Beer # 53 Summer Weiss Muskoka Cottage Brewery

Summer Weiss Vintage 2011

Muskoka Cottage Brewery, Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada (Independant)
Weiss Bier 5.0% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 750 ml
$5.95 (Canadian) at LCBO.

Well the weather outside is anything but summery. In fact it has rained snowed and hailed all at different points today. So it is a perfect Canadian spring day to taste a summer beer. I think that made sense. We visited Muskoka Cottage Brewery once before in our "Lucky 13" Post, where we did the Double Chocolate Cranberry Stout. So I won't go into a lot of detail about the Bracebridge brewery again. If this is the first time you have read my blog (first of all welcome!) you can click the above link and read up on the pretty town of Bracebridge and it tiny but industrious brewery.

On to summer...


Translucent and light gold somewhat cloudy. Off-white head made up of medium sized bubbles. The nose is all cloves with a hint of cinnamon and sweetness. The first taste is strong ripe bananas, spice becomes milder. There is a lingering sweetness on the palate that is reminiscent of a banana Popsicle. As it warms toasted bread comes to the surface. Light caramel. Aeration brings out the wheat.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional

                                                                                                               

Cost:  5/6  PASS

Colour:  5/6  PASS        

Beer Style:  6/6 EXEPTIONAL  

Re-Order:  5/6 PASS   

Experience:   5/6  PASS

Final Thoughts: 

Very enjoyable, with all the right moves. The beer style is textbook and I could have written my description out of a judging manual (don't worry... I actually think these big words up on my own...) I would put the beer toward a high pass, and I have to say I am enjoying the brewery's new seasonals, each seems to be better than the last.

Cheers
CJT

Beer # 54 Tusker

Tusker Premium Lager

Kenya Brewery, Nairobi, Kenya (80% Owned by East African Breweries LTD, 20% SABMiller)

Premium Lager 4.2% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 500ml

 $3.30 (Canadian) At LCBO.

Tonight's offering is a product of a death. Shortly after the Kenya Breweries founding in 1922 by two white brothers, George and Charles Hurst, George found himself on the business end of a large male elephant (known as a Tusker). In tribute to his lost brother Charles named the newest creation of the brewery "Tusker" and the stylised portrait of the offending creature has graced the bottle ever since. Tusker is one of the most popular beers in Kenya with 30% of the market share and a burgeoning export business. Tusker is now sold in the UK, The USA, Japan, Tanzania, and Canada.

The ingredients for Tusker are 100% sourced locally, keeping as much money in the Nairobi area as possible. The barley is grown at the foot of Mount Kenya, the water comes from The Aberdare Mountains, even the yeast is cultured in the area. There is no listed ingredients by I garnered from the website that they do use sugar and cornstarch as fermentable adjuncts (sourced locally as well). One interesting fact that I found was that Kenya Breweries uses 6% of the total Nairobi water supply.

On to the tasting:

Clear gold in colour, with an off-white grey head that disperses quickly. Medicinal bitter hops on the nose with dusty grain background. First sip is light ethereal, mild citrus cold crisp and clear. musty medicinal hops make up the aftertaste slight syrupy mouthfeel, some sweetness. Light malt appears with aeration.


Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional

                                                                                                               

Cost:  5/6  PASS

Colour:  5/6  PASS        

Beer Style:  5/6 PASS  

Re-Order:  5/6 PASS   

Experience:   5/6  PASS

Final Thoughts:

Once again, a good beer not one that knocks you off your feet. They have won gold medals, and it is because the style of the beer is very indicative of a pale lager. However it is certainly not something I will remember, or crave later on. I will probably remember the story of the hapless George Hurst longer.

Cheers

CJT

Beer # 52 Gemini

Gemini 

Southern Tier Brewing Company, New York, USA (Independant)
Blend (see below) 9.1% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 650 ml
$9.00 (Canadian) at LCBO.

