Love Good Beer

Rickard’s Dark Review

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | Beer | 20 Comments

Chris, the kind man that he is, patiently waited for me to arrive at his house yesterday to try Molson’s latest creation, Rickard’s Dark. I must admit, my expectations were not all that high going in – a major brewer such as Molson has aggressive sales targets and reaching sales targets often translates into brewing bland beer. Sadly most macro-brewed Canadian beer has to appeal to most beer drinking Canadians, and most beer drinking Canadians are  intimidated by a dark flavorful porter. With that said, There is nothing stopping Molson from brewing quality porter and I was hopping for the best.

Chris displaying his pouring skill

Rickards Dark, a self proclaimed “porter”, poured a deep, but nowhere near deep enough, ruby-brown. Of course I was only able to appreciate the colour after removing the supplied blindfold. I would very much love to speak with the marketer who came up with that idea – most brewers are proud of their beer’s appearance.

Blind Taste Test

The aroma was quite mild and I couldn’t much detect any maple syrup. Similar to the color and aroma, the beer was mild and tasted quite similar to other Rickard brews. Faint flavors of roasted malts, chocolate and nuts was detected, key word being faint. For a more in depth tasting review check out Greg Clow’s review at Taste T.O.

The Final Verdict

Rickards Dark is just not a porter, it is much closer to a mild ale or nut brown ale. Porters are dark, rich and flavorful – Rickards Dark was neither of the three. It is certainly not a great beer, but not foul in any way either. My hope is that Rickards Dark will serve as a gateway beer, introducing many beer drinkers to the unknown world of dark beer.

Cheers,

Erik

Tags: Maple Porter, Porter, rickard's dark, Taste T.O

BC lacks Porter

Monday, August 24th, 2009 | Beer, Favorites | 2 Comments

I love porter; it is one of my favorite beer styles.  I find porter to be quite easy and enjoyable to drink, which might be due to the moderate alcohol levels and pleasant roasty and chocolate flavors one finds in porter.  What I don’t like about porter is its relative scarcity in these parts.  I can’t think of one BC brewer that regularly sells six packs of porter.  You’ll sometimes find 650ml bottles of porter from BC craft brewers available in BC Liquor Stores, but these examples are often brewed with an additional element such as chocolate, coffee, coconut, or other fruit. While I definitely like these beers, what I’d really like to see is a widely available six pack of quality porter from one of BC’s many fine brewers.  In the mean time, Deschutes has recently made its way into BC.  Thank heaven for their Black Butte Porter, which is definitely one of my favorite beers!  I picked some up from Brewery Creek last week and, with a few friends, made quick work of them.  With craft brewing gaining ground in BC, I can only hope that a widely available porter is on the horizon.  I’d suck one, or six.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: bc liquor stores, black butte porter, brewery creek, deschutes, Favorites, Porter

Ozarks Famous BBQ

Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | Beer | 6 Comments

A new southern BBQ restaurant name Ozarks Famous BBQ recently opened in Langley. This is the first authentic BBQ restaurant in Langley, although Boonies BBQ & Soul Food sits right next door in the neighboring Cloverdale area. After waiting a few weeks for the restaurant to get past the typical problems that most restaurants experience in the first few weeks of operation, I decided to stop buy and give it a try.

I am a huge fan of real BBQ cooking and am happy to see that people are finally beginning to realize the difference between high heat grilling and low heat barbecuing. Ozarks is a true BBQ restaurant following the time honoured traditions of slowly smoking inexpensive, tough-yet-flavourful cuts of meat until they become delicious and tender. BBQ also happens to pair excellently with a number of beer styles from IPA to robust porter. This should come as no surprise seeing that many local brewpubs serve BBQ influenced dishes.

Ozarks is a locally owned family business with a number of years experience in BBQ. Prior to opening this restaurant, the owners mastered the art of southern BBQ by offering an award winning selection of BBQ meat and sauces at Ozarks Country Meats in White Rock. There years spent perfecting slow smoked BBQ cookery is very apparent. Every piece of meat I tasted, including pork riblets, BBQ chicken and beef brisket were all barbecued to perfection. Nothing was overly sauced nor was it too dry – it was moist and tender with a noticeable but not overpowering hardwood smoke flavour.

