First Trax Brown Ale
Fernie Brewing Company
Fernie, British Columbia, Canada
Independent
Brown Ale 5.0 % ABV Aluminum Can 355 ml.
$1.85 (Canadian) At BC Liquor Stores (12 pack for $22.25)
Twitter: @ferniebrewingco
Last of the four-fer beers from Fernie Brewing Company. As before I went into great detail about the City of Fernie in my previous post here. Feel free to go on over and read it. I'll wait....
Ok, now that you are back onto the tasting!
Go Ghostriders!!
The colour is dark chestnut with a fluffy light tan head made up of small bubbles. The aroma is very malty with some burnt notes molasses and demerara sugar, in the background is some leathery dried fruit and dark leafy notes. First sip is surprisingly light and refreshing, fruity and smoky like barbecued stone fruit. Evenly balanced from the attack to the finish the only detraction is a slight ashen flavour as the finish ramps up. Burnt sugar lingers on the tongue for quite some time. Aeration gives us a sense of spiciness, cloves and cinnamon.
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:
By far the best of the four Fernie Beers. I would certainly want to cook with this beer, a nice hearty pot roast or beef stew. Giving the right inclination I would even put it in the food.... So a warm Thank You to my friend who brought me these beers from B.C. I enjoyed tasting them very much. Next beer up we are staying in B.C., but we are picking ourselves up from the mountains and heading to the coast.... Squamish here we come!
Cheers
CJT
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Buck Wild Ale
Fernie Brewing Company
Fernie, British Columbia, Canada
Independent
Golden Ale 5.0 % ABV Aluminum Can 355 ml.
$1.85 (Canadian) At BC Liquor Stores (12 pack for $22.25)
Twitter: @ferniebrewingco
Third and penultimate beer from The Fernie Brewing Company. One again I shall refer you to my other post on Fernie here, if you would like to know more about the town or brewery... Go Ghostriders!
Onto tonight's beverage:
Light gold with a slight cloudiness.Head is off white and fades quickly. Aroma is malthouse... with hints of hay and molasses. First sip is light building quickly into wheat and malt flavours, heavy on the malt sugars. More suited to food
Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional
Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 4/6 PASS
Beer Style: 3/6 So-So
Re-Order: 3/6 So-So
Experience: 3/6 So-So
Final Thoughts:
Not really a good offering, and so far the bottom of the three... Sadly it has all the structure to be a good beer, I just find that the parts all do not work together, there is promise but no balance.
Cheers
CJT
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The Griz Pale Ale
Fernie Brewing Company
Fernie, British Columbia, Canada
Independent
American Pale Ale 5.0 % ABV Aluminum Can 355 ml.
$1.85 (Canadian) At BC Liquor Stores (12 pack for $22.25)
Twitter: @ferniebrewingco
Back to BC after a small hiatus for technical issues, and second in our series on The Fernie Brewing Company. I won't rehash a long introduction for this beer as I have a number of beers to get through this week. But if your memory fades as mine often does please re-acquaint yourself with the small city of Fernie B.C. in my previous post here.
Go Ghostriders!
Onto the Beer...
Light gold to barely amber, off white head with a hint of grey. Aroma is piney and resinous with a slight earthiness to it. Lighter on hops that what is the norm for a American Pale Ale. The combination of hops competes in the mouth from light and flowery to harder and piney. They is an air of smoky ashen flavours in the finish, not unlike a campfire made with green wood. The body of the beer is quite light and airy with soft hints of citrus which sadly only poke out breifly to get mashed down by the harder hoppy elements. Aeration gives a softer herbaceous feel to the beer, almost like mountain underbrush and wild wintergreen.
Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional
Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 5/6 PASS
Beer Style: 3/6 So-So
Re-Order: 3/6 So-So
Experience: 3/6 So-So
Final Thoughts:
I love Pale ales, be them APA, IPA or English, a good hoppy Pale Ale usually gets my vote every time. Sadly this beer did not know what it wanted to be. The competing flavours of the hop destroyed any chance of the body of the beer shining through. I did however "feel" the mountains in this beer. I could smell the pines and the cedars, and the distant campfire. I think if they tinkered with this beer, and maybe gave it a little more hoppy backbone this could be a pure winner.
Cheers
CJT
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Rocky Mountain Genuine Lager
Fernie Brewing Company
Fernie, British Columbia, Canada
Independent
Lager 5.0 % ABV Aluminum Can 355 ml.
$1.85 (Canadian) At BC Liquor Stores (12 pack for $22.25)
Twitter: @ferniebrewingco
Well I'm back and breaking the silence with a four-parter for you. This summer I had the fortune to acquire four beers from a brewery that I had only read about and was quite excited to try. They are from B.C. and yes they were brought "illegally" into the province . It astounds me that in this day and age there is still laws on the books that prevent the movement of alcohol across provincial borders. Granted, the only time I have heard of the law being enforced was when certain bar owners were purchasing beer in one province and carting it over to another to avoid taxes. This summer we saw laws governing the sale of wine across inter-provincial borders struck down so isn't it about time we do the same for our beers? Our craft brewers need our help! Write your MP. (for a great story on the topic read the Cranky Beer Blogger's post on the topic here) #freemyhops.
Onto Fernie!
Fernie B.C is a small city of about 5,000 people in the South-eastern tip of the province.
Home to one of Canada's largest ski resorts and the only city in Canada fully surrounded by the Rocky Mountains, Fernie also plays host to a hockey team with the coolest name ever: The Fernie Ghostriders. Fernie is also home to The Fernie Brewing Company. Opened in 2003, the small brewery has grown so fast in it's 9 years that it has already had to build larger facilities. They also added a bottling line in 2010 to start producing bottle in the new micro-brew norm size of 650 ml.
Here is the first of four:
Clear gold with a thin white head, with medium sized bubbles. Citrus, metallic, and herbal hops with a touch of roasted malt. Slightly sour citrus and malty. A typical American lager. Not a lot of flavour but certainly more that the major labels. Aftertaste is metallic and caramel malt.
Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional
Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 5/6 PASS
Beer Style: 5/6 PASS
Re-Order: 4/6 PASS
Experience: 5/6 PASS
Final Thoughts:
Crisp and clean, yet suffers greatly from being put in a can. I would prefer to drink this on tap in a pub a mile or so away from the brewery, I feel it would taste much better. Lagers have really taken a hit lately, everyone is trying to water them down and make them like the majors: Blue, Bud, Coors, almost flavourless, and... if I may say it... unoffensive. Which is just wrong on so many levels. A good flavourful lager is a wonderful thing. At least this beer shows some backbone, a hit of flavour. I would look forward to trying this again if it comes to Ontario in a bottle or if I take a trip through the Crow's Nest Pass, and visit Fernie... and maybe take in a Ghostriders game.
Cheers
CJT
Follow me on Twitter: @pintjockey
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Independent
