make a dramatic difference.

But when all's said and done, CAMRA UK was born out of historically adverse circumstances. They've even made a film out of it (incidentally the trailer of which features my own local, the Malt Shovel Tavern in Northampton). Isn't it sacrilegious to take a name forged in the fires of social conflict and append it to some beer geeks' unwillingness to select a designated driver to take them to a decent Vancouver boozer? What possible problems face the ostensibly thriving craft beer scene in BC???

"It's true, we don't have the same problems here. BC craft beer sales went up by something like 30% last year. But there are problems… Big brewers are looking to buy out craft breweries, not to mention the tied houses regulations in BC might be abolished. That could get nasty"

Jonny is right. Until now BC has enjoyed some sensible regulations that prevent large breweries from essentially bribing outlets to favour or exclusively stock their products. For anyone who has had the "pleasure" of trying to find a beer at a local hockey game only to find a choice of one or two (shit) beers at extortionate prices — this could be the future of BC watering holes if certain interests get their way. In such a scenario, one could imagine a real need for a dedicated consumer rights movement. I can say with confidence that CAMRA chapters such as Fraser Valley's would be ready-made for exactly those purposes.

Jonny and I end our conversation and I find myself reappraising CanCAMRA. What was hitherto for me an object of affection and mild derision has taken on the unexpected aura of a sleeper cell of underground resistance to potentially hostile forces intent on forcing me to drink Keiths pseudo-IPA. As the recent Vancouver riots have proved: we might as yet have absolutely no reason whatsoever to get miffed about anything at all — but British Columbians look to be more than ready for the ruckus should it eventually turn up. And that's at least in part thanks to CAMRA.

CAMRA Obscura

2011-08-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

A Victoria CAMRA Member

CAMRA is a hot topic for bloggers right now. People are debating the absence of brewers and types of beer at the Great British Beer Festival, whether CAMRA is at some sort of existential crossroads, and how best to represent good beer now that the "craft movement" has departed from what have traditionally been considered the best brewing practices.

To my knowledge, only two Canada-based beer writers have waded in with any force on what are chiefly British concerns (my excuse is being British; Alan will gatecrash any party whose guests include beer and passion). It is to their credit that no UK folk have told us to fuck off on the basis that it has little to do with us (perhaps they will now I've admitted I'm an imposter). But I have wondered whether it is my business and, frankly, why I care so much.

My wondering has led me to this answer:

Like many, I look for meaning in beer. I'm a sociologist, but also a hormonal marxist who cannot help but seek solidarity with others in my passions and pursuits. Something about the way the North American "craft beer community" (or worse, "movement") is packaged in various social media outlets feels phony and tacky to me. More power to them and no disrespect to the individuals involved, but gestures like the I Am a Craft Beer Drinker video make me cringe inside. I can't identify with it.

I get great satisfaction through companionship and spanning time with local drinkers, brewers and writers here in Victoria. But I also hunger to connect beyond that, which is why at least half of the beer writing I read regularly is about the complicated world of UK beer. Beer culture in North America – like a Hollywood movie – has a neat and knowable history, clear-cut baddies and goodies, and a current feel-good triumphalism. In many ways thrilling yet unengaging. British beer has an enigmatic history, diverse sagas and side-narratives, and complexly-developed protagonists — of whom CAMRA is certainly one. More Mike Leigh than James Cameron.

CAMRA in particular fascinates me. Alan flippantly observed a parallel with the Tea Party — a comment that I found more insightful than perhaps he intended. Like the original Tea Party, CAMRA shares a common tragedy with all insurgent movements: successful revolutionaries often find themselves in the dubious position of becoming establishment conservatives. CAMRA's original struggle — to save cask ale culture from mass-production (which happened to favour kegging beer) — plays a similar role to the American Constitution for modern Tea-Partiers: it offers a stubborn lens on a political landscape whose struggles have shifted considerably, pitching those with many common interests against one another for the sake of antiquated loyalism.

With this in mind, I sit here with my CAMRA Victoria membership card in my hand and experience a bit of a revelation. What has CAMRA in Canada got to do with UK CAMRA? Besides the love of good beer, I can't work out what the affinity could possibly be. There has never been a cask-ale tradition here let alone a threat to it. CAMRA Victoria started well after the early-1980s good beer trend started. A few internet searches later and I realize that I cannot find any up-to-date references of any CAMRA chapter outside BC (besides some old mentions of CAMRA Ottawa — which seems to be defunct).

Suddenly feeling a chill, I wonder if CAMRA UK even knows about us. Another internet search reveals no links at all! I recall a recent article about an enterprising businessman in China who set up an exact replica of an Apple Store — down to the shelf-fittings and polo-shirt wearing uber-geeks — and sold Apple merchandise for months before being rumbled. Are we imposters? Am I in a cult? Am I part of an underground splinter group with secretive aims to subvert NA craft beer optimism with archaic, esoteric in-fighting? AM I A REPLICANT?

North American beer culture just got interesting for this CAMRA member…

Trending Upwards

2011-07-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

If you can read and you like beer you will have noticed that three things are trending in beer right now:

1. Collaborations
I read today that local outfit Phillips are brewing a Belgian IPA with Halifax's Garrison. There are special circumstances behind this particular collaboration, but it proves even our Island outfits have joined the throngs of brewers eager to mash each others' tuns. Brooklyn and Schneider did it, twice. Dogfish head will do it with literally anyone. Even hirstute beer bloggers are getting in on the act. (humble old us did it too recently, but we don't like to shout about it)

2. Beer cocktails
When the Beer Wench is mixin' IPA-a-rita in the same week that Alan McLeod is eying up saucy suds, you know it's beer cocktail silly season for the twitterati.

3. Belgian IPA
It's hoppy, it's yeasty, it possesses the unqualifiable characteristics of Belgian beer whilst simultaneously usually not being brewed in Belgium nor being in any way shape or form an IPA. It is, inexplicably, the Belgian IPA. It makes no sense, but it sounds delicious and people are in love with the concept of it anyway. More power to them.

The small beer blog likes to trend hard; it has been known to go on a three-day-trender. So naturally I felt compelled to make all three trends meet (within a tight budget) with my passive-collaborative-beer-cocktail-Belgian IPA: I dumped a can of Red Racer IPA and a bottle of Unibroue Fin du Monde into a right big glass and glugged it.

Blending beers has always been a core component of the production of many beer styles (ok ok I know it's not exactly a 'cocktail'). Depending on which sources you believe, porters were often produced with up to three separate brews. The Duchesse du Bourgogne Flanders Red I drank last week is a combination of an aged batch with a newer one — something that Guinness used to do (possibly still does?) with the addition of some sourish beer to produce a desirable twang.

Blending is not the same as brewing a beer with the combined ingredients of the blend, of course, as different yeasts and fermentation processes obviously nurture different flavours from each batch. I tend to mix two ales together from time to time on a whim — just to see if it'll work. But this was my first intentional blend and it worked out beautifully.

Fin Du Monde is a dry and pungent tripel — oozing peppery yeast in the classic Belgian mode, and Red Racer IPA is probably the most aggressively hopped, well-made IPA brewed within Canada. In combination they did not disappoint. I was very surprised that even in a 50/50 mix the Fin Du Monde engulfed what I presumed would be the more dominant hop-ridden bedfellow. The result was a very mellow, thick and resplendent drink. The bite of the yeast played well with the subdued, complex hops. The flavour was perhaps muddled after a too-cold first pour. But when it warmed up a bit it was really very lovely.

Give it a go with your favourite local Tripels and IPAs, or perhaps saisons too if you have them. But never, ever, EVER a Dubbel. It would only encourage someone to coin "Belgian Dark IPA": not worth the risk.

Tasting Notes

2011-07-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

After one sip of my first ever Duchesse Borgogne last night my face spasmed — fluctuating between an involuntary sour grimace and a beam of sheer delight. I try to resist the temptation to read descriptions (and worse: reviews) of new beers before I try them. As any movie-goer will attest, expectations and predispositions can be the arch-enemies of enjoyment. I hadn't even realized the Duchesse was a sour Flemish Red until it curdled my consciousness and tattooed a smile across my cheeks that lasted all evening. The shock of the sour with the luscious mead-like body really pleased me.

Our physical reactions to tasting beer are an oddly personal thing. Mood, fatigue and above all company can be more significant than mere flavour in determining whether we roll our eyes, adopt a stony snarl, or launch into a full-on "o" face. As animals our reactions to flavour are essentially carnal, yet as social creatures we have learned to become aware of and control how those reactions bubble up to the surface.

Personally, my tasting reactions mirror my reactions to good comedy. If I am watching The Daily Show or listening to The Bugle alone, even the most uproarious gags might solicit an appreciative nod — a monosyllabic chuckle at most. But put me in a crowded cinema and I will bellow through a full ninety minutes of a mediocre Will Ferrell flick. Similarly, a great beer enjoyed in solitude might fire up my synapses, but put me in a beer-tasting and the same beer could reduce me to giggling jelly.

On some occasions company has the opposite effect. We've all been in situations where someone has split a rare or celebrity beer and the gathered tasters proceed to play flavour-poker, stifling their visceral reactions – whether delight, disgust or indifference — for fear of betraying unsophisticated tastes or a misunderstanding of the intended style. It takes a bold or blasé comrade to break the seal: "It's OK, but I have no idea why BeerAdvocate drinkers have it as the best of its style" before others will wear their frowns of disappointment with confidence.

My favourite tasters of all (my taste in tasters, if you like) are those awesome individuals with a winning combination of hyperactive tastebuds and a total lack of inhibitions. There is one such guy called John who comes to our semi-regular Epic Beer Dinner pairing events. I always search the RSVP list to see if John is attending, and if he is, I know we will be offered a veritable showcase of joie-de-vivre.

John reacts to a beer the way ordinary people might react to being publicly slapped, tickled by a platoon of Oompa-Loompas, or being told they have less than three minutes to live. Reactions explode out of him. I once saw him react to an imperial Hefeweizen as though it had just suggested that John and his wife join it in a three-way.

I've never seen someone perceive such audacity, outrageousness and utter seduction in the beers that John drinks. I salute him. Most of us cannot be like John, but all beer lovers have their own version of this reaction. We might simply sit, aware, in the serene moment, feel an immediate compulsion to write about what we just drank, or snap a pencil lead scribbling tasting notes.

And now, because my words do not have the power to replicate intense visceral reactions, for John and the Duchesse, a video of some small children eating lemons.

The 'Rock is Rolling

2011-07-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

The BeerOnTheRock executive meeting took place last night. Dave, Ian and I managed to plan some changes to our Vancouver Island beer news resource before our sobriety clock ran down and we were reduced to watching a man inhaling his own boot on YouTube.

BOTR currently just does Island news and announcements, but we will start doing two other things:

1. Articles
BOTR is intended to be opinion-free (saving rants for our blogs), but our main aim is to promote our beer scene. We have decided therefore to start writing feature articles, e.g.:

profiles of local breweries/brewers
interviews with beer-related folk
historical bits about the beer industry here

2. Homebrewer's guild/community
Victoria does not currently have a homebrewers' organization. We have been in touch with some guys who have been planning to start one and it is likely that we will either host it or publicize it and certainly cover it. Dave and I are building our own brew operation; Ian already brews.

If any Island drinkers want to suggest another angle we could pursue on BOTR, feel free, we're here to serve.

OK now to the important business of what we drank last night:

Howe Sound's latest beer "Brilliant Lager" (and first in a can) is a Dortmunder-style lager. DAB — an exemplar of the style — seemed a natural comparison point. Both beers are solid, relatively malt-forward with minerally-hops. But I preferred the DAB which was crispier and more tart.

Second up was my beer-revelation of 2011 Weltenburger Kloster's Asam Bock. It is a dark doppelbock named, as far as I can tell, after the Brothers Asam — a pair of 18th Century German artisans (architect and painter, respectively). Such a lovely beer — warm and soothing, not too sweet, hint of chickory, and a clean finish. I used to pass this one by because of the antiquated label and its low price — I assumed it was a throwaway import. Since then I have had four other varieties of Weltenburger and I cannot recommend them enough.

Next was a half bottle of Dogfish Head's World Wide uber-imperial stout. Ours was a muddy brown, not black, and frankly not lovely. It had a great oily texture and all the concentrated liquorice and treacle flavours you'd want to see —but it was also a bit astringent and bitter.

The Serendipity pair were interesting. I had the bright idea of doing them in reverse order to save the oldest for last. The No.2 was much as I remembered it — a fairly nice bourbon-infused hybrid ale that could have used a more robust backbone. The No.1 was utterly infected and tasted like mouldy lime peel.

These out of the way we turned to Ian's gentle homebrew: a light, light bitter that eased the meeting to a close.

Keeping it Real: UK CAMRA vs. BrewDog

2011-07-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

A dispute between Scottish brewing provocateurs BrewDog and CAMRA UK — who run the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) — has ended with BrewDog being denied a spot at this year's GBBF. Working from BrewDog's complaint (I am assuming they accurately portray the issue as I am not aware of a response from CAMRA) the issue boils down to this:

CAMRA rules state that all British attendees must supply cask beer; only non-Brits may bring kegs due to difficulties in transporting casks and the fact that many beer styles are not appropriately presented in casks.

BrewDog contend that they had achieved an agreement to bring kegs of beer (their preferred method) which was reneged on by CAMRA; BrewDog are now not allowed to attend with kegged beer as their arrangements did not fulfill the terms CAMRA would accept in their agreement. [EDIT: Steve Lamond points out that it was not a renege, BD just didn't meet certain requirements]

Putting aside the issue that CAMRA may or may not have had an agreement with BrewDog to allow an exception in their case [EDIT: and also the fact that the technical reasons BD were refused was their failure to meet contract in terms of payment date and vessel size], I think that this issue represents a fundamental flaw in CAMRA that will certainly undermine its long-term aim to advocate cask beer. Here's why:

My first response was echoed by Pete Brown's tweet: "if the defence is 'We're all about real ale, that's the name," kindly rename the Great British BEER festival". This is obviously correct. Defining "great British Beer" as that solely served in cask is as luddite and arrogant as it is inaccurate. Modern beer producers have refined so many approaches, elevated so many styles to greatness, that I wouldn't be surprised if we see even "craft" rice and corn beers before too long (all right, don't mark my words on that one).

CAMRA's stance on cask beer is clearly linked to their raison d'etre: namely their admirable defence of cask ale from the threat of extinction at the hands of large corporate interests whose production methods and aggressive marketing were rapidly making kegged beer the only viable commercial option.

If you define CAMRA as a defence of cask beer against kegs, then it is wholly understandable why they'd take this precious stance. This explains why so many CAMRA advocates are (possibly reluctantly) supporting the cask-only policy.

But that is not how CAMRA should be defined. What they did, in essence, was protect a form of production and enjoyment that enjoyed wide appeal from powerful organizations and a commercial movement that was attempting to redefine "good" beer, and to unfairly marginalize other forms of production.

Kind of like what CAMRA are doing now by excluding kegged beer from the GBBF.

CAMRA began as a reactionary organization with noble aims, many of which persist to this day. Unfortunately, CAMRA now resembles a protectionist organization clinging to an outmoded hierarchical dogma that is doing its utmost to live up to the out-of-touch dinosaur clichés it has been (mostly unfairly) tarnished with since the 70s. Its "not in our backyard" decision to allow Euro breweries to bring kegs, but deny Brits the same privilege — makes CAMRA look like a possessive husband, dragging his long-suffering wife to a strip-club while forcing her to wear dungarees and a raincoat.

Surely all they will achieve is to alienate drinkers who recognize the inherent quality of kegged beers such as BrewDog and who wonder why the resurgent "real ale" has become our sole revered product. This, in turn, risks a backlash against cask ale and CAMRA itself — potentially undoing much of the good will toward 'real ale' that has been achieved over the last three decades.

The obvious solution to this miserable state of affairs is to either rename the festival to the Great British Cask Beer (or 'real ale') Festival, or to allow kegged beers into the GBBF — perhaps on a system that allocates a certain amount of space to casks and a certain amount to kegs. There seems to me no good reason why a quality assessment board cannot allocate space based on the merits of beer regardless of whether it is kegged or casked.

I am glad that the Canadian branch of CAMRA of which I am a member is more of general beer appreciation club that works to promote good beer in all its forms.

EDIT:
commenter one points out key points I missed. I concede that I interpreted BD's complaint rather quickly. However, the overarching point of the post is that favouring cask ale in context of Great British "Beer" Festival is the main problem. It is inaccurate and prejudicial and particularly difficult for newer drinkers to understand.

On Scandals of Red Bricks and Red Tops

2011-07-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

British Sunday "newspaper" The News of the World — famed for tawdry celebrity exposés and populist moral crusades such as the "name and shame" campaign that outed known pedophiles — folded this week amidst a truly repugnant phone hacking scandal. As Rupert Murdoch flies in to England for damage limitation/cynical rebranding of his other rag The Sun as The Sun on Sunday, all I can really think to do is microwave some popcorn, crack a beer, and watch the whole shit show go down in lurid detail.

So, while we're on the topic of hackery and rebranding, did you notice I gave my blog an extreme makeover?

Wait, let me try that again.

While we're on the topic of hackery, rebranding and "naming and shaming" — I have to pay tribute to Wolf Brewing Co. (formerly Fat Cat Brewing) of Nanaimo BC. In a week where the headlines have left a taste so bad in everyone's mouth that a turd sandwich would be considered a palate-cleanser, Wolf Brewing's Red Brick IPA should be applauded for wringing fresh grimaces from my over-worked wince muscles.

Dave told me it was the same recipe as Fat Cat's IPA, something I'd read elsewhere. This raises two questions: Why take over a brewery, change its name, and produce exactly the same beers? and Can Fat Cat's one really have been this bad?

The nicest thing about Red Brick IPA is Wolf's new old-timey stylings. The new bottles resemble those of several blended scotch whisky brands; the artwork is well done and approaches classy. The beer itself is not too reminiscent of the style I know as IPA. Wolf's beer is citrusy enough, but not in an aromatic way. Red Brick has a lemon rind flavour and is generally unsuitably sour and lifeless. The hops are strangled and anemic. As I was debating whether to bother with a second pour, I noticed the description on the label reads "impressive west coast style IPA": that's about as accurate as it is humble.

I don't like giving a local(ish) brewery a kicking, but on this evidence it is deserved. To be fair to them, perhaps Wolf are maintaining these recipes while they get a sense of their own approach. I do not know much about the new owners, they could be just finding their feet — so by all means try their beers for yourselves. But if Wolf's management wanted advice, I'd tell them to launch one or two new lines with straightforward appeal and lots of quality. This aint gonna cut it.

If you'll excuse me, I have some popcorn to get out of the microwave and some schadenfreude to extract from some squirming media moguls. Now that's tasty.

Street Beer

2011-07-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

After a dizzying experience hosting my daughter's (4th) birthday BBQ at a beach (we lost her twice and a crow ate part of her cake), I find myself at home, several hours later, microwaving some left-over street meats and contemplating what to drink.

"It's time," I said to my wife.
"You're going to drink that can of Cariboo I found in the street aren't you?"
"Yes!"

I was interested in Cariboo back when I worked in the Hillside Liquor Store. HLS's fridge is divided into sections according to how cheap or rubbish a beer is. Starting at the posh end of the store you have the bombers and quality imports, then the good BC micros like Tree Brewing, then the crappier ones like Granville Island, then your Kokanees and Buds and Canadians and all that shit.

Finally, at the end, you get the weird ones you don't really know where to place: Bowen Island, Moosehead, Wildcat. These beers are cheap, but their labels are at least more interesting than the bland landscape of silvers, reds and blues in the macro fridge next door.

Cariboo is one such beer. "Brewed with spring water" it announces, above a jaunty picture of a leaping Cariboo and a cute, curly yellow logo (that looks like it says "Cariboos" to me).

Maybe it was the glimmer of yellow on green that caught my wife's eye as we walked home one night last month. I picked up the dented can, musing that a hammered student had probably let it slip from his grip and written it off as burst on his way to urinate on someone's porch. I stashed it in our kid's stroller for a laugh more than anything else and we walked on.

But here I am, feeling as battered as the can, munching a reheated burger and sucking gratefully at the simple yellow goodness of Cariboo. Nice.

--

small beer would like to hear reader's reviews of beers that you found on the floor, if you'll admit to it of course…

Photosymphony

2011-06-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Hello reader.

I feel suitably recovered from becoming a dad for the second time to get back to important activities once again. A slow start perhaps, as I will just be posting a collection of recent beer photographs just now. But this doesn't mean I've been slacking — why, we brewed our own espresso dunkelweisse and wrote an article about it and got a double spread feature for Monday Magazine's beer issue.

Not bad for a dude covered in babypoo. On with the show:

Westy 12 bottle cap shot. Beer courtesy of legendary wife.

Yummy Spring Rite, Driftwood's Local Malt Abbey Ale

The five grains used to brew our Espresso Dunkelweisse.
From front to back:
blurry malt, husky grain, fullcup malt, vague wheat and barely-visible stuff

Dave and I celebrated my son's birth with two lovely barley wines,
a decent stout and a punchy little stogie.

Went crazy with the Lightroom settings. Can't remember what this is.

Pliny Proves a Point

2011-05-05T23:07:00.000-07:00

What dreadful timing, and how annoying: a bottle of Pliny the Elder made itself available to me today. This is sincerely not good.

The reason I'm probably the least excited beer drinker ever to anticipate his first taste of what some people consider to be the finest IPA (indeed, beer) currently made, is because of my last blog post. In it, I whined about the lust for exclusive, exotic beers that drives many to ignore the quality and potential of their local breweries.

And here I am, staring at the one beer that might send me weak at the knees and make me look like a proper prick for getting on my high horse about localism: this thing was brewed 1,400km away and took ten weeks to arrive here (brewed 02.24.2011 according to the label). It is among the most coveted of North American beers that are regularly produced (probably losing out to Dark Lord with its freakishly over-attended launch parties). And to rub it in further, this most fetishized of beers arrives as a direct result of the trade made by Dave that inspired me to complain in the first place.

No sense beating myself up about it, let's drink this thing.

All right, I know it would be convenient for my argument to give a less than stellar review, but I have to say this is not as incredible as I hoped it would be. Yes, yes … vindication has touched my lips and its taste truly is sweeter than Russian River's finest. This beer is good, very tasty in fact. As expected there is a strong grapefruit flavour and a stewed pear sweetness, maybe a little coconut — quite my favourite style of IPA. But it is not explosive, not zingy, not particularly sexy.

I sip it slowly as Dave (bless him for sharing this with me) and I hammer some baseboards into the walls and it improves with warmth: a little spiciness from the 8% abv opens the flavour up a bit. I almost get giddy, but it is oddly muted, as though I am drinking it through a muslin gauze.

I have no reason not to believe all the people who rave about this beer, but I think this one has probably deteriorated somewhat. It is likely the storage or transportation — possibly a less-than-perfect batch — because Dave has heard on good authority that the brewer himself prefers this beer after 2 months in the bottle (which this is). There are probably ten IPAs that shook me more forcefully than the beer in my hand, and all but a few of them were from closer to home.

Beer Miles

2011-05-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

I was round Dave's house the other day and he handed me a parcel containing several beers he was planning to mail in a trade arranged with a remote beer drinker.

"Do you think this will be OK to send?" he asked.

