Bellwoods Fortune Cookie Tripel

Brewery: Bellwoods Brewery, Toronto, ON
Style: Abbey Tripel
ABV: 8.2%
Availability: In draught rotation at the brewpub; occasionally in bottles and growlers

Hazy golden-orange with a small head that doesn’t stick around for too long, but recedes to a thin ring of foam that laces the glass nicely. Aroma is mostly right on style - sweet malt, moderate yeastiness, suggestions of spices like clove and anise - with just the citrus-accented hops seeming a bit out of place, but still pleasant. Flavour is similar - i.e. sweet, fruity malt; mild, musky yeast; hints of earthy spice; and a fairly dry and well-hopped finish. It’s like a Belgian Tripel that’s taken a  vacation on the American west coast - seemed odd at first, but by the end of the bottle, I was really digging it.

Beer Academy Porter

Brewery: Beer Academy, Toronto, ON
Style: Porter
ABV: 4.3%
Availability: In rotation on draught and in bottles & growlers at the brewery

Deep almost-black with a creamy beige-tan head. Aroma is quite roasty with lots of chocolate malt and a hint of tart fruit. Soft body, fairly creamy with subtle carbonation. Flavour is nice and mellow, with notes of caffe mocha and malted milk, and a slight black currant tartness in the moderately dry finish. A very nice and unassuming porter that’s a real pleasure to drink.

Highlander Scottish Ale

Brewery: Highlander Brewing, South River, ON
Style: Scottish Ale
ABV: 5.0%
Availability: year-round; bottles at LCBO, draught at select locations in Ontario

This beer was originally known as Highlander Pale Ale, but a recent ownership change and relaunch saw it given the much more suitable Scottish Ale moniker. Pours a nice clear ruby-amber with honeyish tones and a small but persistent head of eggshell-white foam. Aroma is all about the malt - caramel, rye bread, hints of cocoa and raisin and licorice - with barely a suggestion of hops. Flavour is similarly malt-heavy, although not overly sweet - the caramel and dark sugar notes are balanced by some dry roast and a bit of biscuit - and it’s not until it warms up that some grassy hops start to make themselves known in the finish. A good brew that is a nice counterpoint to the hop-forward ales that have come to dominate the craft market.

St. Ambroise Pale Ale

Brewery: McAuslan Brewing, Montreal, QC
Style: Pale Ale
ABV: 5.0%
Availability: Year-round; bottles & draught in Quebec and several other provinces

Bright orange-copper with a decent cap of white foam. Simple but solid aroma of caramel, dried apricot, honey on toast and floral hops. Flavour initially leans toward fruity malt with a nutty backnote, complemented by flowery and mildly citric hops that are subtle at first, but build to a nice bitterness as the glass empties. Increased competition in the craft segment means that this may not be the standout beer that it once was, but it’s still a pleasant old stand-by that is a pleasure to revisit from time to time.

Beer Academy IPA

Brewery: Beer Academy, Toronto, ON
Style: India Pale Ale
ABV: 6.5%
Availability: In rotation on draught and in bottles & growlers at the brewery

Slightly hazy orange-peach colour with a large white head. The info card provided by the brewery indicates quite a varied malt bill was used - eight in all, including red wheat, rye malt and Munich - and the aroma shows this off, with a fairly complex combination of grain, toast crust, caramel and peppery rye, along with mild pine and moderate citrus from the Chinook, Cascade and Hallertau hops. Flavour similarly leans more toward the malty side of things than is normally expected from an IPA made with American hops, resulting in a beer that is more of a UK/US style hybrid. Nothing wrong with that at all, but those looking for a West Coast hop bomb might be a bit let down.

Beau’s Beaver River I.P.Eh? Barrel-Aged Blend

Brewery: Beau’s All Natural Brewing, Vankleek Hill, ON
Style: India Pale Ale
ABV: 5.6%
Availability: Limited release; bottles at the Beau’s retail store

Barrel-aged IPAs can often end up exhibiting too much barrel and not enough IPA, resulting in a beer that is a flabby and woody mess. This rare brew from Beau’s avoids this fate via blending - i.e. a portion of a batch of Beaver River was drawn off and aged in bourbon, wheat whisky and brandy barrels, and then dry hopped and blended back into the un-wooded beer. The end product is bright amber-gold brew that still retains the main characteristics of the original Beaver River - caramel, biscuit, citrus and pine - but with added elements like oak, vanilla and brandied peaches. As it warms up, the finish gets longer and drier, tasting of grapefruit peel, pine resin, and peppery rye. Excellent stuff all around!

King Pilsner

Brewery: King Brewery, Nobleton, ON
Style: Pilsner
ABV: 4.8%
Availability: year-round; bottles at LCBO and Beer Store, draught at select locations in Ontario

Bright golden-yellow colour with a white head that leaves a lot of lovely lacing on the glass. Aroma is fresh and grassy with backing notes of toasted grain. Body is crisp and refreshing. Flavour holds a nice balance of moderately sweet cereal malt and freshly-cut-grass hops, with a hint of peppery herbs toward the back of the tongue. Not a ton of complexity, but exceptionally well made. In terms of traditional Pilsners, it’s one of the Canada’s best.

Howe Sound Pothole Filler Imperial Stout

Brewery: Howe Sound Brewing, Squamish, BC
Style: Imperial Stout
ABV: 9%
Availability: Winter seasonal; draught and bottles in BC

Dark, dark brown - almost black, but not quite - with a big and creamy tan head. Big aroma of close-to-burnt malt, dark chocolate, mint, licorice, and a big enough hint of booze to make it clear that this beer ain’t messing around. Quite full bodied, but not thick or cloying. Flavour features intermingling notes of coffee beans, molasses, chocolate, licorice and dried dark fruit, with a long, bitter finish to remind you that along with all of that big sweet malt, there are 65 IBUs of hops in there to keep things balanced. This is a beer that rewards slow sipping, and shows its best at cellar temperature or higher, when the complex flavours really show themselves.

F&M StoneHammer Pilsner

Brewery: F&M Brewery, Guelph, ON
Style: German Pilsner
ABV: 5.0%
Availability: Year-round; bottles at the LCBO and Beer Store & on draught at select locations in Ontario

Bright yellow-gold with a finger or two of brilliantly white foam on top. Restrained aroma of straw, bread crumbs and lemon-herb hops. Crisp and perky carbonation gives a nice, clean feeling on the tongue. Flavour is as the aroma suggests - bread and toasted cereal off the top, fresh and herbal hops coming up the back and lingering into the finish. A really nice take on the often unappreciated German style of Pilsner.

Howe Sound Total Eclipse of the Hop

Brewery: Howe Sound Brewing, Squamish, BC
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 8%
Availability: Spring seasonal; draught and bottles in BC

Pouring from the chunky 1 litre swing-top bottle, this brew has a striking appearance, with a slightly hazy sunset-amber body and a large and sticky white head. The aroma has a lot of citrus and pine resin hops, no doubt about that, but also a pretty big hit of toasted cereal and caramel - and so it goes with the flavour as well, as the juicy hops are kept in check by a generous malt base. I generally prefer my big IPAs to lean a bit more to the aggressively hoppy side of the spectrum, so at first I was thrown by the balanced nature of this one, but I grew to enjoy it pretty quickly, and had no problem polishing off the big bottle. Now if I could just get that damn Bonnie Tyler song out of my head…