Ice Cold Beer 100% Ontario Ale

 

 Ice Cold Beer 100% Ontario Ale is a crushable, crisp blonde ale from the team at Toronto’s Left Field Brewery. The beer comes in cute 355mL cans and contains just 4.5% alcohol.

Simple and sessionable, Ice Cold Beer is a slightly hazy blonde ale with a thin layer of white suds. It has a sweet, corny nose. The flavour is crisp and balanced, with sweet, grain and malt out front and a faintly bitter back end.

ICB is an approachable, people pleasing ale that one might irresponsibly destroy while watching a ballgame or otherwise wiling away an unproductive weekend afternoon. It is both unremarkable and notable in its simplicity and sip-ability.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Diamond Park English Mild Ale

Named in homage to the former home of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball squad, Diamond Park English Mild Ale is a 3% mild ale from the talented squad at People’s Pint Brewing Co. The Torontonian beer comes in cute 500mL bottles. The beer is an elegant amber ale, almost exactly the same colour and clarity as the bottle it came out of. It pours with a healthy measure of tan suds.

 

Diamond Park has a malty, toasty nose that has a brown sugar subtext. The flavour packs loads of caramel and robust malt notes into its low-alcohol frame, along with a respectably bitter finish.

While mild ales seem to be de rigeur among beer nerds at the moment, I haven’t had many that really caught my interest. But DAMN! This one is a brilliant beer. This is likely the most flavourful session ale I have ever had, and it has a nicely rounded mouthfeel, too. A fantastic ale!

Rating: 9.5 out of 10.

Miami Weiss White Pale Ale

Roll up your blazer sleeves! I’m reviewing Miami Weiss White Pale Ale from Toronto and Great Lakes Brewery. According to the pitch on the can, the beer isn’t a weiss and they’ve never even been to Miami—rather, the name is “just something the guys in marketing came up with.” MW is a wheat beer, though, and at 4.5%, its a pretty sessionable one. And at 35 IBUs, it has some pale ale bitterness, too.

MV is sold in 473mL cans that feature lurid pink and turquoise colour scheme and a palm tree scene. It’s a hazy, pale gold beer that pours with a hefty fluff of white suds. It has a vivid nose rich in sweet, tropical fruit notes and a whiff of yeast. The wheat ale is plenty flavourful for a low alcohol number, with fruit up front and some citrus bitterness at the back end, but it also has a mellow, smooth wheat beer mouthfeel.

I liked MV quite a bit. I’m not always warm to wheat ales (unless they’re exquisite), but the pale ale hybrid nature of this little, low-booze buddy got me pretty close to where I wanted to be.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Evil Genius

Another entry from Skeleton Crew Brewing Company (brewed by Cameron’s Brewing in Oakville, Ontario) is Evil Genius, their 4.5% 34 IBU session IPA brewed with Crystal and Loral hops. The beer is handsome gold, with a thin layer of white head and an unfortunate concentration of tiny suspended chunks which give the appearance of an attempt at haze gone a bit askew.

Evil Genius has an agreeably juicy, slightly tangy aroma. The flavour is built on the same foundation, with citrus notes up from and a slightly perfumed bitterness in the back end.

 

My first thought on noticing the slight granularity in the beer is that it might be a bit old, but the absence of a date stamp on the can leaves that an open question. Additionally, I might have acquired a can from a flawed batch. Or it could be a brewing issue. Whatever the source, the version of Evil Genius that I cracked looked a bit off. However, it should be said that it had no impact on the flavour, which was perfectly pleasant, or on the mouthfeel, which was agreeably crisp.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

Wet Hop Cascader Invader

Perth, Ontario and the Perth Brewery are the sources of Wet Hop Cascader Invader, a session-friendly pale ale. According to the 473mL can, the brew is a collab with a local hop farm and it supports “our community foundation”—no details about the what and the how.

The brew itself is a 4.7% job. It has handsome dull gold colouring and pours with a lush nimbus of off-white head. To my nose, WHCI has a slightly sweet lemony note, balanced against malty biscuit. The taste follows the same blueprint, but writ large: the flavour is rich in sweet citrus and toasty malt. There is some fresh and floral bitterness that becomes evident at the back end.