What Dave meant was "are my bubble-wrapping skills sufficient to prevent the recipient of this parcel from having to mentally reconstruct from the aroma of stale hops and soggy paper what this bottle of Driftwood Singularity might have tasted like whilst plucking shards of shattered bomber glass from his fingers."

"No, you'll probably need to buttress the ends with a wedge of cardboard," I said.

But it occurred to me just then that it might not be OK to send it for another reason...

Permit me to generalize, but beer lovers tend to wear on their sleeves a strong social conscience and eco-friendly credentials. Ask a "crafty" why they eschew macro breweries and they are likely to cite unethical business practices, environmental disregard and crummy working conditions — not just the piss-poor quality of the product.

Here lies a hypocrisy most of us share: we expect to be able to — and frequently do — drink beers from hundreds if not thousands of miles away. One fallout from the so-called "craft beer revolution" (let's not flatter ourselves) is that certain beers, the rarer and more remote the better, have become ludicrously fetishized. Many drinkers feel compelled to try them all, whether for the experience, to boost their BeerAdvocate Beer Karma rating, or to earn a pointless Untappd badge. Should we do it? And is it worth it?

The biggest issue is that the environmental cost of transporting beer — a product with a high weight:value ratio — is significant. I'm fairly green-minded; not because I am particularly morally virtuous, but because any other stance in the face of current evidence seems to be grossly irresponsible. I drink my fair share of imports, but I'm very pleased when local brewers produce previously unavailable styles so that I don't feel the need to. The green beer point has been made on several other websites already.

But there are other reasons to stick to local where possible that have nothing to do with the environment but everything to do with improving the quality of the beer you drink. Here are a few I can think of:

The beer is almost certainly going to be fresh. This is critically important for many styles of beer. How on earth can people expect to evaluate and review a cultish double IPA from the US, for example, if it has been sat in a warm warehouse at customs for six weeks before you get anywhere near it?

Supporting local producers is not just a kind thing to do, it will also put money in their pockets that they can use to expand their offerings — meaning a local source of quads, sours and imperial pilsners is much more likely to emerge.

You will usually get better value. I recently came across a bottle of Phillips Amnesiac going for $16 in a bar in Ontario where local (and better, in my opinion) equivalents were sold for under a tenner. There are exotic imports selling for a packet in your local beer store that are considered to be very ordinary by those who live near the breweries — bear that in mind.

Finally, I don't know about you, but I get a shed-load more pleasure drinking a beer made by a guy who I either know or am likely to bump into in a local pub on any given night.

All I'm saying is don't get too caught up on acquiring the hard to come by at all costs. The grass is greener at home. And if it really isn't, then bloody water it.

Sumpin's Up with the Wacky Hops

2011-04-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Last time I had a Lagunitas it was the weird Brown Shugga — kind of a schizoid beer with a mess of hops and malts and no real character. I was ready to call foul after the first bottle, but as it came in a sixer I had five more to get through. By the end of the pack it had grown on me. It was a similar experience to listening to Soulfly or Merzbow or some other thrashy, distortion artists — blunt and unapproachable until you let your inhibitions down and go with the madness.

The Little Sumpin' was a refreshing contrast. Billed on the bottle as a straight out "ale", this is a zingy fresh IPA with a lemony backbone. Recipe is very close to Central City's Red Racer, I'd guess. Just the right thing for my homemade beef and chocolate chili. I wouldn't usually be concocting such a sledge-hammer of a meal this time of the year, but Victoria seems to have forgotten what season it is. Here are a couple of pictures of young T pouring me a perfect Lagunitas to go with dinner.

Lovely stuff, but I'm a cantankerous type and I'm going to whine about the label. There's a trend these days to add a jaunty twist to ingredient lists, and it is cheesy and boring. "Hops, Malt, Hops, Hops, Yeast, Hops, Water, and Hops" reads the label. Haha. How WACKY! It would be fine if it were just a few guffawing brewers pulling each others' fingers at the back of the classroom, but the temptation to add a cheeky riff to an otherwise worthy bit of packaging is proving too much for today's brewer. Even the generally dignified Driftwood recently felt the need to add "Shwack 'o Hops" to their cute ingredient icons.

I understand that beer labels are important, especially in a saturated craft market increasingly fuelled by hipsters, social media bandwagoners and other image-receptive types. Sure, the need to stand out has prompted some beautiful label designs (the awesome pourcurator.com knows). But I get tired of the pun-ridden names, derivative graphics, and particularly the pornographization of the humble hop.

Hops really are the double-D tits of beer these days. If there's a beer in a brewers' stable that has a ker-azy label or a hyperbolic name — it's generally the IPA. Some of them are pretty well-done, but for every Perpetual IPA there's a dozen that are less-than-inspired: Hop Circle, Total Eclipse of the Hop (I'm sorry Howe Sound, it just makes no sense!), Hop-a-Doodle-Do (oh please). For any brewery marketing types hunting for an easy selling name, might I suggest a few ideas from my own inner-Loaded Magazine-reader "Hopic of Cancer", "Bilbo the Hoppit", "Hop Killah", or, my personal favourite, "A-Hop-Bop-a-Loo-Hop-a-Hop-Bam-Boom" — unless these are already taken. I mean it's just so completely childish and unoriginal and cheapening and...

...Woah, hang on. I just saw this.

I take it all back.

Get yer hops out love.

Is this wrong?

2011-04-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

#1

#2

#3

On right: plain 50/50 Pothole Filler vanilla ice-cream smoothie.
On left: smoothie floated on top of half glass of stout using back of a spoon.

I'm going to repeat this with a handful of black cherries and a splash of port. It's a way of hedging my bets: If the liver doesn't finish me off, the coronary will.

M for Innovation

2011-02-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

Just watched the Oscars, so awards are on my mind. Winners are mostly of two categories: flatly predictable and staggeringly unjust (see A Beautiful Mind, Scorsese's Taxi Driver losing to Rocky, and Braveheart FFS). How could a Colin Firth period drama featuring a disability not win an oscar? Winning an oscar is so easy, you could do it on concept alone, watch:

Title: Marie

Synopsis: Marie Curie is a fiercely committed woman who endures the accidental death of genius husband Pierre, and a progressive illness caused by exposure to radiation during her nobel-award-winning research, to invent radiation therapy and X-rays that save the lives of street urchins with shattered legs etc.

Critical scene: Aware she is dying, Curie stoically keeps working, you know, for the children. The camera fades out as Curie glances at her dead husband's photo, illuminated only by the blue-ish light given out by the lethal polonium isotopes in Curie's tireless hands.

Starring: Kiera Knightley (young) and Meryl Streep (Old) as Marie Curie; Javier Bardem as Pierre.

You know I've just won an oscar, right?

This year, however, the Oscars got something right. Black Swan is an innovative movie perfectly executed, and Natalie Portman thoroughly deserved the oscar.

Now, I don't know about you, but when I think about "Innovation" and "Perfect execution", I also think about Molson's M beer (sorry, that link was as convoluted and unnecessary as Inception). Mostly because someone recently gave me a can of M for free, and the label boldly proclaims its innovative qualities. The beer is "Microcarbonated", which means one of two things:

1. the bubbles are smaller

2. the carbonation process is managed at the "micro" level to be precisely consistent

The result is, in their words, "a lager with an exceptionally drinkable taste". Now, putting aside for a moment the niggling fact that "taste" is a metaphysical concept, and can therefore not be "drinkable" (beer is drinkable, Mr Molsons' marketing copy-editor, and I bet you earned a bucket for that blurb), I'm wondering what this all means and whether the beer is actually really that good. Thankfully, I can test the latter first hand, and I'll get to that in a bit. Not the former though, as it is "patent-pending", so we don't know exactly how (or why) Molson's invented a process that makes smaller or more consistent carbonation. But we can talk about the science of carbonation itself.

First off, nobody puts bubbles into beer. Beer is carbonated by natural or artificial means, which means that beer is partly a carbon dioxide (CO2) solution. Some beers have more CO2 in them, which means they produce more bubbles and feel fizzier when we drink them. Large disruptions (e.g. shaking) and smaller ones (e.g. imperfections in glassware) disturb the delicate equilibrium of the CO2 solution, and bubbles form. All bubbles form the same size: small. However, other factors determine whether they grow larger or remain tiny:

1. liquid agitation: shaking produces more bubbles which join as they bump into each other, producing bigger bubbles.

2. surface tension: as a bubble forms, CO2 from the surrounding liquid will naturally tend to join the bubble as it causes small agitations in its path through the beer. Proteins in the beer determine how tough the skin of the bubble is, and therefore how likely it is to accept more CO2.

3. atmospheric pressure: drinking a beer up a mountain makes a bubblier beer (probably, I did no research for this bit).

"Perfect" carbonation

Now, we can be fairly sure that Molsons are not taking very careful steps to ensure that we all drink our beer in the calmest environment possible, so we can rule out #1 as a factor. Plus, altering the protein makeup of beer is part of the brewing process itself, and therefore in no way innovative. So I presume Molson's have just figured out a way to accurately carbonate their beer to a very specific concentration of CO2 (I'll be cynical and guess it's just some sort of clever gas pump) Now, I'm not sure if Molsons' are aware, but Sodastream has been doing this for years. Trust me, my brother and I drank enough experimentally-carbonated substances (e.g. "Fizzy Tea!", "Fizzy Milk!" and "Fizzy Heinz Baked Beans!") as kids to know that you have a great deal of control over the fizz-factor with one of these babies. Plus, this all raises the obvious question: "just because you can consistently produce X level of carbonation, why the hell does that entitle you to claim that that level of carbonation is better than any other?"

Microcarbonation in action, I guess

So I am confused as to what exactly Molsons have done that warrants patenting. It's not even that innovative; not like breast-milk ice-cream, for example. Maybe the genius of this innovation just has to be sampled. Here goes...

(Minutes later...) I just finished it. It tastes pretty much like any other adjunct lager. It is about as fizzy as a fountain coke at McDonalds, which I have always found to be a perfectly lovely level of carbonation. I'm extremely pleased with this lager because it was free. In any other circumstances, I'd pass. It's not great, but hardly terrible either, and the slightly grim aftertaste is nothing like as bad as that left by the Academy's shameful failure to award the outstanding 10-nominated True Grit a single damn statue.

Afterword: I asked the fine folk of #beer chatroom to name some recent genuine beer production innovations. If they ever get beyond suggestions like "vortex bottles" I'll actually produce a post on the subject...

How Big is a Victoria "Pint"?

2011-01-20T23:06:00.000-08:00

Two recent articles have reminded me of that great bone of contention for anally-retentive drinkers and tightwads the world over: the size of a "proper" pint.

The first article was Pete Brown's take on the possible introduction of a beer glass somewhere between the pint and the half pint in British pubs. I buy his argument: given the variety of alcohol content in contemporary beers and various levels of inebriation we seek out for medical, practical and hedonistic reasons — it makes perfect sense to allow us to binge drink in increments of our choice.

The second article hit closer to home and raised more irk in me: the OnBeer blog article about the interpretation of "pint" in Canada. The argument in this article is that, unlike in Britain "serving sizes are not regulated in Canada – a bartender can serve beer in whatever size glass suits their fancy."

Now Jason from OnBeer is not endorsing this sorry state of affairs. He is making the astute observation that Canadian pubs are not obligated to serve beers in specific sized glasses (fair enough), but also that some of them may actually offer "pints" or respond to orders of a "pint" with a serving that is anything but a pint (not fair enough).

Most Canadians seem to have bought into this conspiracy that "pint" just means "big glass". Most probably don't know that the Canadian Weights and Measures Act explicitly defines a pint as 1/8th Gallon (568ml = 20 imperial fluid ounces), which is the same as a British pint (as opposed to a US "pint" which is only 473ml = 16 US fluid ounces). Most don't care, they just drink the stuff. But you'd expect a barman to know, wouldn't you?

Being a smartass, smallbeer conducted an experiment to see how knowledgeable and scrutable our city's fine publicans are when it comes to selling stuff to drunk people.

Aim
To discover whether Victoria publicans know what a pint is, and whether they sell pints that are actually non-pints.

Method
a. I put on a telemarketer's voice and phoned 16 of Victoria's pubs
b. I asked to be put through to the bar manager or a member of bar staff
c. I asked these three questions:

1. What serving sizes do you sell your beers in?

(If any of their answers were "pint", then:)

2. How many millimeters or ounces is in your pint?

(Finally:)

3. Are you aware of the legal definition of a pint?

Missing data: Now, some of the bar staff either refused to or could not answer 2 or 3. Some also just said "16oz" or something other than "pint" in answer to question 1; god bless them for their honesty, but they ruined the rest of the research design. Some of them got upset when I said the word "legal" and hung up on me. Chillax people!

I decided therefore to keep the pubs' identities anonymous, as my intention was not to embarrass or annoy anyone. (However, if you're interested in the sample range, all but two of the pubs are listed on this site).

Results
Here are the answers from each pub. (Just to be clear, a legal Canadian pint is 568ml = 20oz)

[[[ Before I discuss the results, I should remind you of one TOTALLY CONFUSING FACT: serving a federal legal pint (568ml) in BC is ILLEGAL, as the maximum allowable beer serving size in BC is 500ml (17.5oz).

Isn't BC fucking WEIRD?

Only it isn't… it appears that is either an old rule or pure lies, as the new guide for primary liquor licensees actually states (p. 26):

Draught beer: You may serve draught beer in single servings
of no more than 24 oz (680 ml) or smaller servings of multiple
brands, provided the total served at one time is no more than 24
oz (680 ml). For reference, a Canadian pint is 568ml. Pitchers
or other multiple serving containers shared by two or more
patrons may contain no more than 1.5 litres of draught beer.

But that doesn't deter many BC publicans from thinking that 500ml is the maximum they can serve, as this study partly shows…

Oh, and the same document clearly defines "sleeves" (that other massively variable measure of beer) as 14oz, so go figure. ]]]

Discussion
Serving a "pint"
Well. Bearing in mind that the legal "pint" is 568ml=20oz, Victoria pubs do a fairly poor job. Of the 7 pubs who claimed to serve a "pint", only 2 served a legal pint. In a Victoria pub, a drink that is described openly as a pint may be as small as 14oz, or as large as a 20oz. Both pubs that claimed to serve sleeves (14oz) are guilty of under-serving (both serve 12oz).
Defining a "pint"
Out of 16 pubs, only 10 pubs agreed to guess what the legal definition of a "pint" is. 2 Pubs got it correct, but one of those pubs admitted to deliberately serving 2oz less than a pint. One pub thought that a 20oz serving was illegal, although I'll put that one down to the alleged older guidelines in BC pertaining to a 500ml upper-limit.

Conclusion
Draw your own… I'm not one of these die-hard Englishmen who insists on a "real" pint of beer. But I'd like to get a pint if that's what's being sold to me. OnBeer are correct — the size of a pint is legislated, but it probably isn't regulated too actively, judging by the scope of serving sizes that are passed off as a pint in Victoria.

Of course, the saddest and most upsetting part of this whole study is that I have learned over the last two hours that I am almost completely incapable of operating a spreadsheet program, and most certainly crippled in my ability to publish a spreadsheet to the internet in any sort of readable form.

I blame the BC Liquor Board.

Kidnapped by CAMRA

2011-01-13T22:41:00.000-08:00

I went to my first CAMRA meeting on Tuesday. I've always been vaguely opposed to the organization. Not for any mature, rational reason, of course. But because I used to read the "Real Ale Twats" Viz comic strip, and because Pete Brown's observations of his local CAMRA members portray them every bit as arrogant and anally-retentive as the comic.

This blogging lark has brought me into contact with many a member of Victoria's CAMRA and I've found them all to be disappointingly pleasant and fun. I suppose that some CAMRA chapters defined themselves during some real struggles with the imminent death of cask ale, and are rightly very proud of their successful revival of the craft. But pride sours into self-importance in many of us, which probably explains Brown's anecdotes of deplorable CAMRA capes.

CAMRA Victoria is no stranger to success. Constant campaigning and promotion has certainly contributed to the thriving cask scene on the island. But our chapter comes across as a much more easy-going club for beer-lovers, providing a passable excuse for board members to duck out of the house once a month and get plastered in the name of a good cause. I'm all for that.

I attended the Victoria Annual General Meeting mostly in the capacity of a wannabe journalist, hoping to score a story for our BeerOnTheRock website or our monthly Monday Magazine article. I also suspected (correctly) that, seeing as it was hosted at Swan's, there'd be a free beer or two in it for me. Little did I know how the evening would end...

I sat with maybe 40-50 jocular CAMRA members, including Dave and a handful of other beer friends, and watched the yearly report and election of board members with interest. It was nice when President Glen Stusek gave us props for our blog and Monday article. I sat there with a pseudo air of journalistic objectivity, but I found myself getting into it. The talkers were charming, the mood was great, and that Swans Yuletide Ale was going down very well indeed.

After the first round of presentations, we were given a ten minute break that warped into twenty-five minutes of swift drinking and talking with home brewers, brewery reps, and flirtatious septuagenarians. We got a lot of interest for Ian's proposed Vancouver Island beer tour. Armed with a Swans Extra IPA each Dave and I sat down for the membership vote.

CAMRA's membership in Victoria is up to the high 200s — which is fairly impressive for a city of our size, and marks a steady increase. That said, as the voting progressed it became apparent that a few members had stepped down after long periods on the board, and there were one or two positions left to be filled. "How are CAMRA going to pull this one off?" I thought, as the president repeatedly appealed for someone to step forward as Secretary. But soon enough someone volunteered. I'm not sure he'd operated a computer before, but raised his glass with confidence and the crowd roared their approval.

After a few more votes, they were calling for Directors-at-Large — the final positions needing to be filled. Dave, who had been out drinking for a good two hours longer than I, told me to nominate him. Drunker than I realized I was, I shouted "Dave!" — possibly before the president had finished asking for votes. Dave was hilariously voted in.

I rocked back in my chair and laughed a bit. How had Dave got himself into this mess? I thought. I drained my IPA and heard my name being called out. I was being asked to be a Director-at-Large as well. It was flattering, but I have my journalistic integrity to think about. So of course, I declined gracefully. Besides, I have no idea what a Director-at-Large actually is.

Somewhere inside me the booze-fueled self-destruction pixie shouted "fuck it".
"I'll do it!" I heard myself say.
They voted me in.
I'm officially a twat.

I suppose I had better get a membership now.

A twat

Know Your Beer Blogger

2011-01-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

Beer bloggers writing about beer blogging and beer bloggers is about the most indulgent thing you can do, but who else reads these things anyway? To prove there is literally no beginning to my originality, I present smallbeer's guide to the various species of beer bloggers that may be found making their home in the dense undergrowth of the webbynet.

Anyone who reads beer blogs, or blogs devoted to any subject really, quickly realizes that an abundance of motives, character flaws and mental illnesses drive people to write these things. This typology is in no way complete. I have omitted the most boring categories: namely those smart, witty, balanced folk who regularly turn out delightfully entertaining blogs with some true insights. And you may not find many bloggers who totally conform to each species, but admit it, we all know people who fit these descriptions to an extent. We may even recognize ourselves somewhere in this motley bunch...

The Narcissist
These fey folk stare longingly into their beer glasses, transfixed and in awe at the beauty of their own reflected images, haloed in lovely yellow bubbles. Beer is an accessory designed to display the captivating plumage of their own impeccable tastes. Often sad inside, they intersperse cutting-edge beer reports with appeals to their followers for love, attention and affirmation.
How to spot: The narcissist will generally flock to whatever's hot, but can be found practically everywhere for fear of missing out on the latest "underground" beer trend. Their blogs will be linked on all the coolest breweries' websites, even if the narcissist had to hack the server to get it there. Spouts terms like "artisan", "cottage industry" and "pastoral" — always inappropriately.
Natural habitat: Twitter, social net-working sites, any web-medium where their avant-garde appetites can be flaunted instantaneously.

The Trophy-Hunter
Beer reviews are this species' specialty, and LOTS of them. Their blogs are shrines to gluttony, and the reviews read like a FHM-reading bachelors' list of sexual exploits.
How to spot: Trophy-Hunters' blogs will feature a comprehensive list of reviewed beers that may be sorted by brewery, style, and percentage rating. Beers from all known brewers will be reviewed, and from time to time mysterious brown bottles marked "#37" or "prototype X" will surface, as the Trophy-Hunter's exhausted food supply is supplemented by as-yet-unreleased beers scavenged from fellow trophy-hunters and homebrewing friends.
Natural habitat: BeerAdvocate, Ratebeer, untappd, basically anywhere where conquests may be displayed, or 90x90 pixel beer-achievement medallions may be earned to post on your profile.

The Entrepreneur
A most nefarious, deceptive species — the entrepreneur beholds the craft beer movement as an untapped resource to exploit in its quest for riches and celebrity. Expect this blogger to post, tweet, and comment with nothing but vacuous, simpering, all-too-positive remarks about everything to do with beer, in an attempt to ingratiate itself with as many craft-beer folk as possible.
How to spot: The Entrepreneur will quickly seek to capitalize on its ill-gotten following by plastering its blog with advertisements, releasing a mobile telephony device "app", and developing "synergistic partnerships" with other people who view the craft beer scene as a "loyalty infrastructure". Expect endless tweets, retweets, exclusive tweets, limited edition tweets, all designed to increase traffic and boost blog's performance on all manner of corporate influence charts and whatnot. Refers to self as a "brand", "scene-leader", or "facilitator".
Natural habitat: Twitter, networking sites, and get-rich-quick seminars.

The Beer Geek
The love for beer is genuine and strong in this sturdy breed, but some deep compulsion drives the Beer Geek to obsess over knowledge and detail to the detriment of sanity, relationships, and personal hygiene.
How to spot: can identify any beer from its bottle cap or a 1cm-squared section of its label, and is likely to be able to give the year of its release and the full name of the person who put the cap on. Owns more bottles of beer than it could ever drink, yet considers its collection "woefully incomplete".
Natural habitat: lurking on forums, accessing strange government archives about 1920s barley taxation, attending cask events alone.

The Redeemer
Reconciled to a fairly permanent addiction to the sauce, this creature has hit upon the idea of beer blogging as way to regain some dignity from their hopeless predicament. Like Paul Giamatti's character in (the excellent) Sideways, the redeemer is capable of great sensitivity and insight with regards to craft beer, but would gleefully neck Olde Englishe from the bottle if he thought no-one was watching. Tends to disappear from blogging for weeks at a time due to "blackouts".
How to spot: The redeemer's blog will take on a rambling, inconsistent style. Promised blog posts may fail to materialize, and bursts of enthusiastic daily posting will be followed by terse, depressed tweets, and occasional lashing out at other types of bloggers in convoluted blog posts in order to feel better about some deep personal pain...
Natural habitat: chat-rooms populated by other career-drinkers, any medium that may result in a freebie, holding cells.

Top Ten Beers of 2010 That I Can Remember Tonight

2011-01-03T00:50:00.000-08:00

Flavius, bless the sultry princess, posted a nice top ten of his favourite beers of 2010. I'm always impressed by people who can decide on top tens. I would struggle to list my ten favourite numbers under "11". I'm also too fickle (or spineless) to give a percentage grade to a beer. I just don't think I could present a compelling argument as to why this beer is precisely 1/100th better than that beer. And if I can't manage that, I'd just be lying to everyone if I pretended I could. Experience into numbers just doesn't go.

