On the Third Day of Beermas...Troegs Mad Elf!

Beer: Troegs Mad Elf
Brewery: Troegs Brewing Co. (Hershey, PA)
Type: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
ABV: 11%

Despite our best intentions to try to streamline the Christmas Decorating Day process, it always turns into a hectic and stressful afternoon.  It begins well before the tree is brought upstairs from the basement storage. The layout of our house is kind of stupid (the result of having one large square room that counts as office, library, den, bar, and dining room), and so every year there is the debate as to where the tree should go, because no matter where it goes, it always ends up blocking something.  Once placement is finally settled, assembling the tree is the next challenge.  We have an artificial tree, which tend to come with their own Christmas lights pre-attached, but we always like to add a few more strings to throw some colour and sparkle into the mix.  Sounds great on paper, but the procedure always turns into a Griswaldian nightmare of tangled lines and burned out bulbs.   Last year, we found a way to make things easier by simply leaving the extra lights attached to the tree, meaning all we have to do is assemble the three pieces. Or so we thought.  Turns out one of the strands was essentially damaged beyond all hope, and so we had to start all over.   Don't get me wrong, the net result is always spectacular, but it nevertheless Christmas Tree Day is a mad occasion in our household - one that definitely calls for a mad beer.

(Oh yes, in case people are wondering - yes, those are lobsters under our Christmas tree.  Family tradition, don't ask me why.)

Mad Elf is Troegs' winter seasonal offering, and it is a brew that has featured on many a "Christmas Beers You Should Try" list online, so I knew it was something well worth seeking out. The name itself is quite appealing right off the get-go: one can certainly envision an elf going batshit insane after years and years of incessant Christmas music, unpaid hard labor, people doubting your very existence - all the while knowing that one day you might be selected by the powers that be to live out the rest your life spying on small children and making nightly Orwellian reports to Miniluv (North Pole Div) regarding their devotion to Big Claus and any incidents of counter-revolutionary playcrime.

Yes, I have a bit of an issue with "Elf on the Shelf."  We'll just leave it there.

Mad Elf is an interesting looking brew in terms of style - instead of the big English ales, winter warmers and stouts one usually sees this time of year, what we have here is a Belgian Strong Dark Ale that packs quite the boozy punch at 11%.  The bottle states that Elf is brewed with both honey and tart cherries, which begs the question: will we have a festive, fruity Christmas cake of a beer, or will Mad Elf be more kriek-like in its complexion?  

Let's find out:

Poured into a goblet.  Nice bright cherry red and caramel, with a a thin crown of head that yields just a bit of lace.  It's a boozier beer, that's for sure.

Nose is cinnamon, spices, a bit of cherry, Belgian yeast, raw honey, sugar, and booze.

I didn't actually know this was a Belgian ale going in, but you can certainly taste the influence of the yeast in this one.  There's a mild tartness from the cherries, some mild malt, good mix of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg), honey, a bit of chocolate, and a boozy Barleywine quality to it.  The cherries remind me a great deal of a mead that is made just outside of Niagara, in which some sour cherries are added to the mix.  The interplay of honey and cherry is quite enjoyable - different enough that I'm appreciating every sip for what it is.

Good heft to the brew, certainly has that "Belgian barleywine" feel to it.  Well-carbonated, just a bit syrupy.

Unique Christmas brew experience, that's for sure.  I enjoyed it a great deal (my wife not so much, but she's not a fan of sour cherries).  The 11% certainly helped me enter into that blissful sleepy state I love to be in when I stare vacantly at my Christmas tree, savoring the colours, the lights and the decorations that I have no desire to put away for the foreseeable future.

On the Second Day of Beermas...Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale

Beer: Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale
Brewery: Samuel Smith's (Tadcaster, North Yorkshire UK)
Type: Winter Warmer
ABV: 6%

Starting to get into more of the Christmas spirit, despite the lack of wintry weather.  This is a job made easier here in Kitchener-Waterloo with the help of the Christkindl Market, a traditional German-style market that takes place at Kitchener's City Hall in the first week of December.  I always make a special point of going each year to sample some of the lebkuchen and stollen, knock back a cup of gluhwein, listen to some German Christmas carols, and check out the Weihnacht toys and decorations from the vendors.  Perhaps not quite on the same scale as some of the huge Christkindl Markets in Germany, I'll admit, but it's still a great little dose of traditional German Christmas to get things rolling early in December.