The BBQ was great- no complaints about the food, but the selection of beer was clearly not well thought out. Only one of the beers available even has a chance of standing up to the bold flavours of southern BBQ. The restaurant’s draught beer selection is exclusively Granville Island Brewing – including two light lagers, a mild pale ale and the newly release Brockton IPA. The IPA fared relatively well alongside BBQ pork riblets, but did nothing to complement the other dishes we ordered. The two light lagers and the one pale ale are far too mild to match the restaurants southern food. Porters, Southern Brown Ales, Smoked Ale and other full flavored beer would complement the food much more than light lager. Such a great opportunity to match great food with great beer and again the opportunity was missed – such a tragedy.

I would like to encourage all the craft breweries with BBQ appropriate beers to contact Ozarks Famous BBQ. Perhaps all the restaurant needs is a nudge in the right direction.

Overall, Ozarks’ food is good and it is without a doubt worth a visit. If more appropriate beer was made available I would certainly become a regular customer.

Cheers,

Erik

Tags: Boonies BBQ and Soufood, Granville Island Brewing, IPA, Lager, Ozarks Famous BBQ, Pale Ale, Porter, Souther BBQ

The Brockton IPA Launch

Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | Beer | 2 Comments

Erik and I attended the launch of Granville Island’s Brockton IPA at the GI Taproom last night.  For us, because we’ve both written about Brockton IPA before (Erik did a group taste test and I posted some general impressions last week), the night was less about the beer itself and more about having a good time.  But if you did want to know, we find Brockton IPA to be a decent beer, although somewhat lacking in balance and merely resembling a hoppy version of their pale ale.  It isn’t killer IPA, but it will definitely draw more Vancouverites to craft beer, and for that we are thankful.

When we arrived at the busy Taproom, we were asked whether we were with the press or from the liquor board.  We were press!  I suppose I should be less excited about that, but I had never been referred to as press before.  If press are commonly treated as well as we were last night, I wouldn’t mind being with the press more often.  We were given three pints of IPA, an excellent spread of food provided by a nearby culinary school, and a complimentary cab ride home.  Also, Almira of Jive Communications, who invited us, recognized Erik right away (not hard, he is a behemoth of a man and extremely good looking) and gave us a thorough welcome.

We were also lucky to meet Vern Lambourne, the brewer at Granville Island.  Vern perfects Granville Island’s recipes before sending them up North to Kelowna for production.  More importantly, Vern brews all of Granville Island’s seasonal beers on Granville Island.  I especially enjoyed his Porter and eagerly await next week’s release of GI Bitter.  Last month’s Ginger beer, although not to my tastes, was very popular and sold out fast.  Vern let us into the brewery for a quick peek and a picture, and also invited us back for a tour another day.  It is always awesome to meet brewers, not only because they make the delicious beverage we enjoy, but because they are always such nice, humble guys.  Cheers Vern, thanks for showing us around.

We also ran into the honorable Rick Green, who is always a pleasure to chat with.  Rick is the king of BC beer and always has the inside scoop.  He introduced us to Crystal Henrickson of Yelp, who is their sole Vancouver employee.  She is trying to build a Yelp Community in Vancouver and I hope she succeeds.  Yelp is a great site when it is well populated with reviews.  I’ve found it really helpful when visiting US cities, but Vancouver is still catching up on volume.  Crystal convinced me to go beyond consuming other people’s reviews and make some of my own.  I’ve now signed up and rated a few of my favorite places.

The launch of Brockton IPA was surely an experience, one which I enjoyed.  If any other breweries, or even restaurants, would like to wine and dine us press at future launch parties, we’d be more than happy to oblige.

The crowded Taproom

Erik with a Brockton IPA

Me with a Brockton IPA

Vern in his brewery with his latest creation

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: bitter, Brockton IPA, ginger beer, Granville Island Brewing, jive communications, launch party, Porter, rick green, taproom, vern lambourne, yelp

Homebrewing for the first time

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | Beer | 4 Comments

This past Saturday, Erik invited me over to brew a batch of porter with his good friend Brad.  I had never homebrewed before, so this was completely new to me.  I arrived at Erik’s house a while before Erik, who was running late, returned from Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies with the malt and hop ingredients.  Luckily, I was really on time because Holly had just finished making lunch.  I was already liking brewing by this point.