But I do think some beers are great, and under most circumstances I'd take them over others. Problem is, "some beers I like" is a weak opening gambit for any article, so I'm happy to play the top ten game for the sake of the new year spirit. Each one of the beers listed (in no particular order) below is at least 46% more delicious than a can of Carling, and up to 3 times more lovely than a Molson Canadian Cold Shots.

#1 Driftwood - Belle Royale
If I start talking about how much I loved this I won't stop. Read old review.

#2 Jolly Pumpkin - Oro de Calabaza
This was one of the first wilder ales I ever tried, and I have yet to top it. I took a bottle on recommendation from someone at Vancouver's Brewery Creek beer store. It was one of those staff recommendations where the guy held out the bottle, knowing he was doing the right thing in steering a loyal customer toward a great beer experience, but at the same time hating me for taking it out of his store because he loved it so damn much it HURTS. The most mysterious, disorienting beer I've ever tried.

#3 Oakham - Citra
Had this on tap at the Malt Shovel in England. A single-hopped golden ale brewed to session strength (low 4s I think), served out of a cask. Juicy lychees and marijuana hops, syrupy but not sweet, impeccable bitterness waters the mouth for endless sips. Just the most adorable all-dayer you will ever come across (pictured on the right, next to the also divine Hoggley's Solstice Stout).

#4 Pretty Things - Baby Tree
The world's second best "fruit" beer, possibly, from the always-outstanding Pretty Things gypsy brewery. I loved the rum-and-raisin character of this quad, which is brewed with dried California plums in the kettle. Quads are darkly fruity in any case, but the fruit treatment is far from superficial, and brings a chocolate-shiraz note to an otherwise perfectly made traditional quad.

#5 Brooklyn Brewery - Lager
Surprise factor played a part in this one. Novice to "vienna-style" lagers, I believed for a moment that this hop-heavy lager was an incorrectly labelled pale ale. Brooklyn have done a really good job with this beer, which delivers all the pucker and ether of a middleweight IPA, but with a clinically clean finish.

#6 Moon Under Water - Blue Moon Bitter (first batch)

Victoria's most recently-opened brewpub allowed me to take several bombers of their first batch of bitter home with me after I interviewed them on their premises. Three batches later, I returned to the brewpub to find the brewers still drinking the first batch because it was so darn good. Blue Moon Bitter is a wonderful session bitter in its final incarnation, but the fermentation gods smiled on that first batch and I still crave it from time to time. It was a lightly peppery, very dry bitter, with the most persistently earthy hop flavour I've ever come across. Smelled like fresh soil dug up with your hands.

#7 Dominus Vobiscum - Hibernus
The sister beer to this one — the lovely "Belgian IPA" Lupulus — almost sneaked into this spot, but the Hibernus just tips it for me. Quebec's Charlevoix microbrasserie are generating a formidable reputation for big-but-classy beers, trading on the increasingly crowded genre of European traditional recipes given a North American twist. The Hibernus is a 10% Belgian strong ale with real character. The beer has a very velvety texture, and a really fat slug of dark fruits, mild mulled-wine spices, and a touch of absinthe. A beer for a special night.

#8 Pelican Brewpub - India Pelican Ale
The best of a very good bunch of IPAs that I generally obsess over. I already reviewed this one as part of my in-no-way-numerically-oriented "Top Ten IPAs of the Year" article.

#9 Brewdog - Sink the Bismark
I wouldn't say I wanted to hate this, but I expected it to be a throwaway experience, akin to a visit to a Victorian beer freak show, manned by a leering Scottish vagabond in a ringmaster's top hat, if only there were such a thing. How could a 41% abv IPA even resemble a "beer", let alone merit serious appreciation? I was very surprised. The Brewdog beer is the essence of IPA, and a remarkable liquer in its own right. If it were more affordable, I'd go as far as to say it should be in any well-stocked liquor cabinet. Raunchy with hops and syrup and searing heat, the Bismark is a fine drink.

#10 Brasserie Dieu du Ciel - Peche Mortel
I tried this gargantuan coffee-infused imperial stout in December 2009, but the aftertaste lingered well into the spring of 2010 so it warrants a place here. This is my favourite "dessert" beer. It is decadent, sweet, and mouth-invading. Many beers that go all out for impact, as 'Mortel (or "Mortal Sin") surely does, end up hopelessly muddled or just plain offensive. This one is manna.

--

So there you have it. I'm likely to give a different list if you asked me tomorrow, but I can say with 99% certainty that these are all outstanding beers and well worth your time. Happy New Year.

Toast of Christmas Past

2010-12-28T21:19:00.000-08:00

This Christmas I was blessed with an unexpected beery gift, courtesy of my 19-year-old self. How? As I mentioned, I visited my family in England recently. While browsing through my dad's wine cellar (i.e. garage) I found two dusty boxed beers that I remembered buying for him many years ago. For some beautiful reason, he'd neglected to drink them for thirteen years. Being a red-wine and scotch fanatic, he didn't mind too much when I packed them into my suitcase.

One of the beers is a bit special: a 1997 Fullers Vintage Ale. Fullers Vintage Ale is brewed in fairly small lots each year, and is recommended for aging. The beer is an "old ale" (malt heavy, brandy-like, dark, and very strong), and the recipe changes a little each year. 1997 was the first year of production for this beer, which makes this quite a rare find. My bottle was numbered #669 of only 85,000 produced — subsequent years have seen bigger batches, but never more than the 165,000 produced in 2010.

The other beer is a Shepherd Neames 1997 Christmas Ale. This beer is only 6.7% ABV compared with the Fullers' 8.5%. It is a darkish, spiced beer — reminiscent of a lighter scotch ale. Although Shepherd Neames is credited with being Britain's oldest active brewery (dating back to the 1700s), its Christmas Ale is slightly less prestigious than Fullers. Dave — who I invited over for the tasting — and I held out little hope for this one, but we were still excited to have two thirteen-year-old beers to compare.

We decided to taste both beers before Christmas dinner, fearing the palate-deadening effects of turkey, champagne and Christmas pudding. In early afternoon, over a cheese plate, we cracked the 'Neame first after leaving it outside the backdoor for an hour to bring it down to cellar temp.

We half expected it to have spoiled, noting the 1998 best-before date on the label. But apart from a sourish whiff upon opening, and a dirty-looking ring of sediment around the neck, the beer seemed perfectly fine. It had retained a fair bit of carbonation — exhibiting only slightly less than you'd expect from a fresh bottle of a similar style. The beer was sweetish, with orange-juice malt, and a very dull spiciness. It ended with a burned bitterness that was not particularly lovely, and both Dave and I noted that the spice had fared poorly (presuming it was pronounced when originally brewed). Not bad, but not a remarkable beer. Went well with stilton. Aside from some marked oxidation, there was little sign of thirteen years of aging effects —either positive or negative.

For the Fullers, we decided to run a 1997 vs 2010 comparison. Even though the recipe has changed, Fullers have kept it reasonably consistent so we thought it was a valid exercise. Again, both beers sat outside for an hour or so to take the edge off. The '97 poured a lot darker and murkier, and it was less carbonated, but like the 'Neames, it still had a fair bit of fizz. The aroma was markedly more powerful from the older beer: a sourish note and a slug of dark fruit, whereas the '10 was more akin to ginger ale in appearance and smell.

Taste-wise, the '97 blew the '10 away, in my opinion. To be fair, the beer is meant to be aged (3–4 years for peak results, according to Fullers). It was surprisingly hoppy, with a rich sherry tang. The malts were brutish slugs of brandy and near-burned toffee. There was a mysterious flavour that I described as "marzipan", but I failed to put my finger on what it was. It reminded me of a blackcurrant coughsweet at times too, but that sounds crap. The main impression was warmth and depth. The alcohol was prominent, but it was a such a flavourful beer that you welcomed the kick. The 2010, on the other hand, was thinner, with a ginger-ale tartness and a strong suggestion of pumpkin spices. It had a briney quality that worked with the relative sweetness. I liked the 2010 very much, but I think this beer really would do better with a bit of aging, and it was massively unfair to pit it against the '97, which was great. Whether the '97 had improved or not I cannot say without an account of earlier tastings of the '97, but this was an exceptional drink to my taste, and Dave loved it too.

This was my first tasting of a seriously old beer. I really enjoyed the anticipation of the experience, especially as the '97 lived up to my giddy hype. It set us up for a pretty solid Christmas dinner, and as you can see, a fair few other beer treats capped off a great day (along with a Southern Tier Iniquity — not pictured here).

----

Two thank-yous:
First, Dave, for bringing beers and fine company.
Second, my Dad, who is not too well at the moment, for being a good mate, drinking partner, and unwitting steward of one of my happiest beer experiences to date. Cheers Dad.

Projects/Malt Shovel Tavern

2010-12-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

Small Beer has been a little busy with five new projects:

1. www.beerontherock.com <-- our Vancouver Island Beer Blog has finally been designed, launched, and stuffed with meagre content. BeerOnTheRock will be a news resource for the Vancouver Island beer scene. It will be written and maintained by myself, the beer-genius Dave from beerinbc.com, and the sultry Ian of left4beer.com. Bookmark it!

2. Monday Magazine beer column <-- I have been writing a beer column for local newspaper, the Monday Magazine. Here is the latest article.

3. Epic England Trip <-- I returned to the land of my conception and corruption for a two week stay. A brutal amount of cask ale was consumed, to make up for my churlish adherence to Guinness all the time I actually lived there (GRR!). See below.

4. Being Sick <-- so sick was I, that even with a free ticket to the Spinnakers Firkin Festival, and a potentially unlimited supply of 4oz taster tokens, I managed five before driving home to scoff manflu pills.

5. Impregnation <-- smallbeer #3
--
None of these are adequate excuses for a lapse in writing, but there you have it.

I wish to mark my return by paying brief homage to my favourite Northamptonshire pub, behold the Malt Shovel Tavern:

Mock-Tudor stylings aside, it looks pretty grim with its shopping trolley, battered warehouse annex, and vaguely wee-wee-smelling side alleyway. Also, directly across the road from this pub is the behemoth Northampton Carlsberg Brewery, which emits unsavory smells at various times of the day, like a flatulent aunt. But it's what's on the inside that counts.

The Malt Shovel is a cozy pub dedicated to cask ales and a great selection of continental bottles (all of which are served in the correct glassware), as well as several lambics on tap. I took my brother Ben here on the second night of my visit. Ben — once a Carling devotee who scaled down his drinking a few years back — was a reluctant convert, but by the end of the night the two of us had supped our way through fifteen local beers and a handful of Belgians, and, well, the three sequential pictures below tell you almost all you need to know about Ben's emotions...

Carling: 'Nuff Said

Chimay: Tastes a bit weird. Not bad tho'

Delirium: TEEPEE FOR MY BUNGHOLE

All of the beers were incredible. The Bacchus Kriek on tap was an unexpected treat, the Hoggley's Solstice Stout was also beautiful. But easily the standout was Oakham's Citra — a melon fresh hoppy golden ale, syrupy out of the cask, peppery and smooth and oh so right. It weighs in at something like 3.8% and you could drink it all day and sing soliloquies to its beauty all night. If you get the chance, drink a flagon of Citra at the nearest opportunity.

Unfortunately, by the time Ben's girlfriend picked us up from the pub in order to meet me for the first time, and then take us to meet my parents for a pleasant, family curry together — Ben was dangerously drunk. He lost his lunch, passed out, and curry was served in his absence. Me and his missus got on like a house on fire, however.

Smallbeer is back and regular service will resume over the Christmas holiday. England threw up one or two more beer-related surprises that I need to tell you about. Soon.

Happy Holidays.

My 10 IPAs of the year

2010-10-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

I wish I were special, but I'm not: IPA is, all in all, probably my favourite beer style. This love is relatively new. The first IPA that really turned me on was Anderson Valley's Hop 'Ottin — which I drank in October of 2009. Immediately afterwards Driftwood released their first batch of Sartori Harvest IPA, BC Liquor stores started selling Dogfish 60 minute, and I was hooked. Up until then I'd take a stout or a tripel over an IPA any day.

I've had countless IPAs since, including doubles, triples, imperials, wet-hopped, belgian, etc etc. The downside is I'm not really sure what an IPA is any more, but I know when I've got a good one. Here are some of the highlights of my year of IPA lust. I've no doubt omitted some I liked more than these, but these ones stand out as I type this post.

#10 Black Oak - Ten Bitter Years
The enjoyment I got from this one might be due to a convergence of factors, including stumbling across Chancey Smith's in London, meeting barman extraordinaire Milos Kral, and finally getting a drink after a brutal flight schedule. Ten Bitter Years is Black Oak's 10th anniversary beer, brewed to the discerning tastes of BO president Ken Woods. The one I tried had been aged a few months, and was bursting with mellow apricots and lavender. There is a really complicated hop character to this beer: rich but not overpowering. This is a sipper and should be nurtured until warm in the hand.

#9 Phillips - Hop Circle IPA

Legend has it that Matt Phillips dumped a case of Central City's Red Racer on the boardroom table and informed his skilled staff that "this is the one we have to beat." Sooo close, but not quite. This is an excellent IPA nonetheless, and probably my favourite Phillips beer along with the Skookum. I was lucky enough to try it fresh at the brewery as it was released, and the powerful melony-hops and an intoxicating blast of marijuana this beer delivers left a lasting impression on me.

#8 Avery - Maharaja Imperial IPA
Avery brews "big artful beers" and this 10% brute is as big as they come. A dirty, almost filthy, orange colour, with a slug of tangerine hops and an estery smell that really works. This isn't a zingy, fresh IPA — but one of those sweetish, heavy ones that really wallows in the mouth. Intensely aromatic and excoriating, very recommended.

#7 Anderson Valley - 20th Anniversary Imperial IPA

After their Hop 'Ottin, I knew this would be a good one, and it really delivered. As powerful as the Maharaja, but in a completely different direction. This one bursts with citrus fruit, vanilla and grape juice. Very lightly carbonated but thick — the way imperial IPAs should be. The hops do not dominate the flavour, making this less of a hop bomb and more of a comforter.

#6 Driftwood - Sartori Harvest IPA 2009
This beer really sold me on wet-hopped IPAs, and I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to replicate this experience ever since. The balance of pine and orange was exceptional in this release, but what really got me was a near-medicinal camphor zing that made it the most mysterious IPA I've ever had.

#5 Paddock Wood - Loki

I was in two minds whether to put this or Dogfish Head's 90 minute IPA in this spot, as for me, they both represent the same kind of strong IPA. Neither is a slave to its hops, but brings huge complexities in malt flavours — something many IPAs overlook. The Loki tasted like raisins, rice pudding and pepper, but cut through with just the right amount of grapefruit hops to satisfy the IPA lust. A very underrated beer, this one, and a label to die for.

#4 Central City - Red Racer
Enough has been said about this beer already. It is currently BC's finest IPA, and it is deservedly hyped-to-all-hell on beer review sites. At the Great Canadian Beer Festival I tried a casked imperial version which was also sublime, but nothing really beats the tropical gorgeousness of regular Red Racer. A great beer.

#3 Moylans - Hopsickle

First time I had this I thought "ok, enough is enough." This is one of those relentlessly hoppy IPAs that prompted Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery to quip: “It’s a fairly idiotic pursuit, like a chef saying, ‘This is the saltiest dish.’ Anyone can toss hops in a pot, but can you make it beautiful?” Well, after 4-5 bottles of this stuff, I truly believe it IS beautiful. The "hop-bomb" dismissal slung around by the IPA-backlash brigade is a reverse snobbery that detracts from how damn good some of these hop-heavy beers really are. Hopsickle is a distillation of hops, which, curiously, shares an almost identical flavour profile to Brew Dog's oneupmanship vessel Sink the Bismark (the 41% IPA to end all IPAs). Drink this beer last. (I used FrothyHead's image because, well, it's way cooler than my picture)

#2 Southern Tier - Unearthly Imperial IPA
This beer leaves me giddy. At 11%, that's hardly surprising. Unearthly is a devastatingly hoppy beer, but in that deep, stewed grapefruit kind of way that makes a beer truly sexy. Pretty sweet, thick, and soupy. Loads of herbal, peppery stuff is going on in this beer. I recently tried the Oak-Aged and it's a distraction — the original is much better. This beer should be served after an hour out of the fridge and allowed to warm fully before you finish it. A lesson in hops.

#1 Pelican Brewpub - India Pelican Ale
It isn't imperial, particularly hoppy, rare, or distinguished in any way other than being the most perfectly balanced IPA I have enjoyed to date. This beer is like listening to a well recorded band on some expensive hi-fi equipment: every element of it is clearly discernable and accessible to the taste. The beer has an intensely bready aroma, with equal measures of pine and citrus hops. The taste has an almost soap-like mineral backbone to it that I think is what allows all the other flavours to express themselves so clearly. There is mildly warm sweetness, a very substantial bitterness, and a little spice — all three of which fade at the same rate through the aftertaste, leaving a tiny trace of salt that has you reaching immediately for another sip, another glass, another bottle, and another trip to the bank to get the $9 you need to buy one here in Victoria. Dammit.

Honourable Mentions

Ballast Point - Big Eye IPA

Green Flash - Imperial IPA

Driftwood - Big Tug IPA

New Belgium - Ranger IPA

Anderson Valley - Hop 'Ottin IPA

Duggan - #9 IPA

Dogfish Head - 90min IPA

Stone - Ruination IPA
Moylans - Moylander Double IPA
Edit: Phillips - Nine Donkeys of the Hopocalypse

Review: Southern Tier Heavy Weizen and Lighthouse Shipwrecked Triple IPA

2010-10-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

These two beers have nothing in common, but Dave from beerinbc.com and I independently tried them both this week and chatted about them a bit — so they get a dual post.

Southern Tier Heavy Weizen

Ever since Unearthly Imperial IPA I get pretty excited about each Southern Tier beer I get to try. The Unearthly is one of my IPA benchmarks — such a rich and chewy beer. Their Oat imperial oat stout, Hoppe, and Iniquity (a cascadian dark grandaddy) are all sublime too. Great NY brewery.

Naturally I was excited about this beer. The only other "imperial" hefeweizen I can get regularly is Howe Sound's sublime King Heffy (7% to Heavy's 8%). I like it so much that if I am ever in a BC liquor store and I see someone who cannot make up their mind what to buy, I force them to buy this beer. It's a high bar.

This is probably the fastest I have ever drunk a bomber of imperial anything. The Heavy Weizen's (maybe that's supposed to be one word...) strongest point is its smoothness. It goes down like a vanilla and banana milkshake, and finishes with such a perfect balance it's as if it was never there. Problem is, the King Heffy is very spicy and effervescent and heady and alive. That's a much better kind of hefeweizen. The Southern Tier one is remarkably drinkable, but pretty tame and forgettable. Dave really didn't like it.

Verdict

Me: Worth a drink just for the scarcity of this style, but I won't be buying another when the Heffy is available.

Dave: "I wish I had king heffy instead of this shit"

Lighthouse Shipwrecked Triple IPA

When is a beer a double? That's a tricky question. I know that it is an imperial when one bottle makes me want to fight. But a triple? I don't get it. Let's see if their website helps: "Shipwrecked Triple IPA is a strong beer brewed in small batches using twice the regular kettle time, double the Pale Malt and triple the hops of a regular IPA." So mostly it has double ingredients, but triple the hops of whatever a "regular" IPA is (their Beacon IPA, I presume, which is reasonably hopped but not as much as many other west-coast style IPAs).

This beer looks like Lucozade — the British energy drink that, I've just found out on wikipedia to my astonishment, is actually 0.1% ethanol. Shipwrecked weighs in at a more substantial 10%, so I would expect it to give me lots of energy indeed.

The aroma off this beer is a briney-piney hop blast. Got a weird seaweedy smell to it, but I might be being influenced by the label. Really solid slug of orangey hops too. Good and interesting so far. Lighthouse are a local outfit and most of their beers are, to put it blunt, pretty run-of-the-mill, so it's exciting and out of character to see them bringing out a massive IPA.

I didn't dig the initial taste too much at all. It has a coppery, rust flavour to it. The carbonation is quite high and it accentuates the metallic edge. Tons of booze too. But the aftertaste is pretty good. It tastes somewhere between clotted cream and butterscotch. After a good half of the bottle, sipped slowly, the beer warmed up and I stopped wincing at the initial flavour. By the end I was pretty pleased with it.

Verdict

Me: A flawed but ultimately quite enjoyable imperial IPA. Too many other strong contenders available to make it a regular buy for me.

Dave: "must be drank cold" <- completely contrary to my impression.

Right, I promised myself a bottle of Driftwood's new Fat Tug IPA after I wrote this. It is time. Bye.

Chancey Smith's: Ontario Beer Mecca #1: plus Aphrodisiaque

2010-10-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from an exhausting work trip to a land governed by the world's most hostile opponent of beer: the LCBO. For those who are not familiar with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, their achievements include declaring half of a guy's wine store "dry" and insisting that the checkouts and all alcoholic merchandise be moved to the "wet" side, and failing to allow private beer stores to open — enslaving thousands of Ontario beer drinkers to their cruddy LCBO store selection or the dreaded "Beer Store".

Imagine my surprise when my trip turned into a revelatory pilgrimage to my new beer mecca of Canada: Chancey Smith's in London Ontario.

I had never heard of this place. Sitting glumly in Sudbury Airport, waiting for a transfer to Toronto and then London, I was googling "half decent pubs in London" — not getting my hopes up. I found a few kind remarks about Chancey Smith's, and became intrigued. The website suggests it is an average-looking steak pub, albeit with a pretty bar, but nothing special.

Then I found a link to their beer list, and promptly soiled my underwear in excitement. This place stocks the deepest, broadest selection of European, American and Ontarian craft beer I have ever seen under one roof (the beer list doesn't cover half of what they actually have, hidden away). They have a stunning range. By the time I'd finished reading it, I was in real danger of missing my flight.

Needless to say, the first thing I did upon landing was dump my stuff in the hotel and head down to Chancey's. I sat at the bar and engaged the bar manager — an imposing guy with closely cropped grey hair and beard, mischievous eyes, and the demeanour of a somewhat-tame pitbull. This is Milos Kral, a fine, fine bar manager, who for the next four days befriended me and attempted to destroy my liver in the process.

We began with a Flying Monkeys "Netherworld" — only my second Cascadian Dark (after Phillips Skookum). Milos later informs me that that was a test. Although I introduced myself as a beer blogger and we had struck up a pretty good conversation, Milos is very discerning over who he will share Chancey's secrets with. I must have done something right, as once I've finished my pint (delicious by the way — Flying Monkeys are an outfit to watch for sure), he motioned to another member of bar staff, whispered in their ear, and sent them into the cellar to retrieve something. A full five minutes later, the staff member returns and hands Milos a bottle. Milos theatrically glances up and down the bar, as if to see if anyone is watching. "Black Oak's 'Ten Bitter Years'," he says, "we've been sitting on a handful of these for six months. We tell no-one that we have them. You should try it."

It was brilliant. A very accomplished imperial IPA with the biggest, most portly body you'll find in an IPA. A truly world class IIPA. IMO. ETC.

As I mentioned, over the following four days I was treated to some fantastic beers, and was also very hospitably adopted by Milos and his fellow bar worker and chemist/home-brewer Adil. I will be blogging some of the excellent experiences I had there over the coming posts.