Usually around this time of the season I tend to also snap up a couple bottles of today's Christmas beer, Sam Smith's Winter Welcome.  A good quality English festive ale to be sure, but the real appeal here is the beer label, which features a delightful winter scene that is redesigned for every year.  This year's edition has more of a James Herriott doing his rounds in Yorkshire feel, with a lovely white horse somewhat longingly eyeing a pint of Sam Smith's, but instead being fed an apple.  Truly, there is no justice for our equine friends.


Pours a light amber-caramel colour, good sturdy head of a half inch that settles into a thick ring with lots of icicle lace.  Certainly looks the part.

Nose is faint, but pleasant.  Caramel malt, green apple, cinnamon, a bit of orange peel.

Nice and malty, tea and green apple hops, a bit of cinnamon and spice.  Very easy to drink.  Finishes slightly dry and tart, bit of hop or spice bitterness there.

Reminded me more of a classic English pale than a winter warmer.  Might be more of my palate changing, or this year's batch was a little milder on the spices than other times.  Still, a pleasant English ale with a festive label is certainly welcome this time of year.

On the First Day of Beermas...Redhook Winterhook Winter Ale

Beer: Winterhook
Brewery: Redhook Ale Brewery (Seattle, WA; Portsmouth, NH)
Style: Winter Warmer
ABV: 6%

First beer on our Christmas 2013 list!  We've just crossed into December, and so our Christmas planning is in full swing; the tree is ready to be decorated tomorrow, preliminary Christmas wish lists are being made, and there is the ever-so-slight chance that we might actually get Christmas cards out on time maybe perhaps.  Even though there's a nip in the air and more than enough Christmas carol radio penetration to feel like it's late December, it's still early in the season - it doesn't quite feel like we're quite there yet, so to get us in the mood I figure it's time to get this Christmas Beer countdown off and running!

I more or less picked up this brew solely due to its unique bottle design.  Something about the old time soda pop/Canadian stubby look was instantly appealing.  The label design is also quite sharp, as it looks like a Christmas sweater stitched lovingly by Scandinavians living in Minnesota.

This brew is from Redhook Ale Brewery, which was one of the first craft breweries to get off the ground, pumping out brews in the Seattle area since 1981, and from a second facility in Portsmouth New Hampshire in 1996.  They have a decent selection of ales and lagers,with  a lot of the usual sort of suspects (an ESB, an IPA, Witbier) as well as a couple seasonals, including a very intriguing Pumpkin Porter.  Each Christmas, their winter warmer - Winterhook - is released, though it always tastes a little different from each year to the next.  This is because the brew has undergone a slight revision for every yearly incarnation since it was first released in 1985 (hence the #29 on the bottle).   This year, there has been some extra dry hopping in the brewing process, which should give the brew a nice hoppy aroma.  Let's dig in.

Poured into a nonic glass.  Dark chestnut ruby in colour, with a quarter inch of light foam that recedes into a thick ring.  Some icicles of lacing.

Despite the promise of a bit of extra hop aroma due to the added dry hopping of this year's batch, the nose is fairly malt-forward, but there is a nice earthy/grassy hop presence coming through as well.

Tastes like a solid winter warmer that is malty enough to fall within that heavier brewing category, but has enough pale ale elements to be quite drinkable.  Malty, bit of chocolate, earthy hops, light taste of pine, bit of fruit and spice, grassiness. Mild booziness to it.

Not a bad start to the season, although not the Christmassy blast I might have expected - just a highly drinkable hopped red ale.   Nothing wrong with that.

The season is young, and there are many holiday themed brews still yet to come!

The Twelve(ish) Beers of Christmas!

