Toronto Beer Week – Great Lakes Harvest Fest – Saturday

Attending a work party on Friday night and drinking G&Ts as an out for a lackluster beer selection, Saturday was a day I was looking forward to. Planning to attend 3 Toronto Beer Week events this day I was excited to say the least. But not just any three events! Three events all with cask beer. Delicious.

First up was the Harvest Festival at the Great Lakes brewery. A number of Project X events this past summer were held in the Great Lakes front yard and this one might have been the last outside one of the year. Slightly overcast and a touch breezy, the weather did not ruin the festival of harvest! By the time I arrived at 230pm there were about 60 adults sampling beer, enjoying the food and keeping an eye on the ~15 kids tearing around the lot. The small things often make a difference and the bales of hay and pumpkins were a nice touch along with the booths of local purveyors of fine cheeses, coffee, meats and soap (they had even made a pumpkin ale soap including ‘head’ – very original!). Live country music also filled the air and greatly added to the atmosphere.

We managed to get the last of the cask pumpkin ale on our way in. I have had a few bottles of this year’s pumpkin ale from the LCBO and the pumpkin ale on cask was considerably hoppier than it’s bottled counterpart. Since it was the end of the cask I got a bit of pumpkin particulate in my glass. It added to the authenticity of it being a pumpkin ale, as well, who doesn’t love floaties in their cask? Now armed with some cask it was time to eat!

There were a small number of food choices but boy were they excellent! Jalapeño sausages (brats?) were just massive and incredibly delicious. For $2 this was the deal of the day! I was told they were from a place called European Quality Meats & Sausages in Kensington – definitely worth checking out.

We heard word that Sweet Pete’s Peach Wheat was running out so we hurried over to try this one. It was a very smooth wheat beer – I’m going to guess it was a North American wheat based on it’s smooth, mellow profile. I didn’t taste too much peach, which is OK by me – I’m not a big peach fan, but I did taste some cloves. This one was certainly not dry hopped.

Time to eat again – we grabbed the last couple slices of pumpkin pie and a pumpkin ale on tap. The pumpkin ale was not dry hopped and had that glorious clove, nutmeg, cinnamon profile you expect in a pumpkin ale. The pie was very delicious and dominated by cinnamon. After a bite of pie the pumpkin ale tasted just plain ‘beer-y’, but the beer long outlasted the powerful pie and once again returned to its pumpkin-y glory.

We headed off in search of more casks at Bryden’s for the Cask! social but everyone else was still having a great time. It seemed a fun environment for beer lovers and families alike. Would definitely go to this event again next year!

Toronto Beer Week – And They’re Off!! – Monday

Excitement was in the air as I approached Volo, the humble craft beer mecca, on the first day of Toronto Beer Week. At only 6pm the patio was rammed and the inside near capacity. Three hours later even more bodies somehow fit themselves into the small establishment and a note on the door indicated the bar was at capacity and no more were permitted in. To officially launch beer week the draft line up was to be 10 of Ontario’s best beers as well as two casks: the finalists in the 2010 Cask Challenge.  As it turned out there were 12 Ontario taps and you would be tough pressed to find argument in the excellence of the choices:

Denison Weissbier, Denison Dunkel, Black Oak 10 Bitter Years DIPA, Scotch Irish John By Imperial Stout, Wellington Imperial Stout, Flying Monkey Smash Bomb IPA,Black Oak Nutcracker Porter, Mill St Tankhouse Ale, Durham Hop Addict IPA, Creemore Kellerbier and Mill Street Coffee Porter.

Most of these choices did not last the night as the exuberant the thirsty patrons guzzled them down. At with beer week in the air and at $4/pint it’s no wonder! The casks were also reduced to empty barrels. Flying Monkey’s Smashbomb IPA and Great Lakes My Bitter Wife had at it and voters eagerly cast their ballots for the 2010 IPA Cask Challenge finalists. In the company of these two casks was a third cask (though not in the finals) the top choice Durham Hop Head on cask.

I spoke to a few others who had attended beer week events in other parts of the city including Mill Street, Granite, Starfish (for Malt and Molluscs Monday) and the early consensus was a “great success.” Hopefully everywhere else this week will be a booming as last night was. And that was just the beginning. Happy beer week everyone!

Bear With Me @ Beer With Me

This post marks a milestone in my blogging. Unfortunately it’s not a very glamourous one, but in the blogging world it is a rite of passage. This is my I’m-sorry-I-haven’t-posted-in-a-while-but-promise-to-catch-up-soon post. It’s not a bad thing and it happens to the best bloggers out there. I even fell behind in my precious Google Reader for beer news and posts for a time but it’ll be remedied!

IPA, eh?