But, returning to my LCBO-ribbing opening, here's a picture of a bottle of Dieu du Ciel's "Aphrodisiaque" — one of the many rarities I managed to find at Chancey's. Some of you may know that outside of Quebec, Dieu du Ciel was forced to rebrand this beer "Aphrodite" because "Aphrodisaque" was felt by the geniuses at LCBO (and also US importers who similarly objected) to suggest some indecent qualities that the beer might not be able to guarantee... With this batch, however, the LCBO agreed to let it on the market in Ontario, but only after hiring a LCBO employee (at a cost of $700) to take a black sharpie and erase the offending part of the beer's name from every, single, individual, bloody, bottle.

Nice one LCBO! And cheers to Milos and Adil for a great stay in London.

Review: Muskoka Harvest Ale

2010-10-10T15:41:00.000-07:00

Fresh off a flight to Sudbury I headed for my favourite (read: the only) place to get a good beer in town: the Laughing Buddha. It's got a weird patio, the paving stones are on a ludicrous 30 degree slope and my table is threatening to fall over. I have sat my 750ml ("standard bottle" they call this size) of Muskoka Harvest on the heater (off) next to me, as it is the only stable structure in this place.

The beer pours a pretty rich orange gold with a dense, almost luminous yellow head that quickly settled to a half inch of scum. It smells somewhere between an IPA and a pilsner: decent amount of orange-rind hops but also a clean lageresque tang. The immediate taste is very promising, with a lot of rich yeasty bread. Orange juice is there too. Sweetness subsides to a baking-soda fresh bitterness. This doesn't linger, but it begs for another sip. Very drinkable and decent.

This beer was not on the menu. It's worth asking these guys for off-the-menu stuff as they make an effort to get a lot of things in. Great little beer oasis, this place, and dang fine pizza-pie to boot. I'd be surprised if I didn't sup another few of these before the week is out. Hell, I might have another tonight. Gotta find some comfort as a depressing two weeks away from my family stretches out in front of me.

Cask Away

2010-09-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Our latest article for the Monday Magazine is in print. We talked about the local cask ale culture, which is vibrant. The article was written before the Great Canadian Beer Festival, otherwise we would have been able to wax lyrical about some of the other great casks on offer.

Spinnakers responded to the article to point out that they have been offering cask events for years. This is true, and Spinnakers efforts should not be ignored. We chose to focus on Vancouver Island Brewery (VIB) because, well, I think that their regular lineup is a little bit tame. Good quality — but conservative. I was hoping that getting some discussion going about the totally non-tame casks VIB are producing might help put pressure on the powers-that-be at VIB to let their creative talents spread to the bottle fridge.

Speaking of casks, there will be a unique casking event this Friday at the Beagle Pub in Cook St. Village. For non-Victorians or those who don't know, Driftwood's Sartori Harvest IPA was a sensational release last year. So much so that they are brewing twice as much this year.

Sartori will still only be available in limited quantities, so get down the Beagle if you have the chance, or camp outside a decent liquor store as bottling is underway and it will hit the stores soon. Because it is a fresh hop IPA it is probably best drunk as soon as possible before the volatile and short-lived flavours imparted by the fresh hops fade away.

Fresh hopping (shown left, courtesy of the Double Mountain Brewery) is a seasonal practice. Hop harvests come in at this time of the year and are usually pressed into pellets or processed in other ways to maintain their shelf-life or enhance their usability for brewers. Hop pellets maintain the flavour of the hop very well, but some brewers swear that only fresh hopped beers are capable of imparting the full range of sensations that these little herbs have to offer.

At the Great Canadian Beer Festival I found parts of a hop in my Central City imperial IPA. I'd been warned against chowing down on one of these for fear of ruining my palate for the night. But, let's be honest, after several hours at a beer fest your palate is pretty much beat in any case.

Chomped down I did. Not great. Definitely better in the beer itself. Head to the Beagle tomorrow night to find out what I mean.

Great Canadian Beer Festival Roundup

2010-09-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Great Canadian Beer Festival came and went. I won't argue with any of the four words in its title. My biggest disappointment was enjoying it so immensely that I almost completely neglected to take notes and pictures. Que sera. Above is a shot I did manage to get of one of the festival beer tokens that you handed over in exchange for a 4oz taster (unless you wanted to drink Merridale's cider, in which case the cheeky swines demanded two tokens per scrumpy!)

The bits I do remember will be written up in the next few blog posts. Today I wanted to talk about the beer. I find that tasting notes are useless unless you can actually summon the memory of the drinking itself. These are memories that go stale fairly quickly. Best to write 'em while you got 'em.

My list of beers I was looking forward to didn't all turn out to be the ones I loved the most. Let's tackle them first:

1. Vancouver Island - Chipotle Rauchbier
Now this had potential and was appropriate for a beer fest but I wouldn't drink it again unless the recipe was altered a little. Brutally spicy, droolingly citric, and not too strong on the smoke front. It was a real eye-waterer. I spoke with the brewer Chris Graham and I was impressed. I also got the idea that he knew this one was a bit OTT. His upcoming casks will no doubt be great and I can't wait to get hold of some.

2. Driftwood - Old Cellar Dweller
Wonderful. I knew I'd love this. I already had the 2009 in a bottle, but this cask-aged version was sumptuous. Thickly bitter with rich sherry-flavour. The hops really shine in this old beer. Tastes like a good tonic for a winter morning.

3. Central City - Red Racer Imperial IPA
Probably the best imperial IPA I had at the festival, although I prefer their regular IPA. This is one of those really chewy impIPAs with a bit of sweetness and some spice too. The aftertaste went mildy sour for me, but the front end was just great.

4. Howe Sound - Total Eclipse of the Hop
I didn't drink this one. I can't remember if it was only offered on Saturday or if it was one of the breweries whose line-ups were so long I kept thinking I'd get to it later. I was scarcely conscious of the passing time once I'd been there six hours, so a few beers sadly passed me by.

5. Swan's - Brewcifer IPA with Jalapeno, Pepper and Lime
Just bad. Didn't taste much like an IPA to me. Similar to the VIB effort, the spice was well overdone. This might be a subjective thing, but remember I love curries and enthusiastically munch on habaneros, so I'm inclined to think I wasn't alone in being put off by the power of this one. Not much room left for the beer.

6. Moon Under Water - Pale Ale
I really liked it, as I suspected I would. Richer than the low ABV would suggest, and like their bitter it was not scared of the hops. A real quencher with a lingering hazelnuttiness, and not quite as dry as the bitter.

7. Three Skulls - Blood Orange Wit
There was one beer that tasted and smelled like hydrogen peroxide (as our friend Adam astutely pointed out). I am fairly sure it was this one. Just dreadful. You can't think about the flavour with a face full of hair-dye.

Next blog post, I'll deal with the other beers that left an impression on me. I'll leave you with this picture taken while Dave, Adam and I took an early break to sip the Driftwood barley wine. It is my last truly cogent memory of the day, but what a great beer to say goodbye to reality with. Cheers.

Great Canadian Beer Festival - Brewery Map

2010-09-08T22:19:00.000-07:00

The 17th Great Canadian Beer Festival hits Victoria this Friday and Saturday. To celebrate, I geeked out and made a googlemap of every brewery that will be attending. I also ignored my family for an additional hour in order to add info on EVERY DAMN BEER they will be bringing too (ctrl-c; ctrl-v courtesy of gcbf.com). If this doesn't up my readership I'm just going to snap.

Here's a bunch of list nonsense to keep you distracted while you wait for the weekend.

Top 5 distances traveled by breweries to get to GCBF"
1. Brooklyn Brewery (NY, USA) - 4802km
2. Unibroue (QB, CA) - 4571km
3. Les Trois Mosquetaires (QB, CA) - 4558km
4. Beau's Brewery (QB, CA) - 4551
5. Mill St. Brewery (ON, CA) - 4191km

Top 5 beer styles (by no. of examples) at this year's GCBF
1. Bitter (40)
2. IPA (31)
3. Fruit beer (20)
4. Lager (19)
5. Pale ale (13)

Top 7 beers I am personally looking forward to
1. Vancouver Island - Black Rock Chipotle Rauchbier with lapsang souchong tea (wtf)
2. Driftwood - Old Cellar Dweller 2009 Barley Wine (cask)
3. Central City - Red Racer Imperial IPA (cask)
4. Howe Sound - Total Eclipse of the Hop (cask)
5. Swans - Brewcifer IPA with Jalapeno, pepper and lime (cask)
6. Moon Under Water - Pale Ale (I already had a sneak preview of their "Blue Moon Bitter", which was just beautiful)
7. Three Skulls - Blood Orange Wit

Top 3 random beer stats
1. 57 breweries will attend
2. 184 different beers will be swigged from 4oz tasting cups
3. 20,000 litres of beer will need drinking/spilling

View GCBF Breweries in a larger map

Victoria: the craft beer zone

2010-08-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you follow the blog, you'll know that Victoria is eagerly expecting its fourth brewpub — a traditional English-style pub called The Moon Under Water — once its rezoning hearing goes through. Well, I was one of a hundred or so people who turned up at Victoria City Hall for the hearing last week. The first bit of good news is that council voted unanimously to let the pub open. The even better news is that this city fricking loves craft beer.

As I wandered in with other-beer-blogger Eskimo Dave, I wasn't sure what to expect. The rezoning hearing was to decide whether it was OK for a brewpub to open in an area marked for "industrial production." As one astute councillor pointed out, craft brewing is a light industry. But the fact that the business planned to operate under a "liquor primary licence" (meaning its main purpose was to sell alcohol on premises) meant that the Moon Under Water's owners had to sweat it out for several months with a half-built pub, not knowing if they'd ever be able to open.

I expected a fairly quick "yay" or "nay" from a city official, but it turns out that rezoning hearings are conducted as part of council business — meaning the mayor and council are all present and the public are given forum to express their views. Bonnie Bradley (one of the owners) was called to put forward the case for the pub. Apparently Victoria has an abnormally high number of liquor primaries, meaning you really have to justify a new pub. Bonnie did a fine job convincing everyone that the Moon' is going to be a respectable watering hole.

Next, the public were invited to speech. I was impressed as CAMRA representatives, local industry-types, and several other members of the public put some well-prepared arguments in support of the pub. The highlight (I'm sure everyone who was there will agree) was the speech by Jason Meyer from Driftwood Brewery. Here's someone for whom the Moon' is technically a competitor — yet he put forward about the most eloquent case for the social and artisanal benefits of a pub that you'll ever hear. I only wish I'd recorded it.

I was so giddy from all the craft beer love, that I even went up and spoke in front of council myself. I hadn't expected to speak at all, so I just blathered on about how proud the city should be of its beer industry. I needn't have bothered. I was preaching to the converted. Several councilors — including one who admitted to opposing pretty much every new licence application going — gave warm approval to the plan. Councillor Phillipe Lucas — Green Party member, medicinal cannabis advocate, buddy of mine, and all-round class-act — closed things up by welcoming the Moon' to the city, and everyone left happy that craft beer has a deep support throughout pretty much the entire community.

Proud to be a Victorian. Cheers.

Fruit? Nuts.

2010-08-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

Assuming it's been missed, I apologize for the lack of posts in the last three weeks. I have been writing a major paper and I can't burn the typing candle at both ends, so sadly the beer blog's flame has dwindled, temporarily.

Of course I've still been drinking like a fish. And I'm posting today because I can't not let this out:

Fruit beers: what's the point??

OK that's a bit harsh, but I seriously believe that 95% of fruit beers are a waste of time and that the beer would have been far better without them. It's not that they are inherently bad, but they tell the same lie told by fruit tea: The packaging looks delicious (hmmm, blueberries, yum), the aroma is room-fillingly fantastic, but when you raise the glass to your lips…..nothing.

I don't know why — as I rarely touch them usually — but I have had five fruit beers this month and only two of them have been any good. One of those you already know about: I find Driftwood's Belle Royale to be delightful. But it is both powerful and local (my weaknesses), so am just kidding myself? No.

Exhibit A: Phillips Twenty-four Mile Blueberry Pail Ale

This is a local beer by one of my favourite breweries brewed using ingredients sourced from within twenty-four miles. A wannabe-lefty-beardstroker like me should be gushing over this, but I found it very bland. It poured utterly headless: like Tizer. It smelled like fizzy blueberry tea, and I know this sounds harsh, but it tasted a little bit like pickled beet juice. I have to stress that this is an exception from the usually-reliable Phillips stable. But I did not like it.

Exhibit B: Dogfish Head Black and Blue

A massively 10% "Golden ale fermented with blackberries and blueberries". I might be uncultured, but this tasted like very boozy diet fruit soda to me. It has a thin tannin mouthfeel. I get some odd spices and yeast that makes it worthwhile, but I wouldn't track it down again. I don't even want to think about what I paid for it.

The one thing they have going in their favour is they make pretty pictures. And they do say pictures paint a thousand words…

…which is a lie. My prof won't accept doodles. I gotta get these papers written. Speak soon. SB

Guests pretending to like the
weird beer I served them.

It's not even blue…

Not bad, this one. But I'd not buy it again.

Review: Pretty Things Fluffy White Rabbits

2010-08-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

The gypsy brewery Pretty Things continues to put out lovely beers with lovelier labels. Gypsies like to wander which might explain why PT beers are in such rich supply out here on Vancouver Island. If they all made beer like this I'd make my backyard available as a caravan site.

"Fluffy White Rabbits" is a hoppy tripel. Taking established styles and giving them the North American hop treatment is big at the moment. I scowl at trends but I'm yet to drink an unusually-hoppy beer that hasn't been good.

FWR pours a typical golden-orange colour. The head's not too fluffy. It quickly shears down to a thin but resilient crewcut.

The smell is a bit reserved, with only a mild yeasty aroma and little hop pungency. I get mown grass, pear, and pencil shavings. The first hit of flavour is very satisfying, with loads of peppery yeast, floral hops, and crackling spice. It's a drier tripel, which I guess is to embrace the hop bitterness rather than counteract with a richer body. I really appreciate the play of the floral hops with the chili profile in the yeast.

The aftertaste doesn't sit entirely well with me. Whether it's hops in the boil or some other source of bitterness, I get a minerally jasmine-like flavour that lingers unflatteringly. At 8.5% it should be a slow drinker, but my lust for the glass-to-lips zing — definitely the strongest aspect of this beer — means I've practically chugged it.

With hoppier tripels in short supply, you should probably get one of these if you can. It's a good indicator of the impact this style has to offer and a good beer in its own right, but it doesn't quite scale the peaks some of the other PT beers have.

Moon Under Water: Victoria's latest brewpub

2010-07-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Victoria will have its 4th brewpub soon, with a bit of luck. How do I know? Because I interviewed the good people who are preparing to open The Moon Under Water and wrote it up for local free paper Monday Magazine.

Here's a link to the article. They used my photo, but I took a few others. I see no reason to repeat the article here, so I'll just post the images. Enjoy.

Homebrew Tips from the Masters#3: Sanitation

2010-07-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

The third installment of homebrewing tips, which I bugged some Canadian brewers to dish out, covers sanitation. Brewing is basically the art of selective neglect. Your wort is a rich environment for any number of cultures to feed upon. But tasty beer can only be made by allowing a fairly narrow spectrum of yeast strains — or a handful of bacteria, in the case of some wild or sour beers — to ferment your wort. If you're not careful, undesirable cultures will infiltrate and utterly corrupt what you are trying to achieve. In a nutshell: your wort is Iran, and if you allow a single mullet to gain entry, the whole place will explode into a decadent cesspool of repulsive culture.

Sanitation refers not only to keeping your brewing equipment a. clean (as in, free of dirt) and b. sterile (free from bacteria or unwanted yeasts), but also to controlling the whole environment in which you brew. You might think you're a clean-freak, but your dwelling place harbours countless organisms that are easily transferred to your homebrew if you don't handle everything carefully. Prior to boiling, your wort may also contain unwelcome bugs, so you're up against it from the start. Here are a few tips from Canadian brewmasters for keeping on top of things.

Protect yourself from unwanted cultures

Sanitation
All of the brewers advocate stringent cleaning procedures. Your kit must be rigorously scrubbed and free of any dirt of particles before you can even start thinking about sanitizing it. This means that you must be vigilant about the condition of your equipment. If any cracks, fissures, nooks, or other recessed areas develop in your carboys, tubes, airlocks, etc etc, they must be replaced immediately. Bacteria is remarkably resistant when it has a place to hide.

Jason Meyer (Driftwood):

Keep it clean, or you’re wasting your time. Iodophore is a pretty good sanitizer, but you need to ensure the equipment is scrupulously clean before you can sanitize it.

Sanitation itself usually involves the use of certain chemicals that eradicate bugs without leaving tough-to-remove residues that can also make your beer taste like crap. All forms of home-fermenting (including wine and cider making) will need a sanitizing agent for best products, but some chemicals are better suited to beer-making than others:

Steve Cavan (Paddock Wood):

sanitize!!! Do not use metabisulphate. It is fine for wine, but disaster waiting for beer. Iodophor is a start, but really Star San is the only one that I would consider. We have stuff mixed in the brewery which we give away to homebrewers.

Choice of containers is important too. Second-hand carboys are cheap, but make sure you know that they were only used for brewing beer, and not wine-making or penny collections, prior to purchase.

Terry Schoffer (Cannery):

If you have a love for wine that’s great, but remember, your beer doesn’t! Beer should never be brewed in the same containers as wine has been made in. Small cracks can harbor Lactobacillus, which will totally destroy all your hard work making that perfect brew.

Again, if you are unsure how to properly sanitize your kit, call your local brewer. They will tell you what to use, where to get it, and if they are as saintly as this lot claim to be — they might even hand you some for free. Remember, cleanliness is next to hopliness.

Scottish Devils and Ruination

2010-07-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

I didn't want this to turn into a food and beer blog so I've been holding back on writing about the pairings I've been experimenting with. But I accidentally invented the best beer snack known to man and I have to share.

Recently I was invited to a beer and food pairing event held at the Liquor Plus branch on Douglas Street. It was the first pairing event I'd been to and I'm excited to attend and perhaps even host some more. Left4Beer designed a menu and attendees had to bring a specific snack or beer. By the time I got my act together, there were only a few options left. I chose to bring devilled eggs.

Having never made them before, I did a bit of research on egg recipes and discovered that scotch eggs — a childhood favourite of mine — are not that hard to make. I really wanted to make scotch eggs, but the brief was for devilled, so I decided to combine the recipes and called it "Scottish Devils".

The eggs were partnered with Howe Sound's King Heffy, which is a total triumph of an imperial hefeweizen from one of BC's best craft brewers. They went down well with the beer guys. I neglected to take my camera and felt like I could improve on them a little, so I recreated them at home later in the week. Here they are, partnered with a Stone Ruination IPA. I gave the recipe a good kick of heat and garlic which is ideal with a powerful IPA like the Stone beer.

Ingredients
Scotch part
4 large eggs
4 good quality sausages
1tsp cumin
1tsp garlic powder
1tsp cayenne
1tsp thyme
1tsp pepper
1beaten egg
flour
panko breadcrumbs (or other)
butter

Devilled part
half cup mayonnaise
2 minced garlic cloves
1tbsp dijon mustard
1tsp curry spice (curry powder is good, but use imagination)
2 green onions (chopped)
2 tsp vinegar
salt
pepper

Directions
Hard boil and peel the eggs (5 minutes is enough). Split sausages open and mix well in a bowl with the cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, thyme and pepper. Divide mixture into four, wet hands to prevent sticking, and mold each portion around a peeled egg. One sausage per egg provides perfect cover. Dip each egg into flour, then beaten egg, then breadcrumbs. Bake in a buttered oven dish at 350f for 30 minutes. Remove when done and leave to rest for ten mins. Halve each egg (be careful, the coating can split, so use a very sharp knife). Gently ease out each yolk with a teaspoon and put in a bowl. Add all the devilled ingredients apart from the mayonnaise and smoked paprika. Then add the mayonnaise and stir well until the texture is creamy and easy to spoon. Spoon a blob into each egg cavity, sprinkle paprika over the top, and serve. The version below was a second batch. I followed the same recipe, but drizzled tabasco, chinese pepper/garlic sauce and some more chili powder over the top.

Homebrew Tips from the Masters#2: Yeast

2010-07-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

In the second in a series of posts containing homebrew advice I solicited from Canadian brewmasters, we look at yeast. Yeast is the fermenting agent that turns sugars into alcohol and sculpts the flavour of the beer. It is also a living organism that must be stored, fed and used correctly. Brewmasters tend to get obsessive about it.

Yeast
Yeast is available in dry or liquid forms. Most professional brewers will use liquid yeast, and usually cultivate and store the same strains for use over and over again. The yeast that falls to the bottom of the fermenter once its work is done (flocculation) is not "spent", but merely dormant, awaiting a fresh meal of wort sugars that will restart the fermentation process.

To keep yeast viable for future use, brewers can store it under beer or water (which is becoming more common), although its potency will drop off over time unless the brewer is skilled and resourceful. Because it is such a picky creature to keep happy and potent, Jason Meyer of Driftwood Brewery advises "use pure culture liquid yeast only, and pitch lots of it!" Dry strains of yeast may be stored for much longer, but the results are not held in as high regard:

Steve Cavan (Paddock Wood):

Liquid yeast. Yeast can account for 40% of the flavour compounds. Pick the right yeast for the style. (in the last 15 years, dry yeast has come a long way, although there is still limited variety)

Terry Schoffer (Cannery Brewing):

For increased flavor and body always use liquid yeast. Most micro brewery’s will welcome home brewers and give them yeast and sometimes tips for free. Show your appreciation and bring them a sample of your home brew or buy something from their gift shop.

For those who must or want to use dry yeast, Terry Schoffer flags the importance of rehydrating the yeast properly before use, "make sure you re-hydrate it by heating 1 cup of water to 40C, adding your dry yeast and letting it stand for fifteen minutes before pitching. This will promote healthy yeast growth and keep the nasty bacteria count down. Never use wort to hydrate your yeast."

Dry yeast can produce decent results. However, BA member Homebrew42 warns us about homebrew kits that come with packets of "generic 'ale yeast' that is typically of low quality. You're never going to brew a fantastic English bitter with an old, stale packet of characterless 'ale yeast'."

Overall, the message seems to be if you take the time to understand what yeast is and how it works, and get in touch with local beer makers who are experienced in handling yeast, your beer will turn out better. And you might even score some free yeast in the process.

Final Breakfast

2010-07-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

Some breakfasts are so good that even the crappiest world cup final in history cannot ruin them.
Brooklyn's "Brooklyner-Schneider" Hopfen-Weisse is a wonderful beer. It is a "concept" beer that actually works. Story goes like this: Brewmasters Garrett Oliver (Brooklyn) and Hans Peter Drexler (Schneider, a.k.a. Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn GmbH) are friends. Oliver loves Schneider's Weisse beer, and Drexler loves Brooklyn's East India IPA. They decided to combine the recipes, with each brewer creating a version of the concoction in the other brewer's brewery. Sounds to me like a sordid plan to write off a drunken holiday as a tax-refundable business expense. Kudos.