Aside from the excellent packaging, what stood out most to me about this beer was a vibe of freshness—it has notes that are agrarian, damp, and enjoyable. The mouthfeel is a bit thin, but otherwise I liked it a lot. I gotta think that an Ontario beer built by wet hopping fresh hops likely has to be a seasonal offering, but I’m going to buy more of this stuff while I can and hope it comes back yearly.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Gravel Run Session IPA

From Blyth, Ontario’s Cowbell Brewing Co. comes Gravel Run Session IPA, a 4.5% 40 IBU brewski named, apparently, in honour of historic, rural drunk driving escapades.

The beer is a reddish gold number with a fluffy nimbus of white head. There is a mild but bright citrus scent, supported by a much more enthusiastic flavour. Notes of grapefruit give way to a bitter, floral finish.

Really quite flavourful for a beer that weighs in at less than 5% alcohol, Gravel Run is a fairly enjoyable option. The finish is a bit muddled, but the overall effect is none too shabby.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

Lucidity Session Ale

Purchased direct from the source, Tooth and Nail Brewing Company, in Ottawa, Ontario, Lucidity Session Ale is a 4.5% alcohol brew sold in plain 355mL cans.

Lucidity is a slightly cloudy golden ale that pours under a fluffy white head. It has a mild aroma that a slightly yeasty bent, initially, and then a gritty bitterness. The flavour follows a similar pattern, with a light saison-like yeast in the pole position and a sneaky but clean hops bitterness out back.

Low-alcohol with a slightly quirky pale ale flavour, Lucidity is a pretty nice brew. It’s a bit wanting at the back end, but an otherwise fine session ale.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Theoretikal Zero

A bit of an oddity in the hop-heavy world of craft beer collaborations, Theoretikal Zero is a double dry-hopped beer made with no hops in the boil. Brewed in Barrie, Ontario, TZ is a collab between Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery and L’Anjub out of Vinebre, Spain. The 4.8% session IPA is sold in 473mL cans. According to the copy, the beer has, at least in theory, 0 IBUs.

Whatever the IBU count, TZ is a beautiful looking beer: slightly hazy, orange-gold, and topped with a fluffy bright white foam. It has a juiced, perfumed, and slightly floral aroma, and a flavour rich in peach and tangerine notes up front and a light dose of citrus bitterness. The mouthfeel is light and breezy, though it is a bit more thin and less crisp than I’d have wished.

An interesting concept with a flavourful result, Theoretikal Zero is an enjoyable brew. Too thin and insufficiently crisp, but otherwise really well executed, I’d buy this stuff again for sure.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Calypso IPA

Billed as a “west coast session IPA”, Calypso IPA is a 4.8%, 42 IBU brew from Perth, Ontario’s Perth Brewery. The beer comes in busy 473mL cans. It’s a slightly hazy pale golden ale, packed with carbonation, and covered up with white suds.

Calypso has a nose both juicy and floral. It has tropical fruit sweetness and clover notes in the flavour, giving way to a slightly resinous hops finish.

Overall, the beer was pretty standard, but it was the slight clover lilt that lent Calypso a little intrigue.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Foeder Fermented Grisette

Foeder Fermented Grisette is a low-alcohol Franco-Belgian style brew crafted by the team at Toronto’s Bellwoods Brewery. The beer, sold in 500mL bottles, clocks in at just 4%. It’s a sunny yellow potion with a hazy complexion and a thin layer of white head.

Bellwoods’ take on the grisette style has an earthy, yeasty aroma. Its flavour is extremely mild, primarily driven by funky yeast and supplemented by a floral note. The mouthfeel is effervescent and dry, but also quite brittle.

The Foeder Fermented Grisette is a crisp, refreshing take on the style. The flavour is nice, but I found it too delicate for my tastes.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

Session Seven

Brewed to showcase the Idaho 7 hop, Session Seven is a low-alcohol I.P.A. brewed by Side Launch Brewing Company out of Collingwood, Ontario. A 4.6% alcohol ale, S7 comes in 473mL cans. It’s a bright and clear golden beer that pours with a sudsy white head and a whole lot of lively carbonation.

S7 has a subtle, juicy aroma, with fruit notes both citrus and tropical. The flavour kicks off with papaya and a hint of melon, before transitioning into a slightly dry, modestly hoppy finish.

