National Six-Pack X: Sgt. Major’s IPA, Scotch Irish, Ontario

sgtmaj

Finally the wee truck from Fitzroy Harbour up on the Ottawa River near Arnprior made its way down to Kingston giving us a taste of this excellent local ale. This is a hoppy that reminds me a lot of my recollection of the Dragon’s Breath Ale contract brewed and bottled by the old Hart Brewery of Carleton place about (without looking) 35 miles south of Fitzroy Harbour. Candy cane Goldings and grapefruity Chinook hops combine to provide quite a bit of a sour tang to this fairly lightly bodied clean ale. The finish is a nice combination of the slight rough edge of the hops and the light graininess of the pale ale.

The brewery has a pretty good web presence which provides the names of bars where you can buy a pint of tap. It also describes the Sgt. Major IPA as follows:

Our Sgt. Major’s IPA is our most intense ale to date. It’s a massively hoppy and quite bitter beer, yet one with a nice, full-bodied malt background. It weighs in at 5.5 percent Alcohol (balanced by its big body). It is hopped with lots of Chinook hops which impart a tasty white-grapefruit/spice/resin flavour and aroma (and a total of 68 IBU) making the ale wonderfully refreshing. Being at the low end of the alcohol range for the style, it’s as close to a supping pint as tradition allows. While the Sgt. Major’s rather considerable bitterness is nicely balanced by its full-bodied maltiness, this is overall a predominantly hoppy ale. The full body of our India Pale Ale comes from lots of English pale ale malt and crystal malt, with a very small amount of chocolate malt. Our all-natural draught ale uses no artificial additives or preservatives.

I don’t know if that means the bottled version does have artificial additives and preservatives. I would also think that the full-bodied characterization is pushing it a bit in a world where a drive as far south as this is north will get me a Middle Ages Wailing Wench or Druid Fluid. It is, for example, lighter but hopper than Propeller’s ESB from Halifax, one of the nicer bodied ales in Canada, but according to the standard scheme of bitters and pale ales a grade below an IPA. But this all is not to distract from the ale, just the adjectives. Like Mill Street Tankhouse Ale, the lighter mouthfeel I think reflects the apparent or possibly emerging Canadian style of pale ale, as opposed to my suggested putative style sweeter fuller Canadian amber but less hoppy. Both are a degree or two off the standard for an American pale ale or its amber sibling and different again from English ones.

Nevertheless, this is very good beer and a worthy addition to quest for the National Six-Pack. The quality of the craftsmanship makes me think a wee trip to the Manx in Ottawa is in order to try out the brewer’s draught only Session Ale, a rare ordinary bitter which – if true to style – should not hit 3.5% and ought to be as refreshingly quaffable as a good dark mild.

Spaceship House

Not that far from rocket house is spaceship house…or sombrero house…or mushroom house:

They are in the same neighbourhood – maybe it was oneupsmanship circa 1898:

Her: The Smiths are building a rocket designed in the Turkish style into their house, Jim. What are we going to do? What are we going to doooooooooooooo!?!
Him: Don’t worry, honey…your turret will look like a paella dish piled high with the most famous dinner of our homeland…with a sombrero on top…maybe.

However, we must ask from their future – what price pride?

New York: 46’er Pale Ale, Lake Placid Craft Brewing, Plattsburg

I bought at six of this  in Hannaford’s grocery store in Watertown, New York for $7.99. Customsman let it go. Declared but he no cared. It would be sweeter for that bonus but could it be? I really like this brew. Medium body. Lots of green hops almost to the point there is a green pea, mint and orange peel thing happening. Under that some crystal malt sweet and nice grainy pale malt. Some pear juice among the grain in the finish. Quality from the north country and just over the border. More as I think about it. Top cap design.