When Erik got home with the goods, the first thing we had to do was heat up some water for the first phase, mashing.  Mashing involves mixing the malted barley (the recipe of which Erik can fill you in on) into hot water.  Our malt mixture contained very little roasted chocolate malt (you could see the odd black fleck), which you might be surprised to find out is all that’s needed to give a beer that dark porter colour.  The water had to be heated up to approximately 170F on the stove to get a temperature of 152F in the mashing vessel.  How Erik knows this, I cannot tell.  We used Erik’s fancy beer making software to figure out the ideal temperature of 152F.  Apparently, anything three degrees above would lead to too many unfermentable sugers in the mash (leftover sugar means sweeter beer) and anything three degrees less would lead to too many fermentable sugars (not much leftover sugar means dry beer).  After Erik had mashed in his barley malt and was ready to let it sit in the lautering process, we were dead on at 152F.  Erik’s giant beer cosy system only loses 1F per hour, which I was pretty impressed with.  Lautering is the process of letting the mash steep, to extract the fermentable sugars that yeast turns into alcholol.

Erik Mashing in the barley malt

Action Shot of Mashing in the Barley Malt

Lautering in the giant Beer Cosy

Now Erik would tell you that home brewing is easy, and it is fairly straight forward, but it is really only easy when you are me.  It is true that while homebrewing, you do a lot of work in bursts and then wait around for an hour or so.  Homebrewing is also fairly precise and requires a fair amount of careful sanitization, as well as a good chunk of knowledge (that Erik has and I don’t).  For me, brewing consisted of playing a lot of frisbee with Luca, Erik’s dog, and drinking a lot of beer.  Whereas Erik spent a lot of time tearing around, cleaning stuff, carefully measuring/mixing, and took part in a good deal of attentiveness.  I had a great time though, because frisbee and beer drinking are pretty fun.  We drank a lot of fantastic beers, including Mission Springs Fat Guy Oatmeal Stout, Swans Coconut Porter, Swans Berry Ale, and Anderson Valley Tripel.  We also had Paddock Wood IPA, which I thought was more of a decent pale ale than a respectable IPA, and Granville Island Brockton IPA, finally a westcoast IPA.

Luca, good frisbee player

After an hour of waiting (drinking beer and playing frisbee), it was time to sparge.  After draining the wort (unfermented beer) from the mashtun (Erik’s has a filter in the bottom), we poured hot water (hotter than the first go because we need no more extraction) through the mash to get more of the sugar out.  We did this three times, stirring each time before draining more wort.

Erik draining the wort into the kettle

Wort going from the mashtun to the brew kettle

Chris stirring during sparging (one of my few tasks)

Bad, a good man

After we’d recovered the wort, it was time to fire up the brew kettle.  Erik’s kettle is a turkey fryer that he heats with a potent propane burner.  Bringing the wort to a boil was fairly challenging (mostly for Erik) because the wort wants to quickly extricate itself from the kettle.  After achieving a boil, Erik immediately added the bittering hops for the hour long boil.  After fifty minutes, the aroma hops were added.  I do not recall the types of hops we use, but I seem to recall willamette being used for aroma.  I’ll be honest, by the time the aroma hops were added I was out of beer making mode and into beer drinking mode.  After the hour long boil, Erik cooled the wort using cold water running through a coper hose.  Once cool, the wort was put into a carboy, to which yeast was added, and left to ferment for a week or so.  After further ageing in the bottle for a few more weeks, we’ll have a tasty porter.  Although, I fear my involvement may have somehow ruined this beer, but we’ll see.  Erik, thanks for letting me make beer with you and I apologize if I somehow ruined it.

The Brew Kettle

Erik preventing extrication

We had a good time

Stirring in the bittering hops

Cooling down after the boil (cold water runs through)

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: anderson valley trippel, barley malt, Brockton IPA, dan's homebrew supplies, Fat Guy Oatmeal Stout, granville island, Homebrew, hops, lauter, mash, mission springs, paddock wood, Porter, sparge, swans berry ale, swans coconut porter

The New Imperial Empire

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | Beer, Events | 4 Comments

As Chris mentioned in his previous post, we attended the Washington Cask Beer Festival.  As can be assumed, it was great; never have I seen so many casks of great beer in one single room.  For a first timer to this festival, I and possible the rest of the people in my party, may have gone a little overboard.  Half way through the evening we decided that the only way to possibly make it through a good number of the casks was to share each tasting three ways.  Those who adopted this sharing strategy made it through the night largely unscathed – those who choose not to share claimed to have had a ten minute conversation with Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin at the end of the event.  Perhaps adding a few chefs to the bill would have made for a slightly less alcohol intensive evening while adding a great opportunity for food and beer pairings – pretzels are only good for so long.

