extra special bitter

Some New Favorites

Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | Favorites | 1 Comment

This week, I found three more beers to add to my favorites.  The first is Phillips Accusation ale, which I’ve written about before.  I’d had it a few weeks previously, but I decided to buy it again because I love a good Extra Special Bitter (ESB).  I love ESBs because they are generally more flavorful, with a little more hop bitterness than your typical pale ale, but not as bitter and hoppy as an IPA.  I also love India Pale Ale’s, but they can be a bit much sometimes.  What puts Accusation Ale over the top for me is the great story behind it.  Read my previous post to learn more about what happened with Phillips, as it says on the bottle: “sometimes bitterness comes from frivolous trademark disputes”.

In honor of Canada Day last Wednesday, Innis and Gunn released a special Canadian version of their whiskey barrel aged ale, also now one of my favorites.  The Canadian Cask edition was aged for seventy one days in Canadian oak whiskey barrels imported to Scotland.  This beer is a strong ale, full of rich malty flavors, and I loved it.  This is a seasonal beer, so pick it up at BC Liquor stores and give it a try while it is still available.

Lastly, Brewery Creek recently started carrying Coney Island Lager from the Shmaltz brewery (famous for their He’brew ‘the chosen beer’ brand).  This is not your run of the mill lager, it is amber in color and full of flavor.  They use eight different malts and six different hops to brew this beer, and the complexity really comes through.  I loved this beer and highly recommend it.  It is only available at finer purveyors of beer such as Brewery Creek or Firefly and may not be in steady supply, so buy it if see it.

I hope you get a chance to try these beers.  Phillips Accusation is also only available at the better stores.  It’s a seasonal too, so grab it quick!  If you don’t think you’ll enjoy my suggestions, I suggest chatting with the fine people at the better beer stores who’ll surely be able to help you find what you’re after.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Phillips Accusation Ale Tasting

Monday, June 1st, 2009 | Beer, Breweries | 1 Comment

Phillips used to produce a beer called Blue Truck, which was a tasty pale ale.  It was a popular beer on Vancouver Island and growing in popularity on the mainland when the Mark James Group sued Phillips Brewing for trademark infringement. They thought that people would confuse Blue Truck with their Red Truck brand.  Phillips, being a small brewery, relented and changed the name of their pale ale to Blue Buck.  It was shortly after this time that Phillips began producing their cleverly named Accusation Ale, an Extra Special Bitter style ale.  I received a hilarious email from Phillips today announcing a preview tasting of this year’s first batch of Accusation Ale:

I hope you can read the invitation because it is really quite clever.  I would gladly attend the tasting if I was in Victoria, but alas, I will have to wait until it arrives at Brewery Creek.  ESB is one of my favorite styles and I’m really looking forward to this one.  I suppose I have the Mark James Group to thank for Accusation Ale, but I really think what they did was stupid.  In my opinion, the craft beer scene in BC isn’t big enough for lawsuits.  But MJG has felt the repercussions, incurring the angst of many Vancouver Island beer drinkers.  If the individual MJG pubs like Dix, Yaletown, Whistler, Taylors Crossing, and Big Ridge weren’t some of the very fine few options for fresh beer hereabouts, I’d probably show them a little angst myself.  I do believe the brewers at these establishments had nothing to do with the lawsuit, and so their beer remains morally pure:)

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Search

Categories

Archive

Links