Though I haven’t been posting it was not for lack of beer. I recently started a new job and have been fairly consumed with all that is involved with that. Before I started the job I took a week break to enjoy a week of freedom and the hot August weather. Beer related I did my own IPA tasting. It wasn’t formal or scheduled by any means but I did approximately one a day for the week – sampling beers I have collected over the past few months from Buffalo, Montreal, Sault Ste Marie (Michigan) and Manitoba. I will definitely post about this one soon!

4 Casks and a Pig

I also attended the August Great Lakes Brewery Project X on August 12th. In fine Project X tradition this event was a great success. Held outside, the standard draughts were available as well as four different casks. I did not take notes that night and my memory is a bit fuzzy: I thought I was told I had a black forest pale ale, but when trying to track it down online I came across a black forest porter – this seems a better description of what it was. Huge tart cherry and chocolate. The classic My Bitterer (double ER) Wife DIPA was on offer, which I found LESS bitter than a My Bitter (single ER) Wife I had a Volo a few months ago. A hoppy saison and the ‘does this moo-moo make me look hefe imperial hefeweizen’ rounded out the cask list. The pulled pork was cut right off of the pig on-site and the food ran out! Everyone did get their firsts, but there were only a handful who got seconds. Tough life, eh?

Taps, Awards, and Gold!

The Golden Tap Awards weekend was simply incredible. The 7 course beer dinner put on by Brian and the beerbistro crew last Friday evening was remarkable! A lot of planning was put into the dishes and they were enjoyed by all based on the buzz and high energy in the room. The Ontario beers paired with each course were introduced by the respective brewers, while Cass gave us the run down of the food items. Hats off to The Bar Towel and beerbistro for making the dinner the spectacle that it was. I’m looking forward to next year already!

The ‘main’ Golden Tap Award night was last Saturday and was just as enjoyable as years past. The Golden Tap Awards are always a standout event in my summer as they provide recognition for the efforts in the Ontario craft beer industry and a great afternoon of beer sampling and camaraderie. Brewers, publicans, bloggers, beer enthusiasts and beer lovers alike congregated, sampled, laughed, sampled, cheered for the awards and sampled some more well into the night. The beer menu for the day included a huge number of taps and a dozen plus in bottle form. I didn’t come across more than a handful of choices I had not previously enjoyed so I made sure those were first on my hit list. The Lake of Bays Pale Ale and an offering from Kichessippi (don’t recall any more specifics of the name – a blonde?), which I admit I had not heard of prior to this event. I didn’t dislike them however neither were remarkable in any way. They may be playing it safe by making easy to drink ales but they will need to establish a specialty in the near future else they will be directly competing with the big boys and sadly I can’t see them sticking around too long. I certainly won’t write the breweries off before they have the opportunity to prove themselves as they are both young and hopefully up and comers and I look forward to trying anything else from them in future!

Check out Cass’ post towards the bottom of the page for the beer dinner courses & pairings, as well as the results of the 2010 Golden Tap Awards! Congrats to all!
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Hopefully this post will last you through the weekend. I am off to Bracebridge for a wedding tomorrow and unfortunately won’t be able to stop in on the Muskoka Beer Festival (damndamndamndamn) I do plan to stop in at the Muskoka Brewery which is something I’ve not done before so hopefully that will make up for it!

Regular posts coming next week, promise!

Cheers!

OCB Week Day 6 – Volo & Flying Monkeys

When Volo announced they will be having special taps and casks it’s usually about 50-50 chance that it’s a special event. Though it was OCB week this event was not officially on the agenda but that did not stop the faithful from pouring into Volo. Arriving at 4pm on the dot we grabbed a shady-ish spot on the patio and previewed the cask menu of the day.
Six (or more?) casks on offer plus a number of familiar taps from the BelgOntario days earlier in the week. The casks included Black Oak Marmalade Saison, Granite Hopping Mad, Duggan #99 Double IPA, Great Lakes “does this moo moo make me look hefe?” Imperial hefeweize, Beau’s Festive Alt as well as Beau’s Beaver River.

The light malt, citrus and grassy notes of Black Oak’s (standard) seasonal Summer Saison make it a perfect choice for quenching a thirst, so I was keen to see how the Marmalade version would fare. Visually it looked very similar but the citrus aroma and flavour were considerably more pronounced. I do not think they used actual marmalade but a considerable amount of orange and grapefruit (from fruit) hit your tongue and added notable amount of tart bitterness to compliment the hop bitterness. Would I have it again? You betcha, though drinking it quick enough to stop it getting warm OR keeping it out of the sun would be a wise decision.

Next up was to be The Only Cafe for a Night of Flying Monkeys however we decided to lengthen our trip from downtown to the Danforth and make two pit stops.