The three winners of the six to ten o’clock tasting round, Laughing Buddha’s Pandan Brown Ale, Harmon’s Vanilla Porter and Ram’s Coconut Porter, were all great and worthy of recognition, although the Vanilla Porter was a bit cloying for my tastes.  My personal favourite brewer of the evening was Port Townsend Brewing, hands down winner.  Both the Porter and IPA from Port Townsend were flavorful and brewed to style while remaining distinct from a myriad of other Porters and IPAs.  Ram’s coconut porter was my favourite adjunct beer of the night – the coconut flavour was very noticeable but not overpowering.  The beer selection was great, but I think beer diversity could be improved upon.

I would like to point out what I consider to be a growing epidemic in the world of craft beer – Imperialism; the super-sization of ale.  I may receive criticism from many beer lovers for saying this, but it must be said.  Brewing a stronger, imperial version of an existing beer is just not creative.  Not every beer becomes better by adding more hops and more grain – bigger is not always better.   The Washington Cask Beer Festival was filled with Imperial strength versions of a brewer’s standard offering.  If craft brewers continue walking down the imperialist path, I fear we may lose our much loved session beers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love strong ales – but when inundated with such potent brew over and over again, a person’s taste buds simply give up and that once enjoyable over the top Imperial IPA begins to taste like a tree.  There is no shame in showing up to a cask festival with a regular strength English Bitter – I personally would have loved to see a selection ranging from light session beer to heavily hopped Russian Imperial Stout.

It is time for all beer lover to unite, stand strong and say enough is enough – we demand regular strength cask ale.  This regular strength ale can of course be poured alongside a cask of imperial strength beer – this will add diversity to an often pallet numbing cask experience.

Erik

Tags: Chris Martin, Coconut Porter, Coldplay, Harmon Vanilla Porter, imperial ipa, IPA, Luaghing Buddha Brewing, Pandan Brown Ale, Port Towsend Brewing, Porter, Ram Brewery, washington cask beer festival

Real Beer Can Go Bad

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | Beer, Breweries | 1 Comment

Last Monday I had my family over for a nontraditional, one day late Robbie Burns Supper. The evening went quite well, at least I think it did, and I was pleased with the food, except for one key element, the beer. I picked up a bottle of Jameson’s Scottish Ale from Spinnakers Gastro Brewpub last September with the intent of serving it at a Robbie Burns supper. Scotch Ale is not my favorite style of beer – I find it cloying and challenging to finish as a result. But I bought this ale anyways thinking it would be great when paired with a rich flavorful dessert – sticky toffee pudding to be precise.

I served a delicious Brown Ale from Canoe Brewpub as a match to a supper of cullen skink, braised beef cross rib and of course neeps and tatties. A sticky toffee pudding was going to be served alongside a strong scotch ale as a conclusion to the meal, but disaster prevented this from happening. The beer had gone bad. The ale that was supposed to be smooth and malty was now offensively sour. I picked myself up from this great disappointment and carried on the evening by serving an oatmeal stout instead. Crisis was averted and dessert was served, but with a lingering sense of disappointment that nearly spoiled the evening.

This is not my first experience with spoiled beer from Spinnakers, this is the third time this has happened to me. Obviously Spinnakers has a problem with their bottling line that should be corrected, but in the world of small craft brewing I deem this to be somewhat of an acceptable error. This is not to say that I look forward to opening a bottle only to find sour beer waiting for me, I don’t. Small brewers operate on a tight budget and do the best with what they have – this means consistency from bottle to bottle may occasionally vary. The main reason why I can overlook this mistake is because craft beer is real beer and real beer is not pasteurized. Pasteurization is a high heat bacterial kill step that most macro brewers use to ensure their beer has a long shelf life. The intense heat of pasteurization does not help to improve beer’s flavour, if anything it destroys the delicate flavour compounds found in a proper brew. A clean brewery and proper brewing practices are all that is necessary to ensure a quality beer is reaching consumers – at least most of the time.

Opening a bottle of spoiled beer is part of the real beer experience. Of course it should be a very rare occurrence, but it will happen. Before modern science many beer drinkers would have regularly found their pint glass filled with sour beer. Without stale beer England’s famous Porter may never have existed. I am certain that the great Robbie Burns came across stale beer from time to time and I am quite happy to have a shared experience with him. Every stale beer I come across will continue to remind me that I am drinking real beer and real beer can go bad.

Erik

Tags: Beer, Canoe Brewpub, Pasteurization, Porter, Robbie Burns, Sour Beer, Spinnakers Gastr Brewpub, Stale Beer