Today's beer is a blend of two other of a brewery's regular beers, and it is the first time I have heard of it being done with an IPA. The first beer is Unearthly Imperial IPA a hefty 9.5% 

heavily hopped ale that is described as being very fragrant. The second is Hoppe Imperial Extra Pale ale, a substantial 8.5% ale described as delicate and elegant. Both beers sound impressive on their own, whatever led the brewers to try the two together, well no-one is saying. What I say is the two beers are very similar in nature, so the selection of Gemini as the name rings true... the Twins.

Colour is light copper with a good sized off-white head made up of small bubbles that last a decent amount of time reducing to a skim across the top and some lacing on the glass. Aroma is strong floral hops with some fruitiness and as the beer warms a good hint of barn and molasses. First sip gives us a lot of sugar and a little cheek puckering astringency, herbal floral hops dominate, with the malt sugars bringing up the rear. There is a lot going on in this beer and I taste a little more with each sip. There is a little orange and bergamot, lingering inside. Mouthfeel is actually a little sticky. Aeration brings out the alcohol, and medicinal qualities. Almost gin-like.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional

                                                                                                               

Cost: 4/6 SO-SO
Colour: 5/6 PASS      
Beer Style: N/A it's an unusual blend
Re-Order: 5/6 PASS
Experience: 5/6 PASS


Final Thoughts:
This is a very complex and interesting beer I found myself racing through the bottle inadvertanly trying to taste all of the different nuances. Unfortunately I think I ran out of beer before I found everything I was looking for. The only fault I think is that the beer, however good, is over priced, six or seven dollars, maybe, but nine is stretching it.



Cheers
CJT

Beer # 51 Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor Belgium

Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor

Het Anker, Mechelen Belguim (Independent)

Blonde Ale 8.0% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 330ml

$3.10 (Canadian) At LCBO.

Well first off. I must apologise for the delay in the new post. Many things have been happening here at Pint Jockey Headquarters. Last week I took down Pint Jockey's central computer "Prometheus" and installed a new hard drive. Just over a year old and I have discovered that 500 Gig... is not nearly enough space. (Who said the average home computer user would never need more than 64kb?) My shiny new energy efficient 2 Terrabyte drive arrived and I blissfully set about ripping out the old one and installing all my programmes again. Well not exactly. Two solid nights of no sleep, a lot of tinkering and a lot of watching little progress bars later, I finally managed to restore order and glory to old Prometheus. Throw in a couple of long shifts at work and you have a groggy and grumpy Pint Jockey instead of the happy-go-lucky one. But now I can revel in the fact that I have a computer with more disk space than ALL of the other computers I have owned (including expansions and rebuilds) put together. And yes I am including my much beloved and dearly departed Commodore VIC-20 in there. Poor sad creature of the PC world that got left behind. I calculated that it would take 697,739.3 VIC-20s to add up to the amount of hard drive space in Prometheus right now. That would be around half of all the VIC-20s ever made and sold.


Enough reminiscing, let's drink some beer.


Het Anker means "the Anchor" in Flemish, and the brewery traces it's origins, in one form or another to 1369 but the beer we are tasting tonight was not brewed until 1960. The Anchor Brewery's Beer making traditions com from the Beguine sisters a group of nuns that adopted a lifestyle of self sufficiency growing all of their own vegetables and wheat, and making their own bread cheese and beer (because one works up a mighty thirst...). in 1471 four years after touring the town of Mechelen and visiting with the Beguine Sisters, Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold decreed that the sisters would not have to pay excise on the beer they made and consumed for themselves. 


So the brewery flourished and grew over the years until the First World War. When the Germans seized Flanders it was determined that only one brewery in the area would remain open. The brewery owners drew lots and Het Anker lost. Chevalier Marin remained open and Het Anker and the others had their copper kettles dismantled, melted down and used for the Kaiser's war machine. After the war Het Anker began to rebuild, and when war struck again they survived by producing a beer called Zero-huit. A low alcohol (0.8%) beer, which is all that the Nazis would allow to be produced. Charles Van Breedham the president of the brewery surreptitiously employed far more workers than was ever necessary to keep local townspeople from being rounded up and taken to Nazi labour camps. After the war the brewery was rejuvenated again. New Kettles were built and installed in 1947 and are still in use today.