S7 is the kind of beer that I reach for when I’m craving a session friendly ale—it’s flavourful, decently hoppy, and fairly close to the five per cent threshold. All in all, a pretty decent little session I.P.A. out of ski resort country.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Allagash Hoppy Table Beer

Allagash Hoppy Table Beer is a funky looking potion. It’s a hazy golden brew that pours under a white head and with a yeasty presence that drops through the poured beer like a lava lamp. Brewed in Portland, Maine, by the Allagash Brewing Company, this 4.8% Belgian-style ale comes in 12oz bottles.

AHTB has a spicy, yeast-heavy aroma. For flavour, there is a load of Belgian-inspired elements led by wild yeast and tangy funk. Where the beer really sorta breaks down is at the finish, which is brief but which yields little of the eponymous hoppiness that I was hoping for.

A nice take on the table beer with some quality effervescence and some yeasty resolve. However, the promised hoppiness was in too limited supply, which left me underwhelmed.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

8 Days a Week Single Hop Session IPA (Ekuanot)

The Ekuanot edition of Bandit Brewery’s 8 Days a Week Single Hop Session IPA is a low-alcohol number, at just 3.9%.  Sold in 500mL bottles, the beer proved to be a swampy gold colour with a loose white head. I know by now that Bandit has great labels, but this one might be my new fave.

The brew has a tangy fruit scent with a slight floral kicker. The flavour is similarly situated, if a bit understated (not surprising, given the sub-4 percentage), but it still had some tropical tang.

A nicely-constructed low-octane ale, the Ekuanot edition of 8 Days has some character and style. Truly sessionable and quite pleasant. A more generous hopping would have been nice, though.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Clear Lake Session Ale

From the Clear Lake Brewing Co., in Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, comes Clear Lake Session Ale. A crystal clear, 4.8% alcohol beer, CLSA comes in 473mL cans and pours with a vibrant but very short-lived white head.

CLSA has a sweet aroma that is based around cereals and corn, with just a flicker of hops at the tail end. The beer is fairly crisp, though it is a touch too sweet to make it particularly session-friendly—at least for me. The flavour is grain and corn-driven, with a faint bitterness to close the door.

CLSA has a distinctly “macro” feel to it—it tastes like any number of golden ales that I’ve tried, with little to set it apart. I quaffed my can during a grilling session, and it made an adequate companion to that endeavour, though in truth, it didn’t add a whole lot. In my opinion, this beer was ordinary. Add to that a too-sweet complexion, and it’s not a beer I’m keen to revisit.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

Moonless Night

Moonless Night is an oatmeal stout from Toronto’s Eastbound Brewing Co. Wildly sessionable at just 4.4% alcohol, the beer comes in 355mL cans. It’s a black ale infused with amber highlights, and it pours with a nice covering of light tan head.

For a low-alcohol stout, Moonless Night has a remarkably solid aroma. It has smooth scent that features chocolate, coffee, and roasted malt notes. The flavour is a little less pronounced, though it does have some nice notes of latte, and builds to a fairly bitter crescendo. Mostly, though, the highlight of moonless night is its smooth mouthfeel.

Flavourful and sessionable aren’t beer adjectives that often intersect. Moonless Night is an example, though the beer is rich enough that you might not want to have more than one in a session despite the low percentage. The bitterness at the finish adds a nice element of balance, though the beer is still a bit too sweet.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.

Electric Mud: Major Small Best Bitter

Major Small Best Bitter is a 4.6% alcohol, 30 IBU English-style ale from Toronto’s Muddy York Brewing Co. I had a 12oz pour of the hazy orange grog at the brewery. Through its thin eggshell head, M.S. had an earthy, malt nose, with some coppery elements. It had a slightly metallic flavour with brown sugar, toasty malt, and some English-style bitterness.

