Piña Power

An homage to the former Blue Jays’ slugging outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Piña Power is a pineapple IPA from Toronto’s Left Field Brewery. The 6.0% ale comes in 355mL cans and its ingredients list includes wheat, oats, and pineapple purée. The beer is hazy and orange, with a thin covering of white suds.

Piña Power has a subtle pineapple aroma, backed with a bit of citrus bitterness. The flavour is mild, sweet-but-not-too-sweet, and fruity.

The beer is a little thin for my tastes, but it’s otherwise agreeable. The deft touch on the pineapple purée is commendable, as fruited IPAs can run a little too heavy.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Hamilton Haul--Survival Mode

Survival Mode is billed as a “stout brewed with coffee & vanilla”. It’s a 6.5%, 20 IBU ale sold in 473mL cans by Hamilton’s Grain & Grit Small Batch Beer. The skull in a coffee pot optics on the label made this a hard beer not to buy, so I did x3.

Survival Mode has a handsome, blackish ale with a quick-lived tan head. It’s got a sweet mochaccino nose and a flavour that matches—sweet to bitter movement with café con leche elements. The back end delivers a finish that I’d have sworn was heftier than the advertised 20 IBUs. As for vanilla, there is a whisper, but not much more than that.

This beer has a lot to like—great strength, good balance, and solid bitterness. I didn’t entirely love the coffee flavour, which I found to be a bit grainy. I’d also like to know a bit about the coffee they sourced for the endeavour, but no info was immediately forthcoming.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

WHIP Piña Colada Smoothie IPA

WHIP Piña Colada Smoothie IPA, from Left Field Brewery, is a complicated little brew that reflects a moderately complicated pitching statistic. Like its cocktail namesake, it features pineapple, coconut, along with lactose, oats, wheat, vanilla yeast, to combine in a 6% concoction that is sold in 355mL cans.

A milky golden brew, WHIP glugs out of its aluminum cage with a thin off-white head. It has a coconut-driven nose accented with pineapple 

 sweetness. The flavour hits the piña colada pedigree ever more squarely, with sweet coconut and pineapple elements evident to even the most untested palate. Behind that, there is a light hoppiness evident at the finish.

Left Field’s Piña Colada Smoothie IPA delivered exactly what it promised, with a creamy mouthfeel and boatloads of Island flavours. This isn’t exactly a novelty beer, but it is definitely the kind of ale that I’d only reach for occasionally. Too sweet for business drinking, but definitely interesting, it’s a beer I liked, but won’t hurry out for a second. I was watching the Toronto Maple Leafs host the hated Boston Bruins when I reached for this can of ale, needing something Toronto-born to cheer on the Buds—something from one of Toronto’s elite breweries seemed like an appropriate choice, and even if it didn’t fuel the Leafs to victory, it left me satisfied. My only real beef is that I’d have liked a more boisterously bitter finish to balance the sweet front end.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Rainbownade

One of the busier IPAs I’ve ever gotten down with, the aptly named Rainbownade features additions of grapefruit, passion fruit, mango, raspberry, and blueberry. Brewed in Boston, Massachusetts by Dorchester Brewing Company for Evil Twin Brewing. The beer is a 7% brewski. It has a sediment-heavy ruddy bronze hue, poured with a thin off-white head.

Rainbownade has a sweet, juicy nose rich in a the expected cornucopia of fruit notes. The flavour is fruitful, with a lot of berry elements. What there isn’t is a lot of classic IPA touches—other than the high percentage. There isn’t really a lot of citrus, either.

More fruit punch than IPA, Rainbownade was a tangy, juicy carnival of boozy flavour. I dug it, but not as an IPA.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

MacLean’s Ales Cherry Porter

Porter and sour cherries? Give! That’s the lineup that features in MacLean’s Ales Cherry Porter, a 5.6% alcohol brew from MacLean’s Ales in Hanover, Ontario.

The beer is a near black number with amber highlights that pours with a thin cover of off-white head. It has a malty nose with only a hint of sour cherry. The flavour is equally mild, and the cherry elements are extremely understated. More than anything, the beer is characterized by forward-facing roasted malt, with a kiss of coffee.