Onto tonight's beer:

Dusty gold in colour with an ample long lasting, fluffy white head made up of medium bubbles. Beer is cloudy with white sediment. Orange, clove and coriander on the nose. Bright wheat notes lots of clove herbal, bitter hops. Dusty, woody notes from the yeast. Light clover honey mixed with a bite of astringency on the finish.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional

                                                                                                               

Cost:  5/6  PASS

Colour:  5/6  PASS        

Beer Style:  6/6 EXEPTIONAL  

Re-Order:  5/6 PASS   

Experience:   5/6  PASS

Final Thoughts: 

This is a solid Belgian blonde ale which I enjoyed drinking. The alcohol does go straight to the head though... and for it's relatively cheap price it is a beer one can easily come back to. 

Cheers

CJT

Beer # 50 Aguila, Bavaria Brewery Colombia

Aguila 

Bavaria Brewery, Columbia (Owned by SABMiller)

German Styled Pilsener 4.0% ABV Brown Glass Bottle 330ml

$2.05 (Canadian) at LCBO.

"Aguila" means eagle in Spanish. That is the majority of the information I could find on the web about this beer. Brewed by the Bavaria company, which was started in 1889 as  Kopp's Deutsche Brauerei Bavaria and Aguila was launched in 1913. Bavaria was one of the largest Brewing operation in South America when it was purchased by SABMiller in October 2005. The beer's website although seems to contain nothing about the beer except a warning in Spanish that drinking to much "es perjudicial para la salud" (hazadous to the health). And they have something called "Las Chicas Aguila 2011" I won't explain... just click over and see.

On to tonight's tasting:

Clear gold in colour with an off-white head made up of small bubbles. Head is very narrow and short lived. Oily hoppy aroma light citrus herbs and mineral. First sip is light and clear. Mineral character of the water stands out, sharp bitterness, and herbal, with a  stale finish. Aeration brings out florals and herbals. Aftertaste is bitter herbs.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional

                                                                                                               

Cost:  5/6  PASS

Colour:  3/6  SO-SO        

Beer Style:  3/6 SO-SO    

Re-Order:  3/6 SO-SO   

Experience:   4/6  PASS

Final Thoughts: Unremarkable, probably best left to the beaches of Columbia, where a light crisp beer like this deserves to be drunk.

Thanks for tuning in If you have any comments on the new format (good, bad, or ugly) please feel free to use the comment form below.

Cheers

CJT

50th Beer

Well I am about to hit the fiftieth beer that I have tried and I am one twentieth the way to my "unofficial" goal of 1000 beers.. I have worked at this blog for six months, and a lot of changes have happened in the last month. In March I had more viewers than the first five months. Quite a few very important people in the industry have started to follow me on Twitter ( @pintjockey ) and read my blog, which fills me with an incredible amount of pride... and humility at the same time.

The one thing that I have been pondering lately is that I think, I put my scoring system together too hastily. Not that I am out to rate the world's beers. Taste is the most subjective thing on the planet. Anyone who tells you exactly what you are going to taste in a beer, or a wine, or a whiskey, or even if they tell you what a fruit tastes like... that's their own impression... not yours. You will taste something entirely different. They can only tell you what they "Think" they have just tasted. I have also endeavored to not use the term "review" when posting my blog. I am giving you my impression and my twenty years of experience in the food and beverage industry. Take it as you like, and as I said in my first blog... "you will disagree with me..." I expect that.

My Cat working hard beside me

That being said I have decided to update my tasting report in such a way as it is a bit more quantifiable and scientific. I have added a numeric scale that co-relates to my original judgements (fail - so-so - pass - exceptional) it is scored 0 to 6 ( why six? I like six it's different ) 0 to 1 is Fail, 2 to 3 is So-so 4 to 5 is Pass, and 6 + is E xceptional. (I added a plus there because I always expect there is a beer out there that will blow my socks off and make me want to cry with the angels). This will start with my next posting... my 50th beer ( nice tie in eh? ). I also will be cleaning up the format and making the entire blog post a little more uniform.

Anyone who would like to give me feedback... well I am always delighted to here from you. You may use the comments form at the bottom of this blog, or email me at perryscorners@hotmail.com I will respond to all comments.