Toasty and tasty, Major Small is an agreeable low-alcohol ale with surprisingly big flavour. The mouthfeel is a wee bit thin, but the beer tastes both nice and well-made.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Hopped & Confused Session Ale

Sold in 473mL cans that feature salmon, a Canada goose, a bear, and a beaver in a canoe, Hopped & Confused Session Ale has to be in the running for the most stereotypically Canadian packaging of all time. It’s a 4.7% ale from Toronto’s Mill Street Brewery. Cloudy and pale, this brew is orange-gold and pours with a sudsy white head. The copy on the can is almost inscrutable, declaring “This beer is really hoppy but not bitter. It is an ale and a lager. ... It is a sessionable version of a non-sessionable style. ...” and some more stuff. We’ll see.

The beer has a succulent, yet saccharine nose, with juicy fruit notes. The flavour is similarly constructed, with pleasant tangerine notes supplemented with a subtly flowery note. H&C is hoppy, but, as billed, it isn’t particularly bitter—at least not as bitter as I expected it to be. I don’t know where they get that nonsense about it being “an ale and a lager”, because it clearly tastes like an ale”, but it does taste pretty good.

The only element that would prohibit me from buying this beer on the semi-regular is its sweetness—it the beer were a little less juicy/syrupy. I’ll maybe buy it again, but despite its “session” nature, I feel unlikely to reach for a second can.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Brews From the Six: Pale Ale

During my first visit to The Six Brewing Co., the beer that was recommended the most effusively was their pale ale, so that’s where I decided to start my reviews. So new it lacked a name and a label, the pale ale came in an unadorned 500mL (?) bottle with a tag that indicated an alcohol percentage of just 4.7, putting it in the session category for me. Given the light percentage, the beer was darker than I’d have expected, with a slightly hazy amber-gold hue and a standard off-white head.

To my sniffer, this li’l pale ale had a light, tropical fruit nose, backed with some slightly resinous hops. The flavour echoed those elements, though the murky, resinous quality was amplified and the tropical notes took more of a back seat. The mouthfeel was agreeably crisp, but it should be noted that it was a bit brittle—I was hoping for a fuller texture, particularly in the front end, which I found to be thin.

Folks, my first brush with a brew from The Six was a big net win. Given their somewhat unambitious early roster of standard brews, I was worried that the beer would be equally plain, but I must say, I found their pale ale to be a fairly assertive and enjoyable number. Given the proximity of this brewery to my home, I imagine that I’ll be downing a lot of this as-yet-unnamed pale ale in the months/years to come.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Bent Spoke Sessionable IPA

Hanover, Ontario is the source of Bent Spoke Sessionable IPA. At 3.9% alcohol, this brew, from MacLean’s Ales, is a clean and clear ale with lots of carbonation and a thick, white head. It’s counted in MacLean’s’ Low Gear Session Series. It comes in 473mL cans.

Given the low alcohol content, Bent Spoke has a pretty jumbo aroma, rich in tart grapefruit and dry hops notes. Crisp, yet flavourful, BS has a perfume-heavy flavour, with some citrus notes and a pretty decent level of bitterness and a brittily dry finish.

For a low alcohol beer, this Session IPA is a remarkably flavourful offering. The taste is less robust than I’d seek out for a typical session IPA, but it really is potent for the strength. This light ale is wildly crushable, but still tastes bigger than it ought to. MacLean’s Ales has been quietly putting out some underrated beers over the last few years, and Broken Spoke is no exception. It’s unassuming, but punches above its weight.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.

Nightwatcher Oatmeal Stout

Cooking up a mess of homefries for a Sunday brunch for me and the Bitter Wife, I found myself with a serious craving for a dark ale. Fortunately, I had a 473mL can of Nightwatcher Oatmeal Stout chilled and ready to go. A relatively light brew at just 4.4% and 25 IBUs, under its fluffy eggshell head, Nightwatcher was uncommonly light-hued for a stout, with a clear, rusty caramel colour. The beer came from the Lake of Bays Brewing Co. in Baysville, Ontario.

Nightwatcher had an aroma that was both grainy and slightly metallic. The flavour had fewer rough edges, with a thin, but nicely balanced, combo of grains and mocha. The mouthfeel was compellingly smooth, but with just enough of a hop flare at the back end to keep it honest.

For all of the good, this beer did have one major drawback—it was way too thin for a stout, especially for an oatmeal stout. I really wanted it to have a bit more body. Still, a pretty nice effort from one of Ontario’s less talked about breweries. Nightwatcher is a beer I’ll certainly buy again from time to time.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.