Hey gang,

Getting close to that time of year, and so my wife and I decided to take a little road trip to Buffalo town to get that last big haul of the season.  Just before we left, I had an idea - an awful idea.  A wonderful, awful idea!  Why not, instead of an Advent calendar, do a Beervent Calendar, with a different Christmas beer for each day up to Christmas?  A great idea indeed, though probably not too feasible as it stands - I do have to work a lot this month, and finding 25 different Christmas brews is a bit of a stretch, certainly very much so in this province.  Indeed, the LCBO's Christmas beer list is pretty disappointing this year, as the brews are more or less exactly the same as they were last year, so in order to pad the list to a workwithable number, a trip to the States was in order.  That, and there have been so many Top Ten or Top Twenty Best Xmas Beer lists on the internet that recommend so many brews I have yet to have tried before, so that sealed the deal.

And so, in honour of Christmas 2013, MattsBeerDen presents: The Twelve(ish) Beers of Christmas!

Why "ish"?  Well, I wanted to leave open the possibility of finding more Christmas brews, because you never know what the month will bring.  So if some other brew comes into the mix, I ain't gonna turn it down! But for now, we've got ourselves a pretty dandy list to celebrate this festive time of year:

1st Day) Red Hook Winterhook (Seattle, WA)
2nd Day) Samuel Smiths Winter Welcome (Tadcaster, UK)
3rd Day) Troegs Mad Elf (Hershey, PA)
4th Day) St. Peters Winter Ale (Suffolk, UK)
5th Day) Thiriez Biere de Noel (Esquelbecq, France)
6th Day) Goose Island Sixth Day Festive Brown Ale (Chicago, IL)
7th Day) Wychwood Bah Humbug (Witney, UK)
8th Day) Anchor "Our Special Ale" 2013 (San Francisco, CA)
9th Day) Great Lakes Christmas Ale (Cleveland, OH)
10th Day) Captain Lawrence Winter Ale (Elmsford, NY)
11th Day) Southern Tier 2XMAS (Lakewood, NY)
12th Day) Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine (Escondito, CA)

Will I follow a particular drinking schedule?  I mean after all, as those sage gentlemen Bob and Doug McKenzie wisely observed, what the hell are the Twelve Days of Christmas?  There are of course, Christmas, Christmas Eve, New Years, New Years Eve, and "there are two Saturdays and Sundays in there, and three other days, which I believe are the 'mystery days'."  Technically, according to our good friend wikipedia, the Twelve Days start on Christmas and cover the twelve days following the 25th.  Nuts to that, I says; I'm not waiting that long.   I'll just work my way through the month with the goal of finishing the list with the Old Guardian on Christmas Eve (I have a tradition of drinking Barleywine and copious amounts of brandy on Christmas Eve).  

We'll kick things off next week!

Happy Hallowe'en from MattsBeerDen!

ALL HAIL THE PUMKING

New Brewery on the Block!

Ontario really seems to be going through a bit of a craft beer renaissance over the past two years, and I couldn't be happier.  The number of microbreweries in the province is increasing every few months, with such new arrivals as Spearhead and Sawdust City getting regular play on liquor store shelves, and a good dozen others getting things off the ground in their immediate community.  To run a successful brewery one needs to also have friendly bars and restaurants willing to serve your products, and in more and more communities across Ontario, these establishments have been turning towards craft brewery offerings, whether it be simply a tap or two or as a total craft brew lineup.  Craft beer has quickly become big business in the province; microbrewery sales saw a 45% increase over the past year, and account for nearly 30% of total Ontario brewing output. Simply put, it's a good time to be drinking in Ontario, a real sea-change from the state of the industry a mere four or five years ago.   Now, in terms of craft beer, I happen to be pretty fortunate in my location.  A large community of breweries within about an hour's drive of my front door (Wellington, F&M, Grand River, Nickel Brook, Great Lakes, Black Oak), and a number of craft beer establishments nearby at which to whet my whistle (including such new additions as Kitchener's Imbibe and the Bent Elbow), offering the latest Ontario craft beer selections.  This isn't exactly the norm across the province; not all LCBOs are stocked equally with craft beer, and not all communities have these sorts of craft beer friendly establishments available.  As a general trend, however, things are looking on the up.