The resulting brew (Brooklyn version — I doubt I could get hold of the Schneider version) is a 8.8% wheat beer with the hop profile of a double IPA. It smells like a banana milkshake laced with pine sap. The taste is incredible. The zingy edge of the wheat beer style is utterly corrupted by the hops and also by the black-spice flavours resulting from the beer's imperial treatment. As you expect from imperial wheat beers, there is a dry fruitiness and some soured-pear sweetness, which give the beer a big and complicated body. And that's before you factor in the thick and sticky soup of hops which — outrageously — sits in the balance just right.

Surely one of the only beers that could compete with a HP sauce-laden English breakfast without falling apart.

Get some if you can. It is one cup that won't let you down.

Homebrew Tips from the Masters#1: Malt

2010-07-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

I recently sent out twenty emails to Canadian breweries, asking for some homebrew advice for beginners. I anticipated a few responses, hopefully enough to fill a blog post. The response was unbelievable. I'm very thankful to several brewers who took the time out of their busy schedules to provide extensive, thoughtful advice. I also want to thank "Homebrew42" — a BeerAdvocate member who responded to my forum post about extract-versus-grain boils with a veritable essay's worth of great tips.

I will therefore be publishing their words of wisdom in a series of blog posts dedicated to giving newb-brewers a headstart. Today I'll cover Malt; over the coming weeks I'll address the topics of yeast, sanitation, method, water and the social side of homebrewing.

Malt
Malted barley is one of the core components of beer (along with water, yeast and hops). Malt is partly germinated barley, rich in maltose and other goodies that turn into alcohol and flavour during brewing. Homebrewers face the choice of whether to use full grain or malt extract to create the wort that will become the backbone of the beer. Extract is said to be easier to handle, whereas grain should produce the best results. That's as far as my knowledge goes. What do the pros say?

Whichever way you go, Steve Cavan (Paddock Wood, SK) advises against supplementing malt with other sources of sugars, "All malt. That 1kg of corn sugar and a can of extract doesn't work." Overwhelmingly, the brewers who replied to me frown on adjuncts like corn syrup, and strongly favour full grain boils. As Jason Meyer (Driftwood Brewing, BC) sums it up, "All-grain only, screw that extract stuff".

That's not to say good beers cannot be made with extract. If you're nervous about mashing and boiling grain, or simply don't have the extra equipment you'd need to do this, Homebrew42 has some advice:

1) FULL WORT BOIL.
If you're doing concentrated boils, you're never going to produce flawless beers. If you're brewing 5 gallons of beer, you MUST start with at least 6-6.5 gallons of wort, and this is ESPECIALLY true for very pale colored or very hoppy beers.
2) Use only high quality, extra light, light, or pilsen extracts, and I much prefer dry extracts over liquid, as they tend to be fresher and lighter in color.
Every extract beer that I brew is based on either extra light DME, or pilsen DME. When an all grain brewer builds a recipe, they start with a pale base malt and work from there, even for the darkest beers, and a great extract brewer should do the same. Extra light extract is nothing but basic good quality 2-ro, and a touch of carapils, while pilsen extract is 100% pilsner malt, and either of these are a fantastic slate on which to build any amazing beer.
3) Use only FRESH extract!
Don't buy extract kits that have been sitting on a store shelf for who knows how man millennia. This is especially true with liquid extract, which has a much shorter shelf life than dry and tends to darken and taste stale over time. This alone is a good reason to completely avoid liquid as far as I'm concerned. And try to find a retailer that moves their product and always has fresh inventory. For example a larger online homebrew supply may be better at providing fresh products than your stagnant local shop.

Finally, if all-grain is the way for you, make sure you handle the grains correctly. Terry Schoffer (Cannery Brewing, BC) says:

If you are an all grain brewer beware of HSA (Hot Side Aeration). HSA takes place in the mash tun from over splashing when mashing in as well as from vigorous stirring. HSA will bring out off flavors when maturing in the bottle.

Homebrew42 adds:

Do NOT scorch your extract! This is yet another reason why I prefer DME over LME, as DME floats while LME sinks to the bottom of the kettle. If you decide to use LME however, remove the kettle from the burner and FULLY dissolve your extract before putting it back on the heat.

Thanks to all the brewers for their advice. Next time we'll look into yeast — acquiring, handling and pitching

Review: Tree Brewing Serendipity no. 2

2010-07-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

Serendipity no.2 is the sixth whiskey barrel-aged beer I've had to date. A few of those beers were great. Serendipity joins Innis & Gunn in being merely OK, but mildly baffling as a product.

The term "whiskey barrel" returns 825 beers on Beer Advocate. Spelling it "whisky" gives another 798. So I'd be a curmudgeon to call it a gimmick, but that's how I feel when I put my nose into this nice murky-looking brown ale and get a toasty blast of damp bourbon-cask in my face.

I like whisk(e)y. Uncapping a Laphroaig brings me to a state of physical arousal. I bet there's plenty of beer drinkers who really appreciate the depth of infusion you can achieve by aging beers in various casks. But a generic whiskey-whiff rising off the head of a beer doesn't move me. Maybe I'm damaged in some way.

Port casks are also involved in the aging of this beer, and word has it their next releases in this series may well be exclusively port-casked. I'd be interested to try one, if only to see which barrel is responsible for completely overwhelming the taste of the beer.

The nose is almost pure whiskey, with just a faint apple-ish odour coming through. It tastes like an old brown ale, but with whiskey supplanting the toffee. The aftertaste is dry, a little treacly, and suggestive of the bottom third of a good cigar. Five sips in and the head becomes a memory: flat cola-looking.

Halfway through the bomber I got hungry and exhumed a forgotten piece of brie from the back of the fridge which had grown a luxurious fur-coat. It completely resurrected this beer and I strongly recommend getting some powerful cheese if you find yourself with a whiskey-aged beer you can't quite bring yourself to love. The fat and sweetness meet the whiskey head-on. It stops being a beery experience, but I'm finishing the bottle with a grin and what else do you really want?

For the record, Old Rasputin XII is the best whiskey-aged beer I've had. Don't buy it, it's $30 or something stupid. But take my word for it, it's lovely.

Homebrew Diversions: U-Brew

2010-07-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Like many beerthusiasts, I have romantic ideas about brewing my own beer. I am deluded enough to consider myself a brewmaster of unique genius, trapped in the body of a man with no talent.

SO, as well as the usual guff, this blog will now also report on my forays into homebrewing. In the coming weeks I will publish: some reports on my attempts to brew; homebrewing advice I've gathered from Canadian brewmasters; information about the Victoria homebrew scene, and anything else I can find to stuff the column inches.

I'm not brewing yet. I intend to start in a few weeks. So far I have managed to gather some of the essential equipment:
i. A free 20l carboy that looks in decent condition
ii. A small room with a drain where I can hide things from my family
iii. Unwarranted optimism

Until then, my homebrew life is lived vicariously through the achievements of others. With perfect timing, my friend Jacqueline unexpectedly gave me three bottles of her own homebrew for my birthday last week — an IPA, a marzen and a brown ale (left).

Jacqueline brewed them at a "U-Brew" place. Purists might argue this is not strictly homebrew. U-Brews are places that house all the equipment and ingredients you need to brew beer. You turn up, choose one of their recommended recipes (or invent your own), and pay depending on how much you intend to make. You do the labour, with some supervision if you're a newbie, then you come back and collect your bottles when they're ready. I've heard it works out to about $2-3 a bomber (650ml) depending on the recipe. It sounds like a great way to become accustomed to the brewing process without having to do all the difficult stuff like cultivating yeast and sanitizing.

Jacqueline brewed hers at Bedford Brewing in Victoria. They have twenty or so recipes to choose from, and all three of the beers she kindly gave me were delicious. The IPA (right) was accidentally brewed with double the hops in the boil (I think that's what Jacqueline said). This gave what would have otherwise been a very restrained, light IPA an extra kick of mineral bitterness. It ended a tad astringent, but I'd love to drink some more of it. The marzen was very clean tasting, with only a hint of the coppery caramel flavour you expect. But again, very refreshing. My favourite was the brown. Once more, a simple version, and light, but massively drinkable and lively.

All three beers looked and smelled fantastic. A U-Brew might be a good place for a newb brewer to find their feet, and the results seem massively encouraging. Of course, I firmly believe that brewing is in my blood. Supervision and safeguards are completely unnecessary for someone as attuned to the natural rhythms of grains, herbs, and fermentation as I am. Just you wait and see...

Tapped Out/Flat Beer Eats 2

2010-06-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was recently approached by Victoria's free weekly newspaper Monday Magazine to write a short article about the range of craft beer available in Victoria pubs, liquor stores and restaurants. I asked Dave to help me, as his knowledge of Victoria's scene is deeper than mine. I wrote our findings up, and Monday published our article as part of their "Crafty Brewing" edition dedicated to all things beer (available on stands around Victoria for the rest of this week only!)

It's nice to do a bit of grown-up journalism. For free, admittedly. It's a shame that there isn't too much print media coverage of our beer scene, but as the Editor of Monday Magazine — John Threlfall — explained with sadness, the budget for freelance work has been brutally slashed as part of the struggles all print media producers are suffering.

Regarding the article, our brief was to be, well, brief. So we highlighted 3 pubs and 3 standout liquor stores. There are plenty of other good places we would have liked to have included, many I discovered writing the article. Flavius at Left4Beer kindly pointed me to a galaxy of places I'd overlooked. But our choices are very strong and I stand by them.
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Update on that keg of flat Phoenix beer: I made two more dishes with it. First, a beer-boiled prawn curry. I fried garlic and tomatoes, added a good pint of beer, tomatoes, cumin, coriander and fennel, then boiled it down. Marinated the prawns in yogurt, cinnamon and lemon juice, then threw them into the reduction when it was sticky. I added cream, green onions and salt. The rice is boiled in beer too.

Then I worked on the bread recipe. This one is the same as the last, except I used only a 1/3 cup brown sugar this time, two handfuls of cheese, and some rosemary and thyme. This one came out even better than the last one. A bit denser, as expected, but the flavour is more balanced with less sugar. The Phoenix doesn't lend as much flavour as the Buck — so I'd ideally use a darker ale in future, but it still beats water. In the background are two glasses of the British classic Shandy (half-sprite-half-beer). The only way to drink a dead lager.

If anyone wants more precise recipes, ask in the comments.

Beer Bread Solves Everything

2010-06-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up on the couch at 6 a.m. this morning and immediately had to deal with three sources of anxiety:
1. post-surprise-party hangover
2. England v. Slovenia world cup match
3. two warm, half-full kegs of beer

After a good 5 minutes of misery, I got up and decided to make beer bread for breakfast. Coffee brewed while I made the dough. Then I settled down to watch the match while the sweet smells of baking and coffee calmed my nerves.

I've only ever made beer bread twice before. I googled a few recipes, one of which suggested no raising agent is needed, but my first loaf was a sludgy slab of crap. Second time I used baking powder and a half bottle of stout and I was hooked.

If you haven't made beer bread, you should know that it is one of the best ways to cook with beer. It is simple to make and, unlike a lot of beer cookery, really does showcase the beer itself. Beer bread is usually pretty dense, richly sweet, and has the most powerful yeasty funk. I've never actually used yeast to make it, I'm not sure how that would turn out. Maybe next time. For now, here's the recipe I invented this morning:

Ingredients
3 cups white flour
5 tsp baking powder
12oz warm beer (I used Blue Buck)
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
handful shredded cheddar
pinch chili powder
2 tbsp melted butter

Directions
Throw all ingredients except butter into a big-enough bowl and mix roughly with a wooden spoon (it's too sticky for hands). Let sit for a bit while you coat a bread tin with butter. Bake at 375 for 50 mins then check it. Best check is to turn it out of the pan and knock on the bottom of the loaf with your hand. If it sounds hollow, you're good to go. If not, give it another 5-10 mins, but no longer. It doesn't rise like ordinary bread, so you might not get a hollow sound every time.

You can eat it on its own after 10-20 minutes of cooling on a rack. My wife smeared some with cream cheese, which is a good choice as the fresh tartness complements the hearty flavour of the bread very well. I find this recipe to be a touch on the sweet side, and I'd be tempted to use only a 1/3 cup of sugar, but the sugar is needed for the rising so don't skimp too much.

By 9 a.m. I was full, we'd won 1-0, and I had completely forgotten about the hangover. I went to work with a smile, knowing another slab of beer bread was waiting for me at lunchtime. What a comeback.

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Note#1 I changed the blog theme because I read that light-on-dark can be difficult and even painful to read. I hope the new look is pleasing. Feel free to comment or suggest improvements.

Note#2 Thanks so much to amazing-wife and friends for coming to the party and bringing some exceptional beers too!

Grassley's Gulf Ale

2010-06-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

A unique new beer will be pouring soon in New Orleans and Florida, if Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa has his way. He has suggested that beer ingredients may be used to tackle the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, “I think that there’s alternatives to soaking up oil that have not been used yet...There’s a process for making beer — I don’t know if it’s the yeast or what it is in making beer. You can put those microscopic things on oil and they die, and all you’ve got is some methane gas left.”

It's not good form to extract humour from the biggest environmental disaster North America has ever faced. But people like Grassley are hardly making it easy for us. His idea is completely ridiculous. Has noone told him that oils in suspension will completely ruin the head?

However, there is a kernel of brewing science logic in the suggestion. Micro-organisms such as yeast can break down oils in certain conditions, releasing gases such as carbon-dioxide. Oil is mainly hydrocarbon, which is an alternative arrangement of the same elements that form the fermentable sugars in wort.

Of course, putting brewers yeast into the Gulf of Mexico is unlikely to work, but I recommend pouring the entire US reserves of Coors Light, Miller Hi-Life, and Bud Light Lime into the ocean anyway. You know, just in case.

Fallacy of "Craft" Status

2010-06-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

One of the thousands of questions that Hoptopia tweets every day caught my attention recently. He asked whether Sam Adams should limit production to less than 2m barrels a year to keep their "craft" status. My answer was an off-the-cuff swipe at the label "craft", but I've had time to decide why I really think craft-credentials leave a sour taste.

Other bloggers have made the point that defining "craft" by volume of beer produced is meaningless. That's a dead horse I have no desire to interfere with.

The Brewers Association of America defines craft beer in a little more detail. It must be: a. small (<2m barrels/year), b. independent (at least 75%-owned by brewers themselves), and c. traditional (mostly malt and limited adjuncts). It's a decent set of criteria, made all the more critical because "craft" brewers get tax cuts as well as cache.

"Small" beers are big business in America (worth $7bn in 2009!), so defining the "craft" credential is heavily political. Result: a word that is supposed to distinguish caring producers of beer for whom profit is a secondary consideration, from bottom-line-obsessed factory-brewers, is now ironically a fiscal concept. A brief consideration of how the orange juice industry mangled the terms "pure" and "fresh" tells us that this ends badly.

So why the hell do we need these credentials in the first place?

As with any credential, "craft" is a proxy for trust in the absence of full disclosure. What that crap sentence means is that most of the beers we drink are brewed by people we don't know, who live far away, and for all we know might be evil, evil bastards. How do we know they are using fresh ingredients and sending us their "good stuff"? How do we know we're liking the right drinks?! How can we trust them to play fair?

These questions would keep us up all night if we hadn't come up with the ingenious plan of appointing referees and trusting them to set standards so we don't have to take the effort to do our own research.

Of course, none of this mattered back when beer was made either in your kitchen, by a neighbour, or worst-case scenario in the next village along. Nowadays, we're almost all guilty of an insatiable appetite for new experiences, and of hyping up hard-to-find and exotic beers to the point that locally-available fare can seem, well, a bit tame.

The best and only truly reliable way to know if you're drinking craft beer is to make it yourself, or buy it from a local brewer whose methods you can observe firsthand. Craft describes not only the production process, but also the relationship of the maker to the drinker. As with most relationships, it's a difficult one to maintain faithfully over long-distances...

Of course, your next best option is get in touch with a beer blogger who lives where the beer you want to drink is made. Beer bloggers are intelligent, honest, and absolutely never evil. Now all we need is a Beer Blogger's Association to certify that....

Review: Driftwood Belle Royale

2010-06-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Now and again a beer comes along that sticks in your mind. I'm not talking about the great or the godawful: these are simple to file away. It's the weird ones that haunt you.

Startling new flavours, remarkable brews from crappy beermakers, or dreadful stuff from great ones: these beers can nag at you like an itch, as your once–coherent universe of expectations expands and distorts.

Driftwood's Belle Royale has had that effect on me, prompting me to write a rare review.

I admit Driftwood's new(-ish) Belgian cherry ale was always going to make an impression on me. I'm a bit of a Driftwood cheerleader and I was there as they prepared it for release. But six bottles of this impossibly-red nectar later and I still find myself going "damn" every time I drink (and smell) one.

The beer is a triple golden ale brewed with spicy belgian yeast and masses of sour cherries. As you'd expect, it has a pronounced (though not at all wild) sour tang that waters the mouth. The body is reminiscent of dry sherry or retsina, peppered with raunchy yeast and not as sweet as you'd think. The cherries are mostly about zing, but they also lend an underlying cloying richness, and pleasingly "off" blue notes that make the Belle a mysterious pleasure.

Normally a review starts with the smell, but I've saved it for last. The excoriating sour cherry whiff is spot-on, but beneath it comes a powerful corporeal aroma: to my nose carrion-esque and woody, like the open oak door of a crypt. It took me five bottles to identify this — and it's not a delightful comparison — but the precise odour it reminds me of is the meat-processing plant that hits you as your car emerges on the Liverpool side of the Mersey tunnel in England.

This sounds fatally bad, but I should say it in no way prevents me from loving the beer. There's something entirely appropriate about it (and if it's any consolation, others find it to be more akin to altogether-more-pleasant smoked-salmon). It's a massive beer and you should try one while you still can.

In fact, the vampiric pleasure it gives me ensures I'll be hoovering the Victoria stores for the last remaining Belles lurking darkly on the shelf, beckoning to me...

Oh, and as if it couldn't get more creepy, Belle Royale is also completely headless.

Beertography

2010-06-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

I take a lot of photos of Beer. Part of my motivation for blogging was to write some reviews, so I've been careful to document almost every brew with a pic. However, because Dave and Left4Beer already provide such great coverage of BC beers and others beside, I have settled into a different blog-niche: mainly whingeing and hassling local beer-industry folk for a few word-bites.

Therefore, if digital photos could gather dust, my photo album would resemble the Gobi Desert.

Taking photographs of beer is a lot harder than it seems. With a bit of practice, anyone can squeeze bottle and glass into the shot, keep things in focus, and whatnot. But there lies half the problem. If your aim is to document the beer (this site is the finest example of this that I know of), you need only master one shot. Getting the photo to look fresh or interesting after hundreds of mug-shots (heh) is much more challenging.

I'm no master. Here are a few of my luckiest beer photographs of recent months. I hope you enjoy them. They are, in order: Brooklyn IPA, Russell's IP'Eh, Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout, Driftwood Belle Royale, Central City Winter Warmer, Phillips Hop Circle, and Phillips Amnesiac Double IPA.

Reader request:

If you live/drink in Victoria, and you would like to recommend a pub or liquor store that you feel has an as-good-as-or-better-selection of local and international beers than the following, please comment. It is for an upcoming article, and your help would be gratefully appreciated.
Pubs: Christie's Carriage House, Spinnaker's Brewpub, The Beagle
Liquor Stores: Hillside Liquor Store, Spinnakers James Bay store, Cook Street Village Liquor Store.
Thanks again kind readers.

Beer and Butter Tarts/Chicken

2010-06-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Smallbeer safely returned from Suds-bury to deliver these important messages.

Thanks to Dave for putting me onto the Beer and Butter Tarts Canadian food and drink blog aggregator. This is a site that lets people find Canadian beer blogs without being a. another beer blogger, or b. members of my own family. Sadly, that's pretty much the extent of most beer-blogs' readership. Or at least crap ones like mine.

However, in return for this plug, Beer and Butter Tarts will aggregate me an audience of millions. I will then sell out, and drink free for the rest of my life thanks to google-ads.

To keep this post vaguely on-topic, I recently prepared a Beer and Butter Chicken pairing. I'm a die-hard curry fan, but not this artsy fare you find in Vancouver restaurants, or the timid, soupy type you seem to get in Victoria. I mean the REAL stuff. You know, like what they make in England...

To satisfy my urge for arterial and facial trauma, I tend to make my own curries. Lots of cream, garlic, handfuls of cilantro, half-the-spice-cupboard, and enough heat to bring an old man to tears.

My wife loves the mythical Chicken Tikka Masala. Pictured here is my version: basically a souped-up butter chicken with heightened spice and fresh tomatoes.

In England, I'd typically pair a Lamb Madras or Prawn Pathia with whatever lager they had at hand. Sheffield curry houses often have Kingfisher on tap, which does the job. But I'd heard that IPAs are a natural curry partner so I put my last Pike's India Pale Ale to use.

The Pike is a modest IPA, liable to get lumped into the "English"* category because it is not as powerful as many of its West Coast counterparts. That said, it has a resinous tang that cuts through the thick curry well. The body is not too full. It has a somewhat clotted-cream-like sweetness. Something more forthright might have stood up to the curry better, but the Pike was still an excellent partner.

SO. Do Canadian beer bloggers and yourselves a favour, and poke around Beer and Butter Tarts when you get the chance — particularly the BC section.

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ReaderQ
*Can someone suggest a reasonable definition for the "English" style IPA? I find the current tendency to categorize North American IPAs as either English-style (weak hops) and US-style (strong hops), to be a bit throwaway. I'm sure some critics mean something very specific when they say "English-style", but most, I suspect, are just riding the terminological bandwagon. There must be more nuanced distinctions. We should respect them.

LOL Sudbury

2010-05-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

Smallbeer is currently in Sudbury, Ontario, locked up in a police station 14 hours a day in the name of research. I didn't anticipate too much in the way of blogging — not just because I'm busy — but because I've been warned that craft beer in Ontario is rare as rocking-horse shit. My brother-in-law is in Toronto, and with the exception of Bar Volo he's struggling for a decent pint.

What hope for Sudbury then?

Well, it's actually been pretty good. Mostly thanks to the Laughing Buddha. This unassuming pub/restaurant, overlooking the less-than-lovely CP Rail line, has one of the more diverse bottled-beer selections I've come across in Canada. Along with Samuel Smith's, Chimay (premiere at $12 a bomber can't be beaten) and other international big-name crafts, there's a deep selection of east-of-SK stuff.

-Grand River Brewing Curmudgeon IPA is a somewhat soapy, but sweet IPA, with middling hops and a lasting mineral bitterness.
-Half Pints Little Scrapper delivers a more malty IPA. It's got a lingering aftertaste that retains a rich and bitter balance right through,
-Great Lakes Devils Pale Ale 666 is my favourite of the bunch. It might be a gimmicky concept, but this is a great dark ale with substantial hops — more so than many good IPAs. It's the Ontario equivalent of a Cascadian Dark, just a little less assertive. I'd have another.

Well, I'd better get back to work. I have a potential date with my first BA member tonight, so I better finish off and tart myself up a bit.

Driven to Session

2010-05-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

New BC drink driving legislation (the "toughest in the country") is coming. Drink-driving is the least popular recreational activity since Vlad the Impaler's dinner parties, so you probably won't find much objection to the new measures:
1. Increasing fines and penalties for .08ml/L blood-alcohol content, and
2. Introducing "warning" fines and penalties for .05ml/L blood-alcohol content
That's one way to put pressure on merry-motorists. Another would be the UK's approach of freaking the shit out of people (this one is for drug driving but MAN is it freaky). Whatever works is OK by me I suppose.

