If Canada has a hub of microbrewing, a very good argument could be made that it is in the cluster of smaller cities around Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph about an hour west of Toronto. Off the top of my head I can think of seven or eight breweries in the area. Maybe there are more but however many there are the newest is Grand River Brewing in Cambridge's old Galt district.

We stopped in on a two day weekend zip across the Province and were very happy we did. Although they have not been open long, they already have ten draught accounts including some with the finer beer bars of Toronto - and apparently a brisk trade in growlers if our short time at the place was any indication. The brewery is housed in an old knife factory, a long and narrow building lit by sunlight. Even on the largely grey day when we were there, there was plenty to see in the large reception hall and the adjoining brewing rooms and plenty to sample, too.

I heard about Grand River from the discussion on The Bar Towel, like this thread discussing Grand River's Mill Race Mild. Hearing there was a mild out there to be had was reason enough to stop to check it out given all the interest in session beers as well as my own home brewing interest in milds. But when I got there I found out from one of the owners, Bob Hanenberg, that all of their four beers are under 4.7% and that these sorts of beers was to be their focus. We tried them all and, honestly, all were among the best Canadian micros I have ever tried. Even with the area's natural hard water, the two lagers and two ales were all rich and more-ish with the mild being the favorite. At 3.5%, it had plenty of grainy and nutty texture and, frankly, it was as big in body than most micros made in Ontario of any style. I took away a number of 15.75 CND (including 5 buck deposit so a good deal) growlers of the mild as well as their rich and hoppy Plowman's ale, a green hoppy pale ale that was also nicely rich.

I will give a more detailed review of the two brews that I brought home soon but suffice it to say that this is a brewery that is trying and achieving something new - lower alcohol, full flavoured beers with no compromise. Go find them.

Gueuze. A blend of young and old lambics. I've had some - a couple of sweetened ones from St. Louise and Mort Subite and Lindeman's drier Gueuze Cuvée René. All very pleasant but these two are perhaps on the more...errr...hostile side of dry. But I am here to learn so bear with me.

Before we get there, what does gueuze mean? I've been asking around a bit lately. Lew was stumped...and just a tiny bit sweary Mary: "Damn, no, never knew about that. I REALLY need to read some Dutch history. I keep reading around the edges of it. Thanks for the prod in that direction." Prof. Unger of UBC of the great books on medieval beer gave me his guess when I noted the naming of a group of 16th century Dutch rebels, the watergeuzen:

...Geuze = "beggar" is a French word that only appeared in the mid 15th century and was taken over into Dutch [Flemish] in the 16th and connected, as you say, with nobles who rebelled against the crown in 1566. There was a middle French word geus which meant throat and so came to mean hungry and my guess is that the beer type comes from that meaning. Also though I will not swear to it I think geuze is a beer type of the South, that is the southern Netherlands and which does not turn up in the Dutch Republic where, if the name were connected to the watergeuzen you would expect it to be used. I could be wrong but that is my best guess at the moment.

These beers are very similar. Cantillon's Classic Gueuze is a 2006 bottling of blended 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics (and apparently a relabelling of their Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic-Bio, an Organic Gueuze) while Hanssens Oude Gueuze (the "oude" being explained on the brewer's site that features no way to link to the actual page within the site) states on its label that it is matured for over three years in the bottle. There is more of a head with the Hanssens as I think you can see from the photo to the left with a coating white froth and rim jumping up from the slightest swirl over the amber straw ale while the addition of an ounce of the Cantillon to the wine glass quickly dissipates to a fine thin white rim over more lemon tinged straw ale.

Each give off a tart brightness when subjected to brief nosal inquiry, the Hanssens having a bit richer aroma. In the mouth, there is a clear distinction with the Hanssens being not just vinegary but also somewhat creamy with an unsweetened grapefruit white thing - slight vanilla and tiny note of lime in the middle of a sea of unsweetened white grapefruit juice. The Cantillon is a little thinner with maybe pear, citrus pith and grass under the sour white grapefruit tartosity. BAers like the Cantillon a lot and the Hanssens a tiny bit more. Both lack the barnyard funk that I found so especially pungent and a wee bit foul with Cantillon's Bruocsella 1990 Grand Cru the reaction to which was one trigger for these sour beer studies of mine.

I paid Cantillon 7.50 USD for the 375 ml Cantillon while the Hanssens was 4.99 USD. As a result, if you are going for just one of these to try a first dry gueuze, pick up the Hanssens even though the Cantillon is probably a tiny bit less tart. Someday I will sprinkle one of these on my french fries. And bit steamed or even coconut shrimp. The big question is still "do I like these beers?" When I was a teen, I played soccer for the high school team. After daily practice, I drank a litre of white grapefruit to cut the sweat and on a hot humid day these two tart ales reminded me of that. But I still want to try them on fries. Is that so wrong?