The next day: Lake Placid Craft Bewing is not in Lake Placid though it used to be. The brewery explains:

Founded in 1996, The Lake Placid Pub & Brewery began as a small brewpub, brewing less than 400 barrels each year for sale on site. Our great-tasting, fresh beer quickly grew in popularity and requests for our products poured in from area restaurant and bar owners. Production increased exponentially to keep up with demand, and we sold every last drop of beer we produced. In November 2001, the LPP&B; expanded to a second brewing facility in Plattsburgh, New York, known as The Lake Placid Craft Brewing Company, quadrupling our brewing capacity and adding bottles to our product lineup.

That is a success of scale and smart growth – and when it is on the Hannaford’s in Watertown shelf 200 miles west as well as on tap at the Blue Tusk (look far right) 350 miles south west, Lake Placid is making a mark for itself. They are smart, too, in keeping it to two bottlings this pale ale and the heavier, maltier Ubu ale which I brought back way back last spring. Just so you know, the pale ale comes in at 6% with the Ubu at 7%. My man Lew Bryson tells me they have a milk stout on tap at the brew pub as well as an even hoppier Frostbite Pale Ale. He also says:

A “46’er” is someone who’s climbed all forty-six “high peaks” of the Adirondacks..

I really do not understand the experience of the lower end of the beer advocate scale. Maybe they all had shelf stung bottles. Mine are definately fresh and displaying nothing other than loveliness. I would like to do a side by side with some Southern Tier IPA, maybe a Ithaca Flower Power and even a Syracuse Pale Ale to get some sense of the Lake Erie, Finger Lakes to Lake Champlain brewing arcing axis and what it all means.

Libel Shopping

Here is another cheery story to warm the hearts of those who hear that 1960’s Coca-cola ad about teaching the world to sing when they turn on the internet in the morning [from The Star]:

Relying on a long list of legal precedents, the Post’s lawyers brought a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds the case had no “real or substantial connection” to Ontario. Bangoura had little or no reputation in Ontario because he did not live here when the stories were published and the reporters who worked on the story were based in the U.S., Kenya and Ivory Coast. If Bangoura’s lawsuit were allowed to proceed simply because the stories had been accessible in Ontario through the Internet, it would mean that publishers worldwide would face the prospect of being dragged into other countries’ courts for libel, no matter how remote their connection to the country might be, the [Washington] Post argued. That would encourage “forum shopping” by libel plaintiffs and have a devastating impact on freedom of expression, the newspaper argued. Its lawyers, however, were not able to persuade Superior Court Justice Romain Pitt, who called the Post a major international newspaper “spoken of in the same breath as The New York Times and London Tel(e)graph,” [Ed.: really, brother, missing that “e”] whose writers influence viewpoints throughout the English-speaking world. The Post should have foreseen fallout from the stories would have followed Bangoura wherever he lived, Pitt said in a decision last year, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial. The Post appealed.

So you see how that works. The Washington Post is available world wide via the internet and access to the on-line version paper that embarrasses in the legal sense is enough to land that web site’s owner a court case anywhere anyone can read it as opposed to where it is published. The prospect of being libelled in the most libel-finding-friendly jurisdiction or the most libel-damages-friendly jusrisdiction arises. But then why not? Should it be where the most part of the experience of the offence occurs? Should it not be where the person offended lives? If this principle is established, it won’t be limited to on-line newspapers, either.

It all reminds me of the glorious days of first year law school contracts class and the rapt fascination we all had encountering the telex case and the question of where the contract existed for substantive and procedural jurisdiction. I can still recall the sound of that fly buzzing in the florescent lights above the 41 daydreaming heads…

Five Things

I usually do not like “memes” or viral bloggy games and tests that never cumulate or provide us with sound statistical charts but I am too lazy to stick by my usual paper standards this morning. Why? Nils has a good post following on one of these themey-thingies called 5 Things I’ve Done That You Probably Haven’t. Nils are pretty good – except that he is in the entertainment industry and a former radiohead so all his access to celebrities are cheat-a-ramas of the umpteenth degree. And frankly, Nils, anyone who has tried and failed to waterski has waterskied upside-down if only for a moment.