Now, smallbeer supports effective anti-drink-driving measures. But there are one or two unintended consequences of these new rules that craft-beer drinkers may find interesting and/or concerning.

I was talking to a local brewmaster today about one of his more powerful beers, and casually asked if there were plans for more products at the imperial end of the ABV spectrum. "The opposite," he replied, "with these new alcohol laws coming out, our strategy will probably shift into more sessionable beers."

The brewmaster in question works at a popular brewpub, which is off the beaten track. Many of the regulars probably have to drive there. A single pint of strong ale is likely to put you into "warning" territory under the new legislation. And when the profit margin on a stronger beer is only slightly higher than a ~5% lager — you can sympathise with the focus on beers that patrons can drink without losing their license.

I expect that these rules will have a minimal effect, but brewpubs in particular will certainly take them into consideration. This could mean a thinning out of local choices when it comes to bigger beers. It might also tempt brewers to tone down existing brews to keep them street-legal.

On the flipside, if driving to pubs becomes less possible — which declining suburbia would also hasten — we might see a growth in smaller, local neighborhood pubs. These pubs will be nestled in communities, they will respond to local needs, and produce and serve quality beers using local ingredients for a discerning clientele who can walk in at anytime to enjoy comradeship and togetherness with their fellow man!

Or possibly we'll all end up drinking at home on our own. In the dark. On the internet.

At least there's no Keno machine in your living room...

Beer Identity

2010-05-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

When buying a beer in Canada — so long as you're less than 50% grey and in possession of some of your own teeth — you stand a good chance of being asked for ID. Anyone who's worked at an alcohol retailer will have seen enough "8"s artfully manipulated into "3"s ("7"s into "1"s, etc) on the driver's licenses of the suspiciously-young-looking to know that it is often a good idea to establish the ID of the buyer.

But have you ever asked for the ID of the beer?

I'm not talking about knock-offs. The profit margin on fake ale is hardly Gucci handbag-worthy. Wine fraud might get its own wikipedia page, but beer drinkers are too smart (or cheap) to be tricked into paying out for counterfeit Kolsch. What I mean is, have you ever asked yourself what it is that makes this beer this beer?

It might have the same name, look basically similar, and can be reliably gotten for $5 a pint at your local pub — but a certain amount of variability is expected, and often accepted. Smaller-volume craft breweries struggle to ensure absolute consistency without the benefits of measured blending afforded to larger beermakers. A lot of craft drinkers take pleasure in observing the variations in seasonal brews. A brewer may also "improve" or otherwise adjust his recipe over time — considering the changes too minor to warrant a rebranding. Or possibly something about the storage, quality control, age, or handling of the beer, or any number of other variables, could make a beer vary from one pint to the next. It is truly a drink as fickle as its drinker.

But pinning down a philosophical definition of the "essence" of a beer is pretty tricky. You'd sensibly suppose it has something to do with
1. How you make it
2. What you make it with
3. What you call it
But I can think of three beers in BC alone that challenge each one of these definitions
1. Phillips Hop Circle is a modified, unfiltered version of their IPA — yet until recently when someone pointed this out, Beer Advocate had it listed as the same beer
2. Driftwood Ale is now produced with substantially more hops than it used to be
3. Phillips Skookum has undergone a name change and at least two bottle-design changes that I'm aware of — but is still brewed to the Black Toque recipe.

OK, beer changes, so what? It doesn't matter really, you know from experience what you can rely on and what you can't, and people are mostly cool with this. That's all true. But it sort of makes you think, when you observe reviewers arguing and pontificating about the merits of certain beers, or internet critics debating the finer points of the flavour of beers that cannot possibly be tasted identically, given the massive geographical, temporal and experiential variability of the universe of beer-sipping!

This philosophical noodling is of course a way for me to extend a (fairly trivial) complaint about Spinnakers' Blue Bridge Double ~~India~~ Pale Ale, which I am currently sipping with utter suspicion. With the help of Eskimodave I figured out that the bottle label has quietly been altered from "double IPA" to "double pale ale" very recently. I even emailed them about it, but no-one has got back to me so far.

Now, this may or may not explain the poor pint of BB I had the other day. The recipe could have changed along with the name. Or perhaps they just changed the name because, as Dave puts it, "they realized it wasn't cutting it as a DIPA".

Either way, "double pale ale" is a much better description of what I'm drinking right now. And perhaps the fit of the title to the taste is what's letting me enjoy this one so much more than the last time. Minimal hops are fine without the Indian expectations, and it's not a bad pint tonight at all. Perfect comfort for an otherwise troubling think about the true loneliness of experience..

Still, I'd love to know where they put the 8.2%. Two bombers in and I do not expect to be able to type straight...

Wrong pint

2010-05-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

"This isn't the double IPA"
"What?"
"It's got nothing to it. This one's usually sweetish, admittedly not too hoppy, but richer than this. The carbonation's wrong too. And where's the body? This is meant to be 8.5%. There's no way...."
Just then I noticed my wife was giving me a bit of a look. Her parents had taken us and her sister to lunch. It isn't good form to complain in these circumstances, I suppose. So I shut up moaning. Still. If this is Spinnaker's double IPA, then I'm a burlesque dancer.

There's a number of ways to deal with being served the wrong drink. The most popular is to not really notice. On some subliminal level your psyche might register that something is amiss, as the Old Speckled Hen slides down your throat in place of the Bombardier. Perhaps a sense of unease will follow you around for the rest of the day. You may even have unsettling dreams. But you won't actually know.

Another option — if you do notice the error — is to drink it anyway. Especially if you're too timid/lazy/drunk/happy-go-lucky to try for a replacement. And who knows, you might have scored something better than you'd ordered.

Finally, you can complain. I'm sure for some ale-aficionados this is the highlight of their week — being presented with an excuse to demonstrate the breadth of your knowledge and get one over the help.

Usually I'll sit and sup my mystery pint, enjoying the instability of the universe and the new flavours it has endowed me. But as I sat in Spinnakers on Saturday, with what resembled a over-fizzy and skunked pilsner in my hand, I had to at least get some recognition.

"Excuse me," I said, as my wife's eyes rolled out of her head, "are you sure this is the Blue Bridge IPA? It tastes like something else."
The waitress was very helpful, to be fair. She brought over the bar-tender who gave me a half glass of verified Blue Bridge to compare with. Nice, I thought, it'll be right this time and they'll pour me another.

But it was the same wrong pint again. At this point, I lost my bottle and just nodded and said thanks. They couldn't have switched the taps, could they? Could a batch of IPA really differ so much from another? Could it lose 3 points of ABV, gain a double measure of CO2, and shed all resemblance to the pint I drank in this exact pub but a month ago?

I debated another run at the barman. But I figured the sight of their son-in-law attempting to force a barman to taste his drink, mumbling about "hops", and getting upset about "malt character", might have freaked the in-laws out a bit. So I sat and drank it, feeling slightly forlorn, and worried that my mouth might be broken, and that every lovely ale would from that moment on taste like fermented tomatoes.

But I think I'm OK. This Moylans double tastes as good as ever tonight. And now I've got an excuse to get down Spinnakers again soon for a follow-up.

Octavius Tinsworth Federidge Ace

2010-05-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

F-f-ff-fff-f-ff-for some people — me included — this is a supremely satisfying beer image: Eight cans of Federation Ace lager.

I have never tasted Ace. Until this week, I had never even seen an actual photograph of it. I half suspected it didn't exist. But it does. Or at least it did. I believe that Federation Brewery (owned by Dunston) abandoned it in the 90s, but RateBeer contributors reviewed some cans as recently as 2006, and it isn't the kind of beer you'd intentionally age.

In fact, if you are anything like 8-Ace — an alcoholic comic-strip character from legendary juvenile British magazine "Viz" — all eight cans are to be drunk on the way home from the corner shop where you bought them.

Viz requires no introduction to the initiated, yet its charm is difficult to explain to the newcomer. Wikipedia does a thorough job, but briefly: Viz is a toilet-humour comic, aimed mostly at teenagers and men who think making up imaginative names for vaginas is high art ("Wizard's sleeve" and "sausage wallet" spring keenly to mind). It's crass, irreverent, but often sharply satirical, and occasionally brilliant.

8-Ace is my favourite character. He's a truly hopeless alco, living in a run-down house with a battleaxe of a wife and several feral children, whom he threatens to "bray" with regularity. The gist of every episode is that 8-Ace comes to realize he is a disastrous boozer, seeks redemption and sobriety of some kind, but is always cruelly trusted with £1.49 ("one-forteh-nine") — which is precisely the cost of eight cans of Ace lager. The final frame always depicts 8-Ace's inevitable wagon dismount: hammered, surrounded by empty cans of Ace, screaming at the world ("f-ff-ff-ffucking, y-y-yer f-f-fuck!") and inexplicably urinating on his own nicotine-stained fingers.

£1.49 seems impossibly cheap for eight cans of any beer, but it seems to be factual. I worked at Safeway in the 90s, where we stocked 4-packs of "Eiger" lager for £1.25, so I can believe a lager was that cheap in the eighties. But it must have been pretty rank, two Ratebeer guys give it 0.5/5 (the lowest possible score), the third and final reviewer goes as far as 1.8/5, with a touchingly earnest review: "Golden coloured and slightly sweet. Wheat flavour. Some dryness in a malt finish."

8-Ace seems like a depressing business all around. But despite his affliction, temper and appalling physical appearance, 8-Ace possesses the dregs of a sweet soul. Every time he sobers up he genuinely seems to want to make a go of it. He addresses an imaginary god "Why did ah 'ave ta luv the ace so?", and makes heartfelt promises to his awful wife that he'll do the right thing and "neva eva eva" touch the Ace again. And he means it too. It's just the world conspires to put lovely, lovely Ace at his fingertips. And Octavius Tinsworth Federidge Ace just cannot resist.

However, if Pliny the Elder, Dark Lord, or Orval were £1.49 (about $2.50) for an eight pack, I warrant there'd be one or two more of us shaking our fists at imaginary deities and weeing on our fingers.

Moved to Thirst

2010-05-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'd apologise, but I can't be sure it wasn't a welcome break... It's been two weeks since the last post owing to the smallbeer family up and moving to a new house. The upheaval robbed me of work hours, so I've been too busy scrambling for school deadlines and simmering in bitter resentment at missing out on the Vancouver Craft Beer Week to post to the blog.

This is all a big shame, because the perfect combination of long hours of lifting and acute stress mean it has been a particularly productive week in terms of drinking beer. Physical labor has a special effect on my beer drinking habits. Not only does it generate genuine thirst — which is all too rare a sensation for today's pampered beer-drinker, but it also makes substandard-to-average beers taste completely beautiful.

Moving house is to beer what the miracle fruit is to vinegar, although I'm not willing to test that last proposition. It is second only to removing a concrete patio in July with a sledge-hammer with a loose head, and two small chisels, in its midas-like ability. I drank 15-20 bottles of Becks that day and each was as sweet as a dewy morning. There's a climbing frame on my mate's lawn where that patio used to be. I leaned against it recently with a Phoenix Gold in my hand. Another kind of lovely.

Race Rocks Amber ale, brewed by the local Lighthouse Brewing Company, is a once-championed brew of Victoria. Nowadays the consensus seems to be that it has gotten worse over the years, although I admit to finding it the better option served at the University of Victoria's "Felicitas" campus bar. It pours a dim red, just like Dr. Pepper, I always thought. Pretty fizzy, indistinct on the mouth, but leaves a decent aftertaste of herbal malts and a dash of cough syrup. After 14 hours of lugging boxes around while my knee swelled with fluid and I almost knocked over a lamp post with the U-Haul truck — it tasted as good as anything I've had to date.

I'll be back with less emotional musings later on. Right now I have to find my remote control....

Another Boring Beer Recipe

2010-05-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

This article puts "Cooking with beer" at #3 on the "5 MOST BORING TOPICS IN BEER JOURNALISM" list. I was just typing up my experiments with beer-battered fish when that article arrived — courtesy of a tweet by AGoodBeerBlog's Alan McLeod. (Oh I'm on twitter, finally, just in time for it to become obsolete probably: dansmallbeer)

The list is tongue-in-cheek, more of a platform for Hedonist Beer Jibe's cheeky ranting skills. But it's true. Beer journalism is awash with some dull, routinized writing. It gets worse when your magazine has a "Cooking with Beer" column, which you then simply have to fill every week, with increasing desperation. Here's some examples* I didn't see recently:

Milk Stout Beerios!
Ingredients
1x small bowl of Cheerios breakfast cereal
1x 12oz serving of Three Floyd's "Moloko Plus" Milk Stout
Directions
Wake up, shake the foggy regret from your throbbing head, and dump a bottle of milk stout over your favourite cereal. Return to bed and spoon into mouth gratefully — avoiding the cereal, of course. Sleep, then repeat.

Dubbel Whopper
Ingredients
3x hamburger patties
2x buns
cheese
1x snifter of North Coast Brother Thelonius Dubbel
Directions
Gourmet burgers don't come much classier than this. Soak one split bun overnight in the snifter of dubbel. Cook and assemble burger, inserting dubbel-soaked bun halves between the three patties. Eat, within dashing distance of a latrine. Avoid clothing with sleeves.

Eggs Beernedict
Ingredients
2x eggs
2x English muffins
6oz cream
1x 600ml bottle of Tilburg's Dutch Brown Ale
Directions
True hollandaise sauce can be a real bingo-wings enhancer. This recipe keeps your netherlands in check with a healthy, slimming Dutch ale. Poach 2 eggs in half the ale. Whisk remaining ale with the cream. Slop the lot over your muffins and serve.

If you're still hungry, here's some pictures of my recent beer-battered fish and chips. I went with a white ale, as my wife sensibly suggested the citrus notes would work with the fish. The batter is just a cup or so of self raising flour (flour plus baking soda plus pinch of salt), with garlic powder, pepper and cayenne added. I dredge the cod through some cornstarch before battering, then sling into 2" of oil for 2-3mins a side. You don't need to deep fry, a few inches is enough.
I've been honing the recipe, and have used lager, stout, wheat beer and hoppy pale ales. To be frank, I can't say there's a lot of difference. Beer is better than water, but the type of beer adds little to the flavour in my experience. I got pretty great results with a tall-boy of Löwenbrau. I think the fizz is the important thing, as it does tend to produce very crispy batter, as you can see above. It is advisable to let your fish rest briefly on paper towels (or newspaper if you're old-school), in the open air. This provides maximum crunch and minimum lard. Oh, and a tall-boy is essential, as you'll only need half of it for the batter, and frying is thirsty work.

*These recipes are all wastes of good beer invented by smallbeer as a joke, and as such, should definitely be cooked by no-one. Except the fish. That one's yum.

Phillips Interview #3: The Beer Carries Itself

2010-05-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

In this final part of the Phillips interview, we talk about the future of the brewery, and Matt Phillips comments on craft-brewery vs. craft-brewery legal issues.

As I'm sipping the last of Matt Phillips' prototype Steinbier, I notice an assistant gesticulating to get his attention. He has another appointment and the visitor is waiting. Damn, I think, probably someone more important than a beer blogger. Phillips tells me to relax, he's got time. I launch into a final round of questions, pissed off that I saved some of the big ones for last.

- SO, apart from the ones I've tried today, what beers are planned for the summer?
MP: There's going to be a Kölsch in the Showcase [Phillips' 12-pack mixer].

- Didn't you do a Kölsh last year?
MP: That's right, the Hudson Light. It was our charity beer. We do one every year. Our way of putting a bit back in.

- Speaking of funds, your brewery was famously started with a stack of credit cards. Are you finally out of debt yet?
MP: No WAY! I'm in way more debt [laughs]. Paying that off is never going to happen!

- Maybe you need to expand your business model. Your reception area looks like a good spot for a bar?
MP: I never really considered opening a bar. We got a good thing going, and good relationships with local places. I'm not into becoming their competitor. But that said, I'm getting more into food and beer pairings. A food-related venture is an inevitable destination. I don't want a brewpub, but I'm excited about putting on cheese-tastings and other pairing events. So far we haven't had a lot of interest from local chefs but I'm hoping that will change. Food is really a part of what beer is all about for me.

I spend a bit more time fishing for Phillips' favourite beers. He plays safe and goes weak at the knees about Pliny the Elder. Jason from Driftwood had the same reaction. Great. That finally shatters the "Pliny is over-hyped" conspiracy theory that I had invented for myself because I can't get hold of any.

So who are his influences? He credits the original Whistler Brewing Company (apparently a step above the mediocre brewing outfit that currently bears that name), and also Ben Schottle. So, a former employer and a current work colleague. Another safe play by Phillips. But I do finally trick him into admitting that he holds naked midnight brewing sessions during which beer demons are summoned. I swear.

Back to reality, and a serious side of it at that: I finally broach the topic of legal disputes between craft breweries. Back in 2007, Phillips was forced to change the name of his "Blue Truck Ale" to "Blue Buck Ale" — in order to avoid the threat of legal action brought by the Red Truck Beer Company of North Vancouver. Sadly, legal disputes between craft-breweries are not that rare. Central City Brewing are currently facing possible legal action by Bear Republic, who allege that Central City's "Red Racer IPA" infringes on their own "Racer 5 IPA" and "Red Rocket Ale" brews.

Now, like many people, my initial reaction was "assholes." As if the craft industry doesn't have enough to deal with competing with macros and getting their beers into new mouths, without petty squabbles amongst themselves. And exactly how many craft-brew drinkers (generally a discerning bunch) are going to mistake the BC beer for either of the California brews — especially when their crossover markets are small? But the more I think about it, the more I realize that both breweries are victims of a virulent litigious culture that punishes you for not attacking the vaguest infringements of copyright. Despite his personal anguish over the name-change, Matt Phillips is sensitive to the larger issues at play:

MP: With Red Racer, there was a lot of people thinking that there could be an issue there. I have empathy for them both. It's not a fun thing to go through. Bear Republic has a lot invested in their brand, and they have the trademark. But the reality is if they don't protect it, their trademark is gone. It's kind of tough. Craft brewers aren't the kind of people who are litigious...but quite often we're forced into real-world situations that don't reflect our personalities. I feel sorry for Gary over at Central City and he's dealing with a US brewery and they tend to litigate first, ask questions later...it's one of those realities.

The problem is, if Bear Republic did not object to perceived similarities, then in the eyes of the law, they have failed to defend their trademark. This would permit a predatory company to aggressively rip off the Bear Republic brand, safe from legal action, because they would likely be able to successfully argue that BR's trademark was invalidated when they failed to object to Central City's similar designs. The whole situation leaves a far bitterer taste in the mouth than either of the excellent IPAs involved would do...

Phillips is philosophical. Sure, it hurt to change the name. And he is very clear with me that it hurt the company too. But he also understands that art and adversity are the most familiar of bedfellows.

MP: We're passionate about our beer but we're proud of what we do. So many breweries have so much in common, we have similar stories, and the names end up sounding similar. Looking for new names is a challenge. We can be days and days and days thinking up great names, then we look it up and it's already there. There's 30 red-truck brands in various segments, but we didn't have the money to fight it. There is a loss, to be honest, but we're really happy with the Blue Buck. And in the end, the beer carries itself.

Canada Craft-Brew Stats Follow-up

2010-05-02T23:59:00.000-07:00

I recently remarked on the state of Canadian craft-beer industry stats. To recap: CBC reported drops in beer sales, but rises in wines and spirits sales = "sophisticated" shift in boozing habits. I whined at the lack of dedicated statistics on the craft-beer industry in Canada that might show that craft beer is doing better at the macros' expense. The US has stats to show that craft beer is doing very well. Where are ours?

Well, having read my post, Rick Green (formerly of the Craft Brew Association of BC) was kind enough to send me a detailed email about this issue. It basically backs up two suspicions:
1. collected stats on Canadian craft brewing are inadequate
2. however, some regional stats indicate that the craft beer industry is probably doing extremely well, and certainly out-performing the big boys.

Here's how Rick tells it:

Hi Dan,

Regarding your post on Craft Beer Stats, I wanted to comment...

...Canada is a patchwork of craft brewer organizations. There isn't a national body, like in the US. The Brewers Association of Canada consists of the large brewers. That makes it difficult analyzing the Canadian craft beer market overall. The BCLDB is the best source for provincial stats, as the membership of the Craft Brewers Association of BC does not include all craft (aka "cottage") breweries and brewpubs and, therefore, is not privy to the individual stats of the non-members. See the LDB's Quarterly Market Review for the most up-to-date figures.

As you've discovered, what StatsCan reports is actually quite off the mark as to what is really going on. In the latest issue of the Quarterly Market Review, you will notice that the volume increase of craft beer sales in BC over the same quarter last year, is the largest of all categories tracked. So what was StatsCan saying about declining beer sales?

This isn't the first time StatsCan has reported on the "decline of beer." The same story was told last year, about which I commented on my blog. Most of what I wrote is still relevant, perhaps even more so as I feel the embracing of craft beer is picking up here...
Regards,

Rick.

Thanks Rick!

It is worth looking at the stats Rick kindly points us to. The document is the BC Liquor Distribution Branch Quarterly Market Review (most recent of which is for December 2009). It gives a picture of alcohol sales in BC, with more detail than the StatsCan stuff. Now, the doc doesn't refer to "craft-beer" specifically, but does break down domestic beer sales into two important categories: sales by companies who produce more than 100,000 hectolitres per annum, and those that sell less.

I'm not so sure this can be taken as the threshold for "craft" status. In a recent interview with Jason from Driftwood, he said:

We have to keep reminding ourselves what a microbrewery is, it's supposed to be a reaction to massive, mass produced, mass-marketed beer. Is it a microbrewery when it's doing 20 thousand hectolitres (HL) a year?

A microbrewery must typically produce less than 18,000 HL per year. "Craft brewery", however, is a term that describes a certain philosophy of beer-making. Although there's a correlation between smaller-scale breweries and craft-beer producers, they are not directly equal. So it isn't straightforward to say that the "under 100,000 HL" category equates to craft breweries, but it gives you a pretty good idea.

That said, the stats are pleasing. Here's a graph showing year on year sales in thousands of litres in the domestic beer market in British Columbia:

It's a crap graph — I can't use excel properly. But it does show a downward trend in sales of the largest macro breweries, but an upward trend in sales by breweries who sell less than 100,000HL a year. Between 2005 and 2009, "macro" sales fell from 218,629,602 litres to 206,218,424 litres. In the same time, "micro" sales grew from 19,762,929 to 29,835,897.

That's an increase of 50%. If even a portion of that increase represents smaller, true craft-breweries (whatever that means to you) — then it looks like things are looking very rosy for the "sophisticated" beer drinkers in BC. Plus, by my estimate, at this rate, by 2035 craft-breweries will outsell macro breweries! (my B+ in stats was a sympathy grade...)

Note: Oh, and Dave — Rick says: "I have resigned from my position with the CBA. I don't have any current plans to move to Asia. However, my new venture is a travel company focused on Asia, so I expect I will be spending more time there."

Cheers! Plus: Moylans Moylander Double IPA

2010-04-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

The secret to a serving a good beer is to have a two-year-old cast spells over it prior to drinking. Admittedly, I draw that conclusion from a sample of one, but the Moylans Double IPA was very good indeed. Not quite the ordeal of its mammoth-hopped big brother — Hopsickle — but still bitter as a bag of divorced lemons, and richly malty to boot. It took me a while to identify it, but there's a definite black tea flavour playing the bassnotes.