More sour beer studies here.

Finally, the last of my six beers from Bell's of Michigan. The brewery calls it an American wheat ale but it pours deeply cloudy amber ale under a thin white foam and rim with a whacking great big glob of yeast left in the bottom of the bottle. Not like any American wheat I've seen lately. Drying but sub-astringent lime-ish hops right down the middle of the palate wrapped in cream of wheatish grain. There is some fruitiness - tinges of apricot and lemon rind - plus late summer grass. Spiced cream yeast - all spice as much as anything. The four percent at the low end of BA love appear to be all scared of yeast.

This is why it is so great to have the LCBO in my life - they use science. It actually came up in the Globe and Mail today in relation to some recent wine forgeries:

The quality assurance process undertaken for every single alcoholic beverage sold by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the largest single buyer of alcoholic beverages in the world, reads like a crime scene investigation checklist. Professional tasters ensure that the wine being sold has the appearance and aroma and taste of the varietal and region from which the maker claims it originates. Then the wine undergoes a battery of chemical analyses that search for things such as pesticides and metal content. Lastly, the labels and bar codes are inspected to ensure they are not forgeries. "If somebody is trying to pass off plonk as a top-end wine, I have every confidence that our sensory evaluation panels would pick it out," said Leonard Franssen, manager of quality services for the LCBO's quality assurance department.

Anyway, maybe the brewer botched the label and the website...and the style and the LCBO scientists are right. Let's go with that and open the beer by flipping of the slightly crusty cap of a well-aged LCBO import. Orange amber ale under thin whispy white foam and rim. On the nose, bready raisin sweet malt. Drinking, I note a very light ale buttressed by a nod to diacetyl, a cunning use of sharp weedy green hops and some light crystal malt keeping it from thinness. All I can think is whether it's 3.7 or 4.4%...it's maddening. Frankly, it's more like 3.7% to me but I am no scientist. No one is. Except them.

3.50 CND for 500 ml at the Ontario Science Centre LCBO.

Good reading today in the Toronto Star's regular beer column by Josh Rubin. It is an honest description of Toronto's Festival of Beer, held last weekend, which makes one wonder why the event is held at all:

Whether it's the long lineups for admission and sample tokens, the drunken frat boys or the fact there isn't much shelter from extreme weather, Toronto's Festival of Beer has a few problems.

Most – like the half-hour token lineups at the 12th annual festival at Fort York last weekend – were just annoying. One problem, however, was bigger. Though the festival boasted more than 200 beers, you could count on one hand the beers that weren't otherwise available at the Beer Store or LCBO.

For anyone trying to sample something they wouldn't otherwise have access to, it was a weekend-long exercise in futility.

Spending an idle holiday Monday as any sensible person would, I was reading Stonch's beer blog and saw his post about playing pub skittles. He's included a short and sensible video explanation. Pub skittles is a old pub game that depends on a small ball hanging by a line from a stick and a swinging action with which the ball is sent into nine pins. The whole set up can sit on a table three foot by three foot square.

That is a good game. But the game I generally want to try is not pub skittle. That game is London Skittles. London Skittles is like pub skittles that has met Alice in Wonderland after drinking the drink that makes things ten times bigger. I mentioned it in the first Pub Games Project post and even got an invite to play the game from one of the guys who plays it at the one English pub still playing it. Given that I live an ocean away, even though it is described in the excellent Pub Games Of England by Timothy Finn, the best I have been able to come up with is the video below from a UK TV show with a demonstration of the game:

One of a number of siblings to the previously reviewed Insanity, the brewer tells us that Prophecy is their tripel, Merry Monk's Ale, aged in bourbon barrel. I liked Merry Monk's ale is Weyerbacher that I tried in a group in early 2006 along with a bunch of their other brews - but I liked their Quad the best...and I appear now have a bottle of that in the oaked version in the stash under the name Blasphemy. Maybe this will end up a double review...except that those two 22 oz bottles equal about eight standard beers. Maybe not.

The beer pours the deep straw of colour of vintage champagne even if a slight bit, but only a bit, less effervescent. A fine white merenge head maintained by all those bubbles. Candy, apple juice and heat on the nose while in the mouth, this is definitely a triple - with a stone hardness to the ale as well as plenty of petrol that reminds me of dry riesling. What does the oak do? Well, there is some tempering of the white pepper sharpness, definitely a whiskey earthiness and some vanilla. But does it also takes away some of the quieter flavours, too. I did note whiskey in 2006 in the unoaked version but I also noted peach. The vanilla really replaces or covers that up. Has the wood, by mellowing, also made it a little less complex? Has it made the petrol stand out too much? I would only know by doing a side by side.

The BAers give this one a harder time than they give Merry Monk - 14% thumbs down compared to 12%. For me, the white pepper burn plus gasoline is likeable but it clearly could justify that degree of dissatisfaction.