So what have I done? My mind is drawn to celebrity and thinks I ought to go without reference to current work related things:

  • I spoke with Tony Randall in passing (who hasn’t);
  • I taught Billy Bragg to play bar room shuffleboard (rehash, yawn);
  • I invented the term “vitamin K” for Keiths ale (and I am sticking by that one);
  • and…and…good lord…I really am dull…

See, this is why I am no good at these things. I think of things like “I didn’t really like the pie at Helen’s of Michias but really enjoyed the view and the staff’s pleasant attitude” or “I was very happy when me and my grannie-in-law did shooters the night the Jays won the World Series”. So, if you know me, please tell me what I did that makes me as cool as Nils. Hmmm. I did participate in the invention of the one-afternoon game called “bumball” where five-a-side boot a soccer ball high in the air towards the other team and one of them has to trap the ball only with their arse without falling at which time the entire group shouts “BUMBAAAALLLL” as loudly as they can. It was undergrad and it was just before, during or after happy hour…I think.

Bonus comment worth saving:

portland –

this is so much showing off. it’s a matter of time until we get to the most unusal places we’ve had sex. it’s only a matter of time until this blog becomes some sad facimile of the newlywed game if nils keeps name dropping and you tell that tired old billy bragg story one more time in your life. y’all get over yourselves. and, by the way when i met jane siberry, i said “holy fuck, you’re jane siberry!”, the same thing i said to stompin tom, only it was “holy fuck you’re stompin tom!” you see how silly this is? you see what you made me all do. this is madness. let’s move on.

Referral Spam Break

Just like that. It stopped at 3:57 pm today. It’s like a three-day storm breaking and the house getting quiet. I can actually see real referrals now like this one linking to my posting about the Canadian courts getting the point about anti-Roma hate crime. That referring site has my favorite Gen X at 40 related comment so far:

Big thank you to Fabrizio for the link!

I’d like to thank all the Fabrizios. Except those in the referral spam industry. It is an industry, right?

Not much later: back on at 7:19 pm. Dernnnnit.

Five Things

I usually do not like “memes” or viral bloggy games and tests that never cumulate or provide us with sound statistical charts but I am too lazy to stick by my usual paper standards this morning. Why? Nils has a good post following on one of these themey-thingies called 5 Things I’ve Done That You Probably Haven’t. Nils are pretty good – except that he is in the entertainment industry and a former radiohead so all his access to celebrities are cheat-a-ramas of the umpteenth degree. And frankly, Nils, anyone who has tried and failed to waterski has waterskied upside-down if only for a moment.

So what have I done? My mind is drawn to celebrity and thinks I ought to go without reference to current work related things:

  • I spoke with Tony Randall in passing (who hasn’t);
  • I taught Billy Bragg to play bar room shuffleboard (rehash, yawn);
  • I invented the term “vitamin K” for Keiths ale (and I am sticking by that one);
  • and…and…good lord…I really am dull…

See, this is why I am no good at these things. I think of things like “I didn’t really like the pie at Helen’s of Michias but really enjoyed the view and the staff’s pleasant attitude” or “I was very happy when me and my grannie-in-law did shooters the night the Jays won the World Series”. So, if you know me, please tell me what I did that makes me as cool as Nils. Hmmm. I did participate in the invention of the one-afternoon game called “bumball” where five-a-side boot a soccer ball high in the air towards the other team and one of them has to trap the ball only with their arse without falling at which time the entire group shouts “BUMBAAAALLLL” as loudly as they can. It was undergrad and it was just before, during or after happy hour…I think.

The Blue Tusk, Syracuse, New York

The last of what Lew Bryson has called “the triumvirate” of Syracuse’s temples to ale, the Blue Tusk, was my favorite for the mood of the day. Much Middle Ages on tap as well as Stone and Victory and even Blue Lite for who knows why. Loud and chatty, we walked in and immediately got into a two and a half hour conversation about Canadian and American differences with a couple of chemical engineers who were regulars. SU had just won a basketball game at the Dome and the place and the streets were