If the 473mL can didn’t have an iridescent cherry on it, I might not have identified it as a major element. It’s a subtle but enjoyable addition to a malt-heavy porter. This is isn’t something I say much, but I’d have liked to see the named flavour hit a little harder.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Éphémère Fraise & Rhubarbe

My review of Éphémère Fraise & Rhubarbe definitely has to go out to my father-in-law, the rhubarb eatin-est dude I’ve ever known.

A wheat beer, brewed by Unibroue in Chambly, Québec, E.F.R. is a 5.5% alcohol, 11 IBU ale on lees. A Belgian-style wheat, this beer joins together the two flavours that combine to form my very favourite pie. Plus, it comes in mighty 750mL bottles with lovely labels. 

 

The beer is cloudy and highly carbonated, with a thick cloud of suds on its noggin. There is a sweet and agreeable strawberry aroma backed against a fortification of slightly funky yeast. The rhubarb elements are understated and don’t really come to the fore until the beer hits the tongue. Even then, juicy strawberry is the dominant note and rhubarb is present only in a supporting role. The back end is characterized by wheat and yeast.

This beer is primarily sweet, which gives it a pleasant, after dinner vibe reminiscent of the pie. However, it should be said that I was pulling for a bit more of that classic rhubarb tartness to give it a bit more balance. Still and all, it was a nice tasting ale with some effervescence and a playful vibe. I’d gladly have another sometime soon. It’s a dandy autumn ale.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Candlepower

Brewed by Grimm at Beltway Brewing Co., Candlepower comes from Brooklyn, New York by way of Sterling, Virginia. A punchy 8% farmhouse ale, the stuff is brewed with pink peppercorns and sage, and stuffed into 1pt 8oz bottles that feature truly unique and enticing labels. The beer itself proved to be a cloudy, dull gold batch with a lusty off-white head.

Candlepower has a funky yeast-powered aroma that is spicy and beguiling. Its flavour is, initially, more subtle than I expected, with yeast and metallic sage notes evident but not overwhelming. The front end of this beer is unlike any I’ve ever had before, but for all of that, it wasn’t pushy—the sweet and savory taste remained understated. However, at the back end, the pink peppercorns do their raucous work, creating a spicy and unusual combo that left me impressed.

Yet another excellent beer sent my way by KC, one of the elite friends of the blog, Candlepower is an unusual piece of work. I enjoyed it unaccompanied, but this strong ale would definitely be bolstered by serving with a sharp firm cheese. Still, on its own, it was a quirky, funky ale with a lot to commend and little to criticize.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.

Cinnamon Roll Imperial Ale

A seasonal offering from Lakewood, New York’s Southern Tier Brewing Co., Cinnamon Roll Imperial Ale is an 8.6% alcohol ale brewed with natural cinnamon and caramel flavour. The beer is a swampy-as-hell brown and it pours with a thin cover of eggshell head.

This beer smells SWEET. Like, unbelievably sweet. It has a hefty cinnamon vibe and a buttload of brown sugar. The flavour is similarly situated and damnit, it does really taste like a cinnamon roll. There is a bit of bitterness toward the back door, and a load of booziness.

This beer is definitely a novelty rather than a regular sipper, but it’s really quite a nicely constructed ghoulish grog. Sweet enough to consider pouring over ice cream, and boozy as can be, this is a quirky ale with some gravitas. The Bitter Wife though it was a treat, and she’d have rocked it for breakfast, because she’s badass like that. Bottom line: I’m super glad my pal MM gave me this brew and I’m glad I tried it, but I can’t imagine that I’ll be trying it again anytime soon. This beer did exactly what it set out to do, but it’s a weird concept.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Cavalier Bleu Blueberry I.P.A.

In what was perhaps a foolish gesture, I cracked open a 600mL bottle of Cavalier Bleu Blueberry I.P.A. while actively rooting against the Cleveland Cavaliers in their match-up against the Indiana Pacers. Almost immediately after uncapping the 6% alcohol ale, the Cavs extended their fourth quarter lead and I regretted my decision. At least the beer was good.

A member of the Wild Oats Series from Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company in Vankleek Hill, Ontario, Cavalier Bleu is a certified organic ale brewed with blueberry juice. As a result, the beer has an unusual fuchsia hue and pours with a sudsy pink head. The beer packs a quirky aroma that is bitter, fruity, and metallic. It has a fairly bitter taste, supplemented with a winey edge. The addition of blueberry juice makes a subtle contribution—something I found extremely surprising, given the funky hue it gave the suds—a nice little tart berry burst.