I don't know why I was so reluctant to try Moylans. It might be the pseudo-Celtic bottle designs; they remind me somehow of a ghastly Irish-themed pub. You know, the ones that purchase all their furnishings from "YeOldePubMemoribilia.com" — which is just a guy knocking up cheap Guinness signs and staining them with coffee to make them look old.

My prejudices (like most) were totally unfounded. Moylans haven't put a foot wrong in the four beers I've tried, and I will go back to the double and the Hopsickle again.

Bit of a mish-mash post; wanted to cheers a few people. First, my brother-in-law who came back from Seattle with a slew of beers I can't get in BC (see left). He's not technically my brother-in-law until the wedding in June, but I've promoted him early based on this gift. I've wanted the Avery Maharaja for ages now. Cheers brother-in-law!

To my mate Brayden, who is as stupid about beer as I am, and whom I am pinning my hopes on starting a brewery with if our respective careers go down the toilet. Cheers Brayden!

And to my few readers who leave interesting and kind comments. Now I've got your attention, I need something. $1000 to be precise. No, I'm kidding. I want to know what BC-related writing you'd be interested in. I've done reviews with the two most prominent (and interesting, in my opinion) local breweries (3rd part of Phillips interview coming this weekend.) I can carry on chasing down the rest, or I could do some brewpub interviews, or I could find out about the local homebrew scene, or anything you can think of. I'd appreciate suggestions, and like a dog after a stick, I'll retrieve the beer truth you desire. Cheers readers!

Phillips Interview #2: Bodybuilders with Bad Backs

2010-04-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

In this second part of three in the Phillips Brewery interview series, Matt Phillips talks about his taste in beers, and the challenges of producing and drinking a good India Pale Ale. Also, I get to drink three new Phillips brews — one of which is still in the testing phase.
--

Phillips tells me that his best sellers are the Blue Buck ale and the IPA — which surprised me, as I thought the Phoenix Gold lager would outsell the IPA. Obviously you'd never mess with your best-sellers, right? Wrong. "Hop Circle," Phillips' new IPA, is actually an unfiltered reworking of the original recipe, and the impression I got is that Phillips sees it as a permanent replacement.

I'm a big fan of the original IPA, so my first instinct was to grab Phillips by the lapels and slap him around a bit. But before I could act he handed me the freshest-possible glass of Hop Circle, and I got over it pretty quick. This beer is simply better. It pours a lemony-gold colour, with a substantial haze (although my glass was the result of a near-explosive pour, which may have contributed to the suspension). The aroma is a blast of resiny hops — it actually smells very much like marijuana. The taste is rounder, a touch sweeter, but at least as bitter as the old IPA. I can't comment on the carbonation (my one problem with the old IPA was that it was always a bit too fizzy) — because the pour on this one left it kind-of flat, but the taste is spot-on. It *might* even be what at least one giddy blogger has called it — "the current IPA champion of BC" — but I'd have to drink some store-bought Hop Circle before I kicked Central City's Red Racer IPA off its throne.

Naturally, talk turned to IPA at this point, a beer that Phillips himself "drinks every day." The "raunchy and coarse" northwestern hops are clearly fundamental to his enjoyment of beer, and Phillips states bluntly that his own tastes govern what he brews (have you noticed that Phillips wide array of seasonals contains no sours? He's not particularly into them.) So, while I fail to draw Phillips on his favourite BC IPAs, he does offer a poetic angle on his go-to style:

MP: I've had some so-called "great" IPAs that have been sensational, and I've had them other times when they've been so-so. It all depends. You have to get them fresh. IPAs are so delicate. They're kind of like the bodybuilder with a bad back: they look really tough, but if you kick them in the knee they fall down. All the things that make an IPA really exciting are fleeting. You have to get them close to a brewery, you have to get them kept right, and without — say — a good bottle-filler? It's all wasted.

During this speech something awakens in Phillips. He drops his measured, friendly demeanor, and excitement takes over. He calls out to a nearby worker and gestures at me to follow:
"Where's the Double Barrelled at?"
"Wherever that hose is going!"
Ten seconds later we're both drinking the Phillips Double Barrel — a Scotch Ale aged in fresh bourbon casks — poured from a tap set in the side of one of the thirty-foot tanks. It's a classy scotch ale, and I preferred it to the pretty decent Swans Brewpub version I had last week. "It's not so bourbony: less heat than last year," Phillips tells me. But I still get a powerful slug of bourbon, woody-vanilla, and figs from it. The booze is up-front, but not unpleasant.

- As a craft-brewer, are you comfortable with interesting inconsistencies between batches?
MP: Yes and no. With our regular beers, consistency is very important, and it's something we're always striving to perfect here. We're excited by the year-to-year variations in our seasonals. Some years we do the raspberry and it's blood-red, other times it might be a mild pink — but it could taste more powerful than the redder batch. It's really interesting. But our IPA should taste like an IPA every time, and our major aim is to deliver that.

I'm still finishing the scotch ale when Phillips makes another quick move and takes me to a tap poking out of a refrigerator. He pours me a pale-looking ale with a musky aroma I can't quite place. It tastes kind of sweet, like a malty brown-ale, but I also get a melony kick from it.

MP: This is a stone beer. It's fired with hot stones, so you get some caramelization when the hot stones hit the wort. It gives a lot of body and roundness and a real smokey flavour. It's a scottish style, light on the hops. Right now it's just a pilot beer but it could go forward.

- Do you brew a lot of experimental stuff?
MP: Oh sure. We could have three batches a week of experimental stuff. The stone beer is shaping up pretty well. Hey, let me show you the bottling line.

With that, I'm whisked to another part of the brewery, where we talk about the future of Phillips Brewery. I also manage to get Phillips to comment on a subject that has touched his own brewery — legal wrangles over copyright between craft-breweries.

But that's enough typing tonight. Catch it in part three.

Canadian Craft-Brew Stats: Not Sophisticated

2010-04-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

The CBC recently commented on the decline of the beer market share in Canada as evidence that "Canadian palates — at least when it comes to alcohol — are becoming somewhat more sophisticated." The inference that wine drinkers are more sophisticated is pilsner off a mallard's back to most craft-brew drinkers. My problem with the report is that the stats are too vague to draw these types of conclusions.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the root of the word "sophisticated" is "sophistry" — meaning deceitful or misleading.

I used my university library account to get the raw Statistics Canada data (which they'd charge you $3 a pop for otherwise). Turns out no analysis is done on the types of beer or wine that are bought. The changing sales data could be explained by falls in macro-brew sales, coupled with an explosion in the market for Yellow Tail and cheap Euro-zone Vodka imports. Craft beer purchases might be rocketing. We just don't know.

I suppose the real point is that we don't have readily-available data on the craft-brew industry in Canada. The US Brewers Association does a good job of publicizing craft beer sales south-of-the-border — and they posted a 7% year-on-year volume increase in 2009. It's possible Canadian craft beer is doing just as well, but I can't find a single reference on the equivalent Brewers Association of Canada website. Their fancy brochure just breaks down provincial beer sales by can, draft and bottle.

It could be I just don't know where to look, in which case I'd appreciate a pointer. But otherwise, how about some craft-brew industry stats, Canada?

Imperial Stout Chocolate Cake

2010-04-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

This is the best chocolate cake I've ever had.

My wife has been making the excellent Nigella Lawson Guinness Chocolate Cake for years now. It recently occurred to us that Nigella only uses Guinness because of its popularity, and maybe other stouts or porters would be even better. As usual, my wife is way ahead of me, and I came home the other day to find a bottle of Howe Sound Pothole Filler Imperial Stout in the fridge.
"Do NOT drink this one," she said, as I lifted the heavy, litre-bottle of tar out of the fridge to inspect it. "It's for a cake."

After three days of my ceaseless pestering, she finally baked it. I could have done it myself, but she's a cake-master, and I didn't want to risk ruining it. The recipe calls for a quarter of a litre of stout, which isn't a bad thing, as drinking a litre of imperial stout in one sitting can be a bit much (all Howe Sound beers come in litre bottles only.)

The Guinness version of the cake has a subtle bitterness that complements the sweet chocolate. The Pothole Filler model blows it out of the water. It certainly adds a heavily bitter twang, but also a complex sweetness. As you'd expect, it brings aniseed, coffee, and molasses to the party, which is perfect for this cake. But because it is an imperial stout, not all the alcohol is lost in the bake, and you still get a bit of heat and boozy-aromatics. As for texture, the cake is as thick and rich as you could ever want, which is typical for this recipe, and the imperial stout certainly doesn't dry it out any.

Of course, I got a chance to drink the stout too. It's a very accomplished RIS, and the texture is thick and hearty. The flavours can become a bit of a muddle, though. I already mentioned the aniseed, which works in the cake, but gets a bit much in the beer, jostling with vanilla, coffee and other warm flavours. I suppose I wish it had just one or two dominant flavours coming through the mix, but some people will enjoy disentangling the complex soup. Any BC stout lover should try it, but perhaps not by the 750ml glassful like I did. Too rich for a session for me,

I strongly recommend you bake the cake, though. I'm already thinking up other stouts that could work (I think barley wines could be good too). Maybe that Stone Smoked Porter would be good, or, if I could bear to sacrifice a bottle, the Peche Mortel from Brasserie Dieu du Ciel would probably be sumptuous, as would be pretty much anything on this page.

Phillips Interview #1: Obligation to the Beer

2010-04-25T00:03:00.000-07:00

Matt Phillips met me for an interview last week at the impressive Phillips Brewery in Victoria. Waiting for the interview to start, I hung around the reception area, which is reminiscent of a minimalist art bar: abstract portraits hang on brightly spot-lit walls, an engaging receptionist fills growlers from a row of Phillips taps, and video monitors set into the walls show live feeds of the brewers at work behind the scenes.

Phillips himself greets me with the relaxed charm of a seasoned host. He's about forty, I'd guess, but youthful-looking, animated, and definitely the likeable side of self-confident. He doesn't know exactly what I'm there for other than that I have a blog, but before I can completely explain, we're already peering into an enormous mash tun — with Phillips telling me how he shaped its domed top by driving his car repeatedly over a slab of sheet metal.

Offbeat stories like that are commonplace in the Phillips folklore, which is pretty well-known, and there's no need to go into much detail here. Suffice to say, the brewery was a one-man show begun in 2001, with only a collection of maxed-out credit cards as startup capital. Nowadays, ask most people and they'd say Phillips is the most popular craft-brewery on the island, has a strong reputation throughout BC, and continues to make excellent beer year after year. Personally, a bottle of Phillips IPA turned me on to the Canadian craft-brew scene back in 2005, and I still buy them five years later.

The brewery itself is a hive of noise and activity, as you would expect from an outfit with nine beers in constant rotation (a number that swells to fifteen depending on seasonal brews). Rows of thirty-foot-high tanks line the main warehouse area, but the brewery snakes off in other directions, revealing nooks stuffed with ancient-looking equipment right next to work-spaces full of very fancy looking brewing kit. An annex houses a vast bottling line, with a pallet of "Hop Circle" (Phillip's revamped IPA) sixer boxes in the middle, waiting to be filled.

Busy it may be, but the workers all seem pretty content: lots of beards, T-shirts and grins. Phillips pours beers from a spluttering tap, pitches a glass of foam over his shoulder, then hands me an IPA so zingingly-fresh, I almost forget to ask my questions. We cover the usual craft-brew stuff: yes the passion comes before the business; no he doesn't feel tempted to "go macro"; yes Victoria is a great place to make good beer — but how so?

MP: Well for several reasons. First, the water is really good here. And the public, they have an interest and appreciation of beer here that you don't find in many places in Canada, apart from a few pockets. That pushes us and allows us to be free in what we do here. I've worked in conservative places where brewing has been all about just keeping the doors open. I didn't want to work in a place like that.

- But Phillips has grown so much. Do you ever feel pressured by your market to take fewer risks, seeing as things are going so well?
MP: Quite the opposite. One of the great things about having expanded is that we have the space and ability to do more things, we can afford to be adventurous, and the beers don't have to be commercial success. They're such small batches that if they don't sell through (which happens very occasionally) we're happy to bring them back and drink them ourselves.

- What did you have come back?
MP: The Double Surly came back. Now and again something's too much, or not quite the right fit. It can happen when you're constantly experimenting. But we loved it and were more than happy to drink what was left!

I ask about the artistic direction at the brewery. Phillips is at the helm in that regard, but ideas are generated at regular group meetings — which isn't surprising, when known innovative brewers like Benjamin Schottle are on the team. Schottle was the brewmaster at the — sadly now closed — Hugo's brewpub in Victoria, where he built a reputation brewing beers such as his "Super G Ginseng Ale."

Phillips regrets that they get so many ideas, they can't possibly pursue them all. I ask for an example of a wackier beer that they had to turn down, but not for the last time during the interview, Phillips steers away from a direct answer. I get the same non-committal response when I later ask him to name his favourite BC beer makers. Although he's clearly all about the craft first and foremost, Phillips' entrepreneurial instincts aren't about to let him reveal a possible future recipe, or risk offending an industry colleague, just so an amateur blogger can have something juicy to write about. I can't say I blame him...

- Speaking of new ideas, I notice Black Toque [Phillips' great India Dark Ale] has recently been rebranded as "Skookum Cascadian Dark Ale". How come?
MP: Thing about Black Toque is this. It's one of the first cascadian India dark ales out there. Now it's an official style. There's probably 30-40 brewed in the states. We really, really like it...[he gives me a wry grin]...problem is, nobody else seems to! So we're re-branding it, hoping it'll help it along a bit.

On that note, Phillips gives a little insight into the "necessary evil of marketing" that faces craft-brewers. Mostly about the detrimental cycle facing beers that don't get an audience right away: they get stuck on shelves longer, so when they get bought they don't taste so good, so they don't tend to get repeat buyers. With justification, Phillips illustrates his point with the example of Slipstream Ale — their cream ale that began life as "Draft-Dodger" — that only found its market after a re-branding and some perseverance. Nowadays, Slipstream does well, and sells plenty in BC. You have to take Phillips' point that sometimes, new ideas need a bit of a push. The popularity of craft-brewing probably owes a lot to preaching of the impassioned. Or as Phillips puts it, "Our obligation to the beer goes beyond bringing it into the world, we want to find a home for it too."

Part two of this interview is on its way.

Brew School's In Session

2010-04-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone after an exhausting 15 minute chat with Steve Gill — the highly enthusiastic beer program coordinator for Niagara College's brand-new brewing course. Gill is best known as a wine expert who has run over 50 independent wine stores in Ontario. He also co-ordinates courses at Niagara College's teaching winery — the success of which paved the way for their new Brewmasters and Brewery Operations Management course.

- This is the first course of its kind in Canada, how did it come about?
SG: We've had the wine program since 2000. It's won awards, the students have won awards, it's been immensely successful. About three or four years ago we started getting calls from the Ontario Craft Brewers' association, and Jon Downing [of Downing International Brewing Consulting], and the Ontario brewing industry in general. The idea was to try and do the same with brewing: train people in all aspects of brewing from production, to appreciation, to running a brewing business.

- We've never had a course like this, so why do we need one now?
SG: There's a huge shortage of skilled people, the industry is crying out for them. Whether its with bigger beer companies or craft-breweries, this course will contribute to the brewing industry in a lot of ways. We've been working on the curriculum with people like Downing [great name for a beer-drinker...] and Bill White, and it's ready to go this fall.

- How many students?
SG: It's full. Two hundred applied, but we took twenty-four — which is kind of a nice number in beer terms. We may add a few more if we can.

- Always room for another sixer?
SG: Right, haha. There were applicants from all over the world. Twenty of the twenty-four are Canadian. They'll be brewing beer from day one. We're even constructing a custom-made [1,500 square foot] brewing facility for the program. The graduates will walk out of here with provincial diplomas, and great job prospects. It's a very exciting project.

I take the opportunity to grill Gill about his interest in the brew industry — what with him being a wine-expert by trade. He professes a growing passion for the craft-brew scene over the last few years, and even admits recently ducking out of a "boring" wine-evaluation meeting to attend a craft-brew event instead. Gill's just returned from New York with cases of craft brews, and he's looking forward to working through them. "Which ones?" I ask. "Ah...I knew you were going to ask me that!" He can't remember, but he listens keenly to some of my suggestions of great NY beer.

As a craft-brew-loving convert, Gill excitedly informs me that the course will be integrated with a working, commercial brewery, and their beers will be sold throughout the province. Any chance of getting them in BC? Not likely. Canadian provincial laws and regulations can make beer distribution tricky for smaller producers.

Ontario alcohol laws have perplexed Gill on occasion before. He recounts a tale about a private wine store he ran on Bloor St. in Toronto that had the misfortune to be situated on the border of a "wet" zone and a "dry" zone. After a visit from the police, Gill was forced to divide the store in half, with alcohol only permitted to be sold in one half of the building. "It was totally crazy," he says, but with good-humour rather than irritation. You get the impression talking to Gill that he enjoys the challenges and variety his work throws up. Perhaps that's part of the reason his course is on the frontier of Canadian brewing education.

I will keep informed about the course, perhaps even try and talk to a student or two, and report back. My thanks to Steve Gill for an informative and fun interview.

Canada: Zero Degree Brewing?

2010-04-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

Are you a Canadian craft-brew drinker with romantic ideas about brewing your own beer? Do you think taking an accredited course (even getting a degree) might be a good way to get a foundation in brewing?

Yes? Well you'd better scrape together your savings and book a plane ticket (Icelandic volcanic eruptions permitting), because you aren't going to find a course like that anywhere in Canada.

I've toyed with the idea of home-brewing for a while, read a few books, even looked into the plastic versus glass carboy debate. This afternoon, on a whim, I decided to look for a local brewing course. Finding nothing in Victoria, I decided to call Rick Green of the Craft Brewers Association of British Columbia to see what my options are.

Me: Hi. I'm a beer blogger. I'm looking for brewing courses in BC. Victoria would be nice, maybe somewhere close to my house?
Rick: How close do you live to California?

Rick was happy to chat — he also finds it baffling that the world's second biggest producer of barley isn't too interested in learning what to do with the stuff (FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS 2007.) So what? You might say. So long as someone's putting that barley to good use. Well, according to the Canadian Wheat Board, 90% of Canadian malting barley is exported to China — where it ends up as Tsingtao, Yanjing, and other macro-lagers. That's perfectly fine if you like that sort of thing, but it's not exactly a vibrant craft-brew industry (although some Chinese brewers use bitter melons instead of hops, which is at least interesting.)

Is it a problem that there are no college or university courses on brewing in Canada? Most brewers will tell you that home-brewing and experimentation are the best ways to learn the art. And besides, says Rick, there are lots of craft-brew associations that are generally happy to teach newbies to mash and sparge with the best of them. The standard of Canadian craft-beer suggests that the know-how is passed along quite efficiently without the help of tuition fees. I admit there's something earthy and good about the fact that brewing has retained a somewhat folksy character in Canada. After all, it is one of the world's finest "oral" traditions...

Footnote: after literally minutes of ceaseless googling, I managed to identify a brand new college course in brewing in Canada. Starting this year, Niagara College Canada, Ontario, offers a two-year course titled "Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management." They claim that their course, which is run in association with the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, is "a one of a kind program not available anywhere else in Canada." I will try to get hold of a representative and find out more about the course and brewing education in Canada, and then report back.

On Beer #1: Beaten-Up for being Scottish

2010-04-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

If you drink beer, chances are you've found yourself stuck listening to a drunk telling a story at least once. You will also know that, usually, your sense of politeness holds you captive more than the tale. You are about to discover the only sense in which blogs are better than pubs: if a blogger launches into an uncomfortable confession of his despicable deeds, you can ignore him — safe in the knowledge he isn't likely to turn aggressive or start crying in your vicinity.

"On Beer" are stories about things that would not have happened if it weren't for beer. It's not big, and it isn't clever, but the undeniable side-effects of beer (for some: the main effect) are the altered thoughts, behaviour and circumstances it leads to. I'm not talking purely about inebriation. Just getting a beer will often take you somewhere, whether it's the shops, a pub, or Belgium. On these journeys, we encounter people and ideas. We get lucky, and we make mistakes. Sometimes something so stupid, funny, dangerous or unique happens, that it makes for a story worth repeating. If any of mine remind me of any of yours: share.

--

Like a lot of English kids, my parents took me to a European resort every couple of years for summer holidays. Sometimes it was Greece or France, but usually Spain. My last of such family holidays was to Mallorca when I was sixteen or seventeen. It was the usual deal: two weeks at a massive half-board hotel with a large pool, several bars, and enough football on TV to ensure your Dad didn't force you to leave the resort to go sight-seeing.

On this trip, I quickly settled down with a group of like-minded youngsters to take advantage of Europe's least scrupulous bar-tenders. Each night we'd order progressively more pints of lager during the 5-6pm "happy hour", quickly get pissed, then wander around outside smoking horrible Spanish cigarettes.

It just so happened the oldest group of us were all Scots except me. A core of about five of us would be the last to sneak into our hotel rooms in the early hours. Once the hotel bars closed at 2am, you had two options: go to a local club, or find a Cruzcampo machine.

Now, I've only ever seen this in Spain and Japan, but these countries have a gift for the underage drinker: beer vending machines. All the ones in Mallorca seemed to sell Cruzcampo, which is a pseudo-pilsner that only tastes great during puberty. Sometimes, our regular machines would be exhausted of beer, and we'd launch a 3am search for one that was still "paying out". By the end of the two weeks I had a detailed mental map of every Cruzcampo machine on the island.

Toward the end of the holiday, after emptying our local machine of frosted, double-D-cell batteries of fun, the four Scots and I decided to hit a club for a change. We walked a mile or so along the beach road — past foam-parties we couldn't afford to get into — hitting up 'campos where we found them. Eventually we came to the club we had in mind — an open air venue surrounded by waist-high hedges that would probably serve alcohol to ten-year-olds.

The problem was we misjudged the time. It was 4am, and they wouldn't let us in. We hung around and smoked, leaning against the hedge perimeter, glumly watching the other drunk teenagers. I was about ready to quit, but three of the Scots had struck up a conversation over the hedge with a table full of lads. Me and Stuart smoked Bisonte ciggies and speculated whether a nearby 'campo would be empty or not. Next thing we know, the "conversation" degraded into a slanging match. Our mates were making "wanker" signs at the table of lads, who were gesturing at nearby tables of lads who looked a fair bit older and tougher.

I heard my one of my comrades shouting "English twats!" momentarily before I noticed a mob of ten-to-fifteen men running down the club steps towards us, most of whom were shouting "sweaty-socks!" (which is apparently a term of abuse for "jocks" — another name for Scottish people — although I have never heard it since). I was immediately faced with a decision: take a beating, or cry out "I'm English, I'm one of YOU! I'll even help you!" But I'd drank 'campo with these boys for ten days. I couldn't betray them. The mob jumped into us like Jackie Chan impersonators and most of us were punched to the ground and kicked around in the sand.

As is often the case, the cheekiest one of us ran away and didn't get a scratch on him. I had a fat lip for the rest of the holiday, and my favourite Diesel T-Shirt got shredded, but at least I could walk into that happy-hour with pride for the rest of the holiday.