So thank you for reading... this blog would be nothing with out you.

Cheers
CJT

Beer # 49 Skjálfti Lager, Iceland

Olvisholt Farm

Well it's hailing outside so an Icelandic beer seems appropriate. Olvisholt Brugghus is a brewery founded by two farming neighbours on a thousand year old sheep farm that straddles a very active fault line. Down the center of the farm the North American plate meets the European plate and the farm has been the epicentre of a number of moderate earthquakes.  fact the name of the beer we are tasting tonight "Skjálfti" is the Icelandic word for Earthquake and was named after a specific quake which centred on the Olvisholt site on June 21, 2000.


Let's shake it up...

5.0% ABV Premium Lager in a 500ml brown glass bottle. Copper in colour with an off tan head made of small bubbles, not long lasting. Grainy wet dog nose. Light in body, zingy herbal, some citrus. Light astringency, and an oiliness to the mouthfeel.

Overall results: (Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional)

Taste: So-so
Cost: Pass (In Ontario it is $3.95 a beer)
Colour: Pass
Beer Style: Pass
Re-order: Pass
Experience: So-so

Final Thoughts: Not a great beer. Not much going for it. To have the name "earthquake" one would think that the beer would be more memorable, more flavourful. However, I certainly would like to try their other beers.

Cheers

CJT

Beer # 48 Little Korkny Ale Nørrebro Bryghus

 

Fourth of five of our ultra-premium beers and last by this unique brewhouse in the Nørrebro district of Coppenhagen. Now what exactly do I mean by ultra-premium? Well in Ontario it has to do with price, standard beers are in the range of $1.50 to $2.50 a bottle, premiums and imports range upwards from this point to about $6.00 to $7.00 a bottle. Ultra premiums start here and can go sky high. One such beer just sold for around $177 dollars. As I am not that flush, we will concentrate on the lower end of that scale. The next five beers are all over $7.50 a bottle and have an average price of $12.50. The most expensive being over $21.00 (and yes... so far that is the most I have ever paid for a bottle of beer, and yes it hurt a little...)

**Special note The fifth and final ultra premium will be delayed for a few days as I have a few other posts waiting in the wings.

So this is the beer that hurt a little. The very first bottle of beer that cost me over $20. Was it worth it is the question? Let's get right into it. Packaged in a specially designed award winning bottle and label, containing "60 cl" or for us non-Europeans 600 ml is a 12.5% ABV American style barley wine. Beer pours the colour of iced tea. very murky with particulate matter floating everywhere. Has a consistency and appearance that was described as "gravy" by my quaffing companion that evening. On closer inspection there is a ring of almost "fat like" looking greasy clear portion around the rim that brings to mind the layer of beef fat that floats to the surface of separated gravy. The head is an off white to tan that disappears instantly, almost too fast to notice. I go in for a smell and I get apples right off the bat, with a woody, oaky, caramel chorus backing it up. First sip is more wood, heavy on the medicinal, caramel, chocolate toffee, with a whisky, vanila, caramel and coffee finish.

Lingering on the palate is a syrupy mouthfeel that brings up the thought of cooked raisins.

Overall results: (Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional)

Taste: Fail
Cost: Fail (In Ontario it is $21.55 a beer)
Colour: Fail
Beer Style: fail
Re-order: Fail
Experience: Fail

Final Thoughts: I was horrified with this beer. I thought that I must have a bad bottle but a quick search on the internet confirmed almost ever word I typed above. out of ten reviews I read one person liked the beer. I felt cheated and ripped off. Honestly I can't see the reason to charge $21.55 for this beer when they are extremely good barley wines here in Ontario and the US that sell for half or a quarter of the price I paid for this bottle. I did note That the beer "improved" slightly as it warmed and later as we were finishing the bottle long after I took my notes; we had some salted vegetable tortilla chips and the salt tended to improve the flavour of the beer... but certainly not enough to save it.

Additional: though the last bottle was disappointing the overall experience of the Danish beers was very positive. Tasting beers from another culture is always rewarding. I look forward to trying more from this little Danish Microbrewery.

Cheers
CJT