There's a lot of beer out there.

But how long can this renaissance last?  One of the worries with the craft beer 'revolution', particularly in the United States where industry growth has been explosive (and a few years 'ahead' of where we are in Ontario, at least in certain states), is whether we will reach a point where the market can no longer sustain the number of new breweries.  There have been a good number of recent news and blog reports that suggest that fear of an industry slowdown, or even collapse, are justified, and that we've nearly reached the point of market over-saturation (though many, like this one, seem to be merely speculative - Betteridge's Law of Headlines states that any newspaper headline that ends in a question can always be answered with a 'no.').  Not everyone agrees with this assessment, however, and nor do I.  CNBC explored this phenomenon just the other day, and concluded that while the market is getting crowded, sales are up, much more breweries are opening than closing, and volume demands remain high.  Big breweries will pick up the volume demands as best they can, while smaller breweries will pick up the local markets.  At worst, the number of new players into the game will begin to slow down to more reasonable levels, but the enthusiasm for great tasting craft beer will remain high.  As long as there are people out there who love craft beer, and their local establishments keep purchasing craft brews to keep on their tap lines, I think there will be room for even more growth, especially in this province.  Rosy view?  Possibly, but I'm calling it like I see it - and beer tends to put me in a damned positive mood.

At least around this neck of the woods, beer drinkers remain thirsty for more.  Just this past month, the KW region saw the opening of a new brewery to add to our already sizable collection, and so far (at least from this humble and not entirely-sober blogger has seen), the response has been terrific.

Block Three Brewing opened its doors on the last day of August right in the heart of downtown St. Jacob's, and so far the response has been terrific.  Tucked away just behind Benjamin's restaurant in the north end of the downtown core, Block Three hasn't eluded the attentions of either local beer geeks (like yours truly) or curious passers-by.  Just down the stairs you'll find a large room filled with local artwork and the smell of freshly sawed wood, with a fridge full of growlers and bottles, and a good-sized bar where someone is waiting to offer a free sample or two, or perhaps a full pint ($5), or a growler fill.  After a massive opening weekend in which most of the beer was sold out, (which is about the best kind of problem you can have as a new brewery, I suppose!), folks have been coming back for more. The village, a major local tourism destination known for its farmer's market and charming downtown full of art galleries, quilt shops, antiques and restaurants, was enthusiastic about the idea of opening a brewery, and so the township helped Phil Hipkiss, Derek Lebert, Graham Spence and Bryan Maher find a suitable location in which to get their brewing started.  The town's restaurants have embraced their new neighbor; as you walk down King Street, signs on the sidewalk proudly proclaim that either the King Street Saison or Sugar Bush Maple are available on tap.  Elsewhere in the region, craft beer bars have also chosen to give this new brewery some love by having their latest offerings on tap.  It's been wonderful to see.

What I particularly like about Block Three - besides the prospect of having a brewery that does growlers a mere ten minute drive from my house, and one that is generous with their free samples - is that their opening lineup of beers are not your standard lineup of brews, and instead represent a more eclectic range of styles that feature local ingredients.  Instead of a light lager, or amber ale, or even the dreaded American IPA (which every brewery seems obligated to produce), the first brews from Block Three have been a Belgian-inspired saison, King Street Saison, which weighs in at a lighter-than-usual 4.6%, and Sugar Bush Brown, which despite using local maple syrup (which this area has in spades), isn't overly sweet, and more resembles a dry English brown.

New additions to the Block Three lineup

Just this past weekend, two new brews joined the list: Blocktoberfest, a maerzen that uses kolsch yeast to produce a grainy, malty Oktoberfest concoction in honour of the region's massive Bavarian festival that just finishes up this weekend, and New Rise Pale Ale - an English-style pale ale that uses a blend of English and American hops.  In the coming months, it looks like a festive brew of some variety is in the works, which hopefully heralds a regular lineup of seasonal offerings.

It looks like it has been a great start for the region's newest craft brewery, and I wish them all the best!