Driftwood Interview Part 3: New Brews

2010-04-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

In this final part of my Driftwood interview, we talk about future plans for Driftwood beers, sneaking more hops into the mix, and advice for would-be brewers. But first, some quickfire questions:

- What's your favourite Driftwood Beer?
JM: The Sartori was a fun beer. Just that whole time: driving out and meeting Christian Sartori, [owner of the Sartori Cedar Ranch, a fledgling hop farm south of Chilliwack, BC] picking up the fresh hops. It felt like something unique and exciting. I loved the whole experience, and I love the big beers.
K: Sartori and the Hildegaard, definitely.

- Hop lovers eh? Favourite IPAs?
JM: Locally speaking, I think the Phillips IPA is great, and they're doing incredible things at Central City Brewing with the Red Racer IPA. Other than that, the Boonville Anderson Hop Ottin', Green Flash from San Diego do great IPAs, and [Jason's eyes glaze over] Pliny the Elder is fucking awesome.

- What about your least favourite beer?
JM: Least favourite? Bud Light Lime makes me want to stake myself.

- Best pub in BC?
JM: Alibi room, no question. Nigel the owner is awesome. He'd drive down here if we had a new beer and pick it up in person, he's so keen to get the good stuff on tap.

- Best beer producing regions of Canada?
JM: Vancouver, Victoria and Montreal.

- No love for Saskatchewan? Paddock Wood is doing some good stuff right now...
JM: True! You know how Paddock Wood started out? They used to be the best homebrew supplies in the country by far. We'd take trips to Saskatoon from Edmonton just to pick up brewing supplies. They'd have stuff you couldn't get in the states even, people would drive from all over. They began putting out kits and I guess they just decided they might as well go all out and sell the beer.

Jason shows me the small office where the business side of things takes place. As we open the door, Jason's dog Suzie jumps at me from behind piles of brewing books, invoices and beer-bottle labels. Jason spends time out here working out new recipes and ideas for Driftwood while Kevin oversees the day-to-day management of the brewing. "For me the excitement of the physical process of brewing is kinda lost now. What I get a kick out of is dreaming up new stuff. It's so gratifying to have an idea form and end up out there in a tank, and then on to whoever drinks it."

- Speaking of which, are more beers on the way?
JM: As a matter of fact... There's an exciting new seasonal on the way, and the labels are already printed. We're calling it "Belle Royale." It's a triple golden ale with a restrained hop profile, and brewed with sour cherries. Belle Royale is a brew of whimsy, but we're confident it's going to work out great.

- Great news! But what about the hop-heads? You have to give us a little something?
KH: Oh, we're dying for a big hop beer.
JM: It's on the way. The Hildegaard did stupendously well, so we're probably going to introduce a fifth beer in continuous rotation: a 6–6.5%ABV IPA with 60-70 IBUs, malty and tons of northwest hops.
KH: In the meantime we've been satiating our desire for more hops by increasing the finishing hops in the Driftwood Ale, slowly but surely.
JM: The challenge right now is tank-space. We're going to wait until after the Sartori in the fall. We're brewing twice as much this year, a full forty-seven hectoliters.

We head back out into the warehouse. Suzie follows me around as I take a few final photos of the brewery. It's an impressive operation, especially as it was nothing more than a few home-brew recipes as little as two years ago. I ask Jason what advice he'd give a brew-newbie with aspirations of starting up an operation. "Start homebrewing, some of the best beer I've tasted anywhere is homebrew beer. You get other guys who start an operation after taking a course of study, and maybe spying a 'market opportunity', but somehow their beer always ends up tasting not-so-good." Jason advocates Dave Miller's homebrewing book as a "sensible system based on sound science." He tells me that once the recipes are good, brewing basically comes down to effective multitasking and attention to detail. "Plus you don't have to spend half-a-million. Some guys set up on $20,000 or less and grow from there." I presume these are meant as words of encouragement, but he clearly hasn't seen my bank account.

Driftwood already distributes beer across southern Vancouver Island, Vancouver, and parts of the Okanagan — which is almost as far as Jason "reasonably expects" they'll ever reach. And that's fine with him. "But there must be something more you dream about doing?' I say. He admits a pipe-dream involving moving to a small ranch with a few acres, growing their own hops, raising livestock, perhaps even a micro-fromagerie and a small bistro... I wouldn't be surprised if it all happens sooner rather than later, I say. "Oh, we haven't blown our wad yet," he replies, "we haven't even come close to it."

Many thanks to Jason and Kevin for such a rich interview. Watch this space for an interview with another of Victoria's prestigious craft-breweries — Phillips Brewing Company — coming in a few days.

Review: Pretty Things Jack D'Or

2010-04-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

I picked this out for review because a reader (Swineshead) asked for pretty pictures, and this beer is pretty on multiple levels. It is a "Saison Americain": an American take on the classic Belgian saison, which is a bit of an oxymoron as the five sources I consulted for a definition are contradictory and/or vague. In fact, if you dig into the history of practically any beer-style hoping for a concrete definition, you'll be disappointed. "Saison" means "season", and the beer was traditionally brewed at harvest time as a refreshment for the farmhands, which explains why saisons are also called "farmhouse ales." Anyways, these days it is brewed for 31-year-old dads who drive Honda Civics.

What I expect from saison is a very fresh-tasting, spicy, lively beer with tremendous powers of refreshment that come from the sourish tang these beers usually have. Randy Mosher says the tang is likely due to the use of strains of yeast usually reserved for red wine-making, or even brettanomyces — wild yeast found in oak and on fruit skin. In most beers, the presence of "brett" denotes an undesirable yeast infection which ruins both the flavour, and any romantic plans the beer had that weekend (sorry). But some beers are encouraged to be promiscuous because wilder strains of yeast can — if controlled — produce a funky and mysterious allure.

The Pretty Things website admits to "three strains of yeast", but doesn't name them, despite going into extensive detail about all the other ingredients (oats feature, interestingly.) Whatever the secret ingredients are, Jack D'Or is one tasty beer. It's funkier and spicier than many farmhouse ales I've had: like cajun champagne, but still lemony-fresh and addictive.

The Jack D'Or is one of seven beers brewed by the Pretty Things "Project". That's right, it's not a brewery, but a "gypsy brewery without a permanent brewing home". Dann Paquette and wife Martha — a brewer and a scientist-cum-tea-brewer, respectively — are behind the Massachusetts-based project. Dann used to live in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where he developed his passions for brewing, Lewis Carroll, and the summoning of ethereal beings (I'm serious). Naturally, that spurred him to move to Cambridge, MA, and begin brewing beers to traditional recipes dating back to 1832.

Jack D'Or is great. You could drink a few of these if they weren't $10 a pop. From what I've heard/tasted, the entire range is exceptional also. But I suspect they won't all be available forever in BC, so, to quote one of Swineshead's favourite bands — Belle and Sebastian — "Do something pretty while you can."

Driftwood Interview Part 2: North American Brewing and Beer for Breakfast

2010-04-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

In this second installation of my recent interview with Jason Meyer and Kevin Hearsum at the Driftwood Brewery in Victoria, BC, we discuss the North American brewing scene, CAMRA activities in Victoria, and the wild drinking habits of a brewer.

Our pints finished, Driftwood's Jason gives me a mini-tour of the brewery. There's a grist mill, grist hydrater, mash tun, jacketed kettle, and several other machines with supernatural qualities I do not understand. At the heart of the brewery are two fermenters — one for clean-yeast beer and one for Belgian. Jason and Kevin tell me that the Belgian beers (White Bark and Farmhand) take a lot more work, not least because they tend to yield a lot more sulphur which requires additional time to ferment out.

I ask if other, wilder yeast-based beers could be on the cards? Jason nervously suggests that he could use the regular fermenters, or he could always use the home-brew setup. Jason indicates his home-brew kit — 30 feet off the ground on a pallet. "Most of the Driftwood beers were worked out on that thing. If we were to do anything experimental we'd fire up the home-brew again".

- Speaking of experimental...the North American brew-scene is often renowned for its innovation, is this justified?
JM: Well...in my opinion, the North American craft-brew scene was started by the New Albion Brewery in North California in the 1980s. They were inspired by a trip to England, and they brought all their equipment over from England and brewed English beer. But some time in the 1990s they found their own voice — and I include us in that, as we're all part of the same culture. We started using more citrusy north-western hops, mixing ingredients, brewing unique stuff. It's not that it's "better", but we do stuff in North America that a German brewery would just never do.

- Aside from being daring, what else sets NA brewers apart from Europeans?
JM: "Daring" is a nice way to put it. Let me see...there's a celebratory culture about the NA scene. You could generalize Europe in terms of well-established approaches, it's steeped in brewing history. They are fiercely proud of it, the Belgians, English and Germans. But it's like an old comfortable pair of jeans. It's good, but it just "is". They don't have the equivalent of the Great American Beer Festival over there, where everyone's like "woo-hoo check US". That self-celebration is unique.

- It seems to me that folklore and mystique play a great part in the NA beer-scene. Certain beers develop an almost cult-like status, and people expend a lot of effort and money to acquire them.
JM: You always want what you can't have. A lot of these beers that seem unobtainable are not. Word of mouth, the zeitgeist, shrewd marketing, quality of the beer — where the smokiness of those ideas come together produces the cult status. There is that element, but truth is if you do not have a modicum of good distribution you're done. Unless you're super small.
KH: Recently a few artisan foody places came specifically looking for our product, and we are proud of it. But we're also aware that some places want to be able to say "we've got the Driftwood!"

The Driftwood guys' comments make me reflect on the English beer scene. As a Brit, I am aware of the ongoing fight to rescue the image of craft beer from the arena of the "old fart". In contrast — from my experience working at the liquor store — BC craft beer drinkers seem to enjoy the aura of the young and informed: beers like Driftwood and Phillips are very much hipster-hooch. So as craft beer continues its recession-defying growth in popularity in North America, I wonder what challenges beer industry advocates in Canada and the US are facing:

- The BC craft beer industry is thriving, so what does the Victoria chapter of CAMRA actually do?
JM: Well...we're paid-up members of CAMRA Victoria and BC. They've disassociated themselves from the stodgy, "old dude" issues brewers face in Britain. They're more a set of general beer advocates, looking out for the industry. But they're still concerned with measures and prices. When we're putting together a CAMRA meeting, the biggest questions are always "Where do we meet? How much does a pint cost there? Is it a real pint?" For the record (Jason indicates his empty Driftwood-branded pint glass) we do twenty ounces!

- Drinking must be part of your job, how much do you drink?
JM: We make a point of having a pint or two after a shift. Sometimes we have a bit of "sensory" first thing in the morning, believe it or not...

- Does it ruin social drinking for you?
JM: Oh, not at all. Social drinking is very much detached from the kind of appraisal drinking we do here.

- So you still go out and drink a lot of other people's beers?
JM: Oh fuck yeah. And that's why we do so many seasonals. We assume our customers are drinkers like us and they want new stuff. I sure as shit don't drink the same thing every day. Kevin went down to Portland recently and came back with a couple of boxes of great new stuff, I'd have been mad if he hadn't!

The final part of this interview will be published soon

Driftwood Interview Part 1: Philosophy, Craft Beer, and Chicken Cordon Bleu

2010-04-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

Victoria's own Driftwood Beer kindly granted me an interview at their brewery on Monday night. Driftwood is a relatively new brewery in Victoria, but it already has an enviable reputation as a serious craft brewery who deliver traditional styles to high standards, and seasonal brews that sell-out immediately.

It was either my excitement, or the bottle of Brookyln Brewery Local One I had beforehand, but I kept brewers Jason Meyer (CEO of Driftwood) and Kevin Hearsum (president) talking for over an hour. Loathe to leave much on the editor's floor, I will publish the interview in three parts. Today I'll cover the Driftwood way™ as well as Jason's and Kevin's ideas about the beer industry on Vancouver island and beyond.

The exterior of Driftwood is about as anonymous as it gets, tucked into the corner of an industrial complex with only a small sign distinguishing it from a cluster of warehouses. Jason welcomes me in to the 3,500 square-foot space that has housed Driftwood since it was launched in 2008. Kevin is busy hosing something down between two enormous tanks. I feel aware I know next-to-nothing about the brewing process, and am bewildered by the array of tanks, machines, and sheer noise I am witnessing. "Can I get you a beer?" asks Jason. Ah. Familiar ground. I receive a lively pint of Farmhand Ale from a tap mounted in the side of their on-site chiller, and the interview begins.

I ask about the Driftwood philosophy. Jason pours himself a pint and tells me that he and Kevin recognized an opportunity to establish the only producer of traditional Belgian-style beers in BC. In addition to the Southern-Belgian Farmhouse Ale I am happily drinking as we talk, Driftwood's permanent four-strong line-up comprises a Belgian wheat beer (White Bark), an Alt-style amber ale (Crooked Coast), and a "quintessential" Northwest ale with dry malts and bold hops (Driftwood Ale).

Respect for tradition hasn't prevented Driftwood producing some interesting seasonal beers (the Sartori Harvest Wet-hopped IPA being a standout). But Jason is quick to distinguish innovation from gimmickry, something that clearly irks him about current production trends.

JM: This bullshit of honey beers. You gotta use so much honey to make it taste like beer. It's uber-fermentable, it's fructose, it's gonna ferment out. It's just marketing, to me it's kind of crass. It's not sincere or authentic. Our whole MO is authenticity. We don't filter our beers. Yet we don't run around saying "we don't filter our beers," we just don't filter it.

– So you're opposed to trends?
JM: I'm in favour of a trend toward double IPAs and imperial pilsners!

– Driftwood's beers contain special ingredients, don't they?
JM: We brew to traditional Belgian recipes, which include Curacao orange peel and pepper. That's not to say that if an intriguing ingredient presented itself to us we wouldn't be prepared to use it. But there's a line between finding an interesting new botanical or a spice, and choosing an ingredient so you can overtly fly a flag about the fact this shit is in your beer.

Driftwood was established on the principles of providing fresh, quality beer for local people. Jason's enthusiasm is palpable as he recounts how he began brewing at age 19, was influenced by a creative brewing scene in Edmonton ("they were doing stuff like triple decoction mashes, stuff that no commercial brewery can do, it was just incredible"), and gained experience working in several breweries, including Victoria's Lighthouse Brewing where he and Kevin hatched the plan for Driftwood.

It was their experiences working in commercial brewing operations that inspired Jason and Kevin to build a brewery with the needs of workers very much in mind.

JM: We wanted to produce a space, a nice place to be, we wanted the people who work here to be proud of what they do, to promote this because they believe they are doing something meaningful. [At Lighthouse] Kevin spent three years hunched over a plate and frame filter inside a giant walk-in cooler, filtering beer, in the dark.
KH: It sucked.
JM: So when we built this place we designed it with lined walls, to create a decent, open, warm space for everyone. We don't have people working at weekends. We don't want people working graveyard shifts. That puts a limit on how big you can get. But it's a moral and good and fun place to be in.

"Getting big" is not the aim, but commercial success is clearly important when an operation on Driftwood's scale will cost upward of half a million Canadian dollars to get going. I ask whether well-publicized hikes in the cost of hops and other brewing-related crops are a challenge to the sustainability of craft beer outfits, but Jason and Kevin dismiss raw material prices as a lesser issue. Craft brewers might not generally get rich, but a good living is still there to be made with hard work, passion, and most importantly a receptive market.

– So what is the Vancouver Island beer market like?
KH: It's a more sophisticated drinking culture here these days. There are so many taps in this city and pubs are putting new ones in all the time. They're more than happy to put out every new product we make.
JM: In Victoria 20 years ago chicken cordon-bleu was the most exotic food item you could get! But it's all changed now. The internet age has made us more sophisticated, more suspicious of manufactured messages, of commercialism. Now there's a really active support for local producers and we're lucky we fit right into that.

Part two of this interview will be published soon

Southern Tier Wallpapers

2010-04-08T11:15:00.000-07:00

Southern Tier have made high-resolution copies of their attractive beer bottle labels available for download. Just click the thumbnail next to each beer description for a 3563*3038 image — big enough for any monitor.

I have a smaller neck label image on my laptop. The Oat and Oak-aged Unearthly are pretty to look at. If any readers have links to hi-def beer artwork, post them in the comments.

Splash beer on your computer without shrieking.

My Second Marriage

2010-04-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

Easter Weekend at the in-laws' in Vancouver is a wonderful occasion.

Sure, we spent three hours on a ferry in a 45 knot gale, during which my sea-sick wife Gravol-ed herself unconscious while I failed to placate our "spirited" daughter with cookies and 5-Alive. And on Sunday I woke up on the couch (wife and kid get the big bed) at 7am to watch my doomed football team, on a crappy internet stream, failing to win a match for the twelfth time this season.

But I got to go to my two favourite beer stores in BC. The Brewery Creek and the West Vancouver Liquor Store (no website?) have orgasmic beer collections, and I'll review them in depth in an upcoming blog on my favourite places to buy beer in BC (please post suggestions for me to check out in the comments!)

So I could be sat here reviewing any one of the worthy ales I picked up this weekend, including Paddock Wood Double Double, Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial IPA, and Pelican Brewpub's Tsunami Stout. But they will all have to wait, because the best beer experience of the weekend was the can of Red Racer Pale Ale I gulped with Joyce's home-made Mac'n'Cheese, after another knackering five hour drive-ferry-drive to get home to Victoria.

I'm such a fan of Central City's legendary Red Racer IPA that I tend to forget how good their other beers are. The Pale Ale is very similar to the IPA: same biting grapefruit front end, sweet malty warmth and explosive aroma. But the hop dial is cranked down several notches, allowing the substantial malts to shine.

The hops are lively enough to cut through the dull, creamy nirvana of the Mac', and the sweetness of the malt emphasizes the sharpness of the matured cheddar. The pairing was far more satisfying than the Lamb/Dunkel matchup from the other day, even though the partnership choice was totally restricted by a near-empty fridge. Perhaps there's something in these arranged marriages after all...

*Watch this space for an interview with Driftwood Brewery, reviews of Saskatchewan-based Paddock Wood's noteworthy new beers, and a roundup of BC beer stores — all coming later in the week.

I Was Looking for Some Action...

2010-03-31T19:49:00.000-07:00

...but all I found were cigarettes and alcohol.

And for many years, this was the only beer pairing I would entertain. Marlboro Lights and Stella, Guinness and rollies. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

But last night was my first conscious attempt to pair a beer with some food. In order to write this blog with some illusion of beer knowledge, I have been reading Randy Mosher's Tasting Beer. It's a great introduction to beer: well-written and broad in scope, opening lots of possibilities for further reading. Mosher is big on food and beer pairings. Having hit that chapter, and seeing as my wife was making seriously delicious Greek lamb steaks, I decided to select a beer so perfectly partnered to it that it would make our own marriage seem trivial.

However, I didn't have time to go to the beer store. In our fridge was a 12 pack sampler of Central City Brewing's great canned beers and a bottle of Phillip's new Dr. Funk Dunkel. Surely I could find something in that lot.

Mosher is actually somewhat vague on pairings. "Match strength with strength" he says, and offers a taste spectrum diagram that suggests beers that will temper or enhance certain food flavours (e.g. malty beers tame curries while hoppy beers make them more aggressive).

The lamb made me scratch my head. Mosher files it under strong flavoured, but ours was seasoned with lemon and oregano and served with a zesty salad. I could see the Central City Red Racer IPA or Winter Warmer murdering that, yet their white beer would just muddle the zest with its own. I began to wish we'd made peanuts and pork scratchings for dinner.

We went for the Dunkel in the end. Not a bad choice. It's a lager so the body is fairly thin, but it lent a chocolate warmth to the meal. Given the choice I'd have picked something sweeter and fuller, perhaps a dubbel or a brown ale. Dr. Funk had a sour side that jarred a tiny bit, but it would have gone beautifully with a Lucky Strike...

Review: Howe Sound Bailout Bitter

2010-03-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

Along with my first review must come a caveat: I generally hate beer reviews. Not that a beer review cannot be as lively and mouth-watering as the beer it references. I'm tainted by the BeerAdvocate experience. BA is an excellent source of opinion and discussion which I refer to daily (I only feel comfortable criticizing a small aspect of BA because it is overall my favourite beer web-resource). And I respect the (superior) experience of most BA members — and their forums show what a wealth of knowledge and passion they have.

But the review system prompts you to choose a score of 1-5 for multiple characteristisc: appearance, smell, taste, mouthfeel, drinkability (ASTMD) — each of which are weighted to give a total mark out of 5 which translates to a final letter grade. Reviewers must also offer a written report of the beer. Multiple choice? Written report? Letter grades? IT'S BEER SCHOOL!

The ASTMD system tends to encourage people to stick to these criteria when describing the beer. This results in mostly boring reviews that go like this:

A: quite lovely, a shimmering orange blossom yellow with amber highlights
S: quite heavenly, a blooming blossom of shimmering suds
T: quite stunning, a caressing highlight of shimmering tastefulness
M: quite sensuous, a blossoming shimmer of caring backrubs
D: not bad

The result is you get a fairly helpful overall grade, which at least helps you to sort promising brews from likely stinkers — unless you are cynical enough to believe that the weight of prior "A"s and "A+"s in any way affects subsequent reviewers' grades ("Oh god I didn't like this beer but Beernut9000 and Hoppywaggle_USA both gave it "A"s, there must be something wrong with my mouth!"). But you have to trawl through crappy report cards until you find a gem of writing that draws on experiences outside the ASTMD spectrum to evaluate the drink.

I have my favourite beer reviewers (some of whom even stick to the ASTMD format — but whose opinions are so astute they mirror my own...), but the reviews that really affect me and get me excited about a beer come from friends, or BAs whose writing and charm convince me to try a beer far more than an esoteric list of "flavour notes" wrung from the cultured tongue of a would-be aficionado. I wish they all had blogs instead...

Shit why would I build up expectations like this then post my own beer review? I have much to learn about blog strategy...

(image from Ruth and Dave's photostream. I have no idea if they ripped it off from someone else, but it's a nice picture)

Now and again a beer comes along that you feel you could settle down with for good. Fill a liter-sized sippy cup with Howe Sound's Bailout Bitter and wheel me off to the retirement home, please.

Gimmicky the label is, but it made me chuckle and buy a bottle out of curiosity's sake. And truth be told I've always been attracted to beers that come in vessels bigger than my head. Though Bailout comes with a Grolsch-esque reusable stopper, I've yet to actually use it - and neither will you.

It pours light for a bitter, but my idea of bitter is forever tainted by the murky-brown pints of John Smith's and Webster's ubiquitous to British pubs in the 90s. Bailout is a frosted, honeyed gold, with a lively effervescence as it slides into the pint glass (hehe - I couldn't resist).

The aroma hits with a fresh blast of yeast and hops, zesty and uncomplicated. Upon raising the glass hints of hefeweizen-style citrus burst under your nose.

The beer is immediately refreshing. It is tartly bitter yet clean, with perfectly judged hops for its modest strength. The body is round enough to be pleasing, yet never bold or committal. Its biggest charm is its ability to enliven at every sip and never grow tiresome.

While not a great beer in the sense of having unmistakable character, this is comfort-brewing at its best. For me, cracking one open is like putting Goodfellas into the DVD player, or opening a worn Bukowski novel. A reliably satisfying experience.