An unusual ale, Cavalier Bleu is an enjoyable little tonic. It doesn’t seamlessly blend bitter and fruity flavours in the way that more citrusy IPAs tend to, but the resulting combo is interesting. It is a bit too tart, perhaps, and it could definitely be a few ticks stronger, but it’s a nice beer  with some distinction in an IPA genre that is sometimes plagued with carbon copies.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Sweet Disposition Plum IPA

On what might well have been the first glorious spring day of 2018, I poured myself a 500mL bottle of Sweet Disposition Plum IPA from Toronto’s Rorschach Brewing Co. My glass of beer a dark gold with a cute pinky hue, although it was a considerably sediment-heavy ale. According to the bottle, the stuff was bottled on December 20, 2017 (the day after my 33rd), so it wasn’t as fresh as it could have been, but all of the floaties gave me pause all the same. At just 5.5%, the stuff was a touch under-strength for an India, but not jarringly so.

Sweet to the nose, with an indisputable fruity proclivity, S.D. had a slightly candied aroma. The plum came through nicely in the flavour, though it was accompanied with a clout of bitter brashness—more hoppy, in fact, than I initially expected, given the sugary scent. Acerbic, but sweet, the flavour combo was unusual. I might not have gleaned that it was a plum tint had I not been tipped off, but there it was.

A neophyte to plum IPAs, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Sweet Disposition. I felt the name was fitting, although it belied the depth of bitterness packed into the finish. The fruity front end was a dream, although, as longtime readers of the Bitter World will surmise, I chafed a bit at the 5.5% listing, and could have done with a bit more sabre-rattling gravitas. I’m no stranger to sediment-y beer, but this one was very nearly too far down the garden path, four months of aging or not. On flavour alone the rating’d have been higher, but sediment and low octane’ll getcha. I might has filtered this one ever so slightly...

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Daidai

Fizzy and vivacious, Godspeed Brewery’s Daidai is a “saison with Japanese bitter orange”. According to the copy on the 355mL can, this stuff is “made with struggle & love in Toronto, Canada”. Low in booze, Daidai clocks in at just 4.7%. It’s a hazy yellow-gold liquid with a short-lived off-white head.

For a low alcohol potion, Daidai has a powerful aroma. It’s nose is yeasty, spicy, floral, and dry. As for flavour, this brew tightropes its way between the citric tartness lended by the bitter orange and a crackling dryness characteristic of the style.

Daidai was an enjoyable saison. It could certainly have been a bit larger, and I’d love it if the flavour was as compelling as the nose, but I liked the finish product quite well. I’d be interested in buying it again, particularly as a tipple to enjoy as the weather gets warmer.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Vanilla Coffee Blonde Ale

I’m still getting used to the idea that blonde roast coffee is a thing, but now my pal MM brings me a 16oz can of Vanilla Coffee Blonde Ale? What a world!

Brewed in Concord, NC by Cabarrus Brewing Co., the 4.7% alcohol, 15 IBU ale is brewed using S&D French Vanilla Roast coffee, roasted locally in Carabbus County. 

The coffee is, according to the copy on the can, blended with Carabbus Cotton Blonde Ale. The result is a hazy, dull gold ale that pours with a white cap. Sure enough the aroma does have sweet notes of French vanilla coffee—the type of java I cut my teeth in in high school before I discovered the glory of dark roasts and espressos—over a grainy foundation. The beer has a light mouthfeel that blends a bit incongruously with its heavily sweet nose. The flavour is also a bit of an oddity, with ample vanilla sweetness initially, easing into a modestly bitter and crisp finish.

Carabbus’ Vanilla Coffee Blonde Ale is a curious specimen. It partners scent and front end taste notes that are traditionally more at home in a porter with a very light, low octane and, easy-sipping ale. In short, a sweet and oddly rich lawnmower beer. While I didn’t find myself wishing for a second can, I must say I did enjoy the one that I had more than I expected to. I’d have liked a bit more boozy ballast, the sweetness could have been throttled down from a 10 to an 8, and the coffee could have been more evidently bitter, but it was still pretty decent. Perhaps there are more coffee-infused blonde ales out there, but this was a first for me. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Raspbeery Coco Lait

An entry from the Muskoka Brewery’s Moonlight Kettle series that I picked up at the brewery in Bracebridge, Ontario, Raspbeery Coco Lait is a milk stout flavoured with raspberry purée. The easy-drinking 4.5% alcohol ale comes in a 473mL can. It’s a dark ale with elegant ruby highlights.

RCL has an engaging chocolatey aroma with just the faintest hint of a tart raspberry backbone. The raspberry in the flavour is considerably more than a hint, though, giving the beer an assertively fruity vibe that follows on the heels of a malty, cocoa rich base.

Raspbeery Coco Lait is a decadent dessert beer that would pair brilliantly with a chocolate indulgence of some sort after a rich meal. And, since if you’re anything like me, you probably had a bottle of wine or two with dinner, you’re in luck that the beer has low alcohol count, so you might not nod off in your tort.

I’m irritated that the can didn’t tell me whether this is a stout or a porter, though those labels are often pretty arbitrary and the website declared it to be a milk stout. Otherwise, I have few negatives to heap on RCL, other than the fact that I’d have preferred a more bitter and gritty chocolate to the milky number in evidence.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Wild North Pumpkin Ale

Wild North Pumpkin Ale comes from Baysville, Ontario. It’s brewed by the Lake of Bays Brewery, comes in 473mL cans, and checks in at a feisty  6% alcohol.

The beer, brewed with pumpkin, has a rich auburn colour and a loose off-white layer of head. It has an autumnal nose—pumpkin pie with clove and cinnamon. The flavour walks a similar pass, with sweet, aromatic pumpkin pie notes, backed against a mild bitter finish.

To my mind, the best pumpkin ales are strong, spicy, bitter, and bold. For me, Lake of Bays’ Wild North Pumpkin Ale ticks one of those boxes (spicy), comes very close on two others (strong and bitter), and falls a bit short on the last (bold). If this beer were upped to 7%, it might have hit all of my unofficial criteria. Still, as is, I liked the beer quite a bit. It had me hankering for a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixins.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Winnower

From the Burial Beer Co. in the beer Mecca of Asheville, NC, comes Winnower, a porter brewed with raspberries and cocoa nibs from the Burial Beer Co. At 40 IBUs and 7% alcohol, it is not messing around.

The beer is a dark, hearty colour; hazy and nearly black. It has a strong chocolate scent, with a waft of berries. The flavour is tart and berry-first, with a cocoa backing band. Winnower has a flavour that ranges betweeen an initially sharp berry taste to a more rounded and chocolatey finish.

Rich and indulgent, Winnower was a fine ale with a strong, syrupy vibe. Well made but a bit sweeter than expected.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Ricky and the Hendersons: Old Fashioned Premium Rye Ale

According to the label of the 650mL bottle of Old Fashioned Premium Rye Ale that I brought home from Toronto's Henderson Brewing Co., this 10% alcohol ale was conceived in response to a challenge: to "brew the flavour & spirit" of an Old Fashioned cocktail into a beer.

For those of you who only drink beer, an Old Fashioned is a simple and succulent cocktail made using bourbon (or rye whisky), bitters, and a sugar cube (and sometimes some water, simple syrup, or club soda). Typically it's garnished with an orange slice and a cherry. Just lovely.

Henderson's Old Fashioned was a fairly clear, deep copper colour. It poured with a modest eggshell head, and gave off a sweet and toasty aroma, with a fair malt presence. Details of the ingredients were scarce on the Henderson website, but a little googling told me that the beer is brewed using rye--the grain, seemingly, rather than the spirit. While the beer doesn't taste like a classic O.F., it does have sweet and spicy qualities that I associate with rye (the spirit), as well as a faint orange tint and a bitterness born less of hops than of something herbal.

At 10%, this stuff'll knock your socks off. It's a bit too sweet to be approachable, but it certainly has a unique flavour. Innovative, tasty, and strong make this a beer worth trying, and one I'll likely revisit.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Ricky and the Hendersons: Face of Toronto

Face of Toronto was brewed by Toronto's Henderson Brewery in honour of the City's 183rd birthday. A dark saison, this tricky little number brings several unconventional ingredients to the traditional Belgian/French farmhouse style: cardamom, orange rind, and chocolate. The beer was a low-alcohol effort, at just 4.5%, and came in a 650mL bottle with a "waving out the streetcar-themed" label. It was Henderson's "Ides of ..." entry for March 2017.

The beer poured stout-dark, which would have been jarring had I not seen MT enjoy one of these guys a day earlier at the brewery. It had a sudsy tan head and a substantially chocolatey aroma. Quite unlike any saison that I've ever tried, Face of Toronto was light on the traditional yeast and spice elements. Its flavours were built largely around chocolate and coffee, with an agreeable dip of the toe into orange. Of the cardamom, I detected very little--only a whisper of spice at the finish of each sip.

If Face of Toronto didn't say "saison" right on the bottle, I'd have called this a spiced stout. However, it does. I must take its saison-itude at "Face" value (puns!), but whatever it's called, I found it to be a largely agreeable dark ale. I'd have liked a bit more spiciness, but the chocolate was nicely represented and the orange peel suitably restrained.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Blood & Honey American Ale

According to the label on 12 oz bottles of Blood & Honey American Ale, the stuff is brewed with "blood orange peel, honey & spices". A pale wheat ale, B&H comes from Granbury, TX, where it's brewed by Revolver Brewing. The beer came highly recommended by my pal JG, so I rushed out and bought a bottle at the first opportunity during a stay in Dallas.

The beer was cloudy and sunny gold, with a thin disc of white head. It' aroma was both slightly yeasty and slightly citrusy, with a whiff of something sweet. At 7% alcohol, it had some gravitas without putting me to sleep. As for flavour, the ale had an agreeable spice presence, some charming citrus elements, and a bit of honey sweetness attributable to Texas honey used in brewing.

On top of its excellent name, Blood & Honey proved to be a delightful little grog--strong and sweet, but backed with a decent hops finish, and buoyed by a zest of orange. If you're in Texas, you should really take this ale out for a spin or two.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

St. Benedict's Breakfast Dubbel

St. Benedict's Breakfast Dubbel came highly recommended by a beer seller in Greensboro, North Carolina. Brewed in Saxapahaw, NC by Haw River Farmhouse Ales, this juicy dubbel contains 7.2% alcohol. According to the info on the 500mL bottle, this Belgian-inspired brewski is made with flaked oats, cocoa nibs, dark Belgian chocolate, and two types of coffee beans sourced from Muddy Dog Roasting Company. All that and a cool label left me aching to crack it open.

My beer flowed out smoothly and with a nice dark brown hue. It poured with such a thick and vigourous head that I had to take a break halfway through pouring the stuff, lest I lose a precious drop. It's nose was sweet, rich, and malty, with elements of chocolate, coffee, and a tart whiff of fruit. The flavour proved to be extremely complex and layered, and a lot more like a porter than a dubbel. For one thing, the beer was not as far along the fruit sweetness spectrum than most of the dubbels I've sampled. As well, the addition of coffee and dark chocolate made for a more bitter ale than the Belgian and Belgian-style dubbels in my repertoire. The beer finished with a pretty decent hops profile, too.

Really a unique dubbel, St. Benedict's Breakfast wasn't a great exemplar of the style, but it was a fantastic beer! Rich and flavourful, with lots of nice ingredient flourishes, this beer left me deeply pleased and sated.

Once again, this came my way from KC, the greatest pal of them all.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.

Midnight Kissed My Cow

Midnight Kissed My Cow is a double chocolate milk stout from Kanata, Ontario. It's brewed and filled into 473mL cow-emblazoned cans by Big Rig Brewery. Checking in at 5.6%, this little ale features lactose and cocoa in its ingredients list, making this a flavoured stout. The beer poured dark and opaque, with a smooth blanket of eggshell head.

Unsurprisingly, MKMC's nose was sweet and chocolatey, if a bit mild. It had a thin but smooth mouthfeel reminiscent of chocolate milk. This vibe was reinforced by a definite mocha taste. The beer finished quite sweetly, with only a sprinkling of cocoa bitterness. 

As double chocolate stouts go, Midnight Kissed My Cow wasn't particularly rich or thick. The richness I missed, but the thickness was an omission that didn't rankle all that much. All told, an adequate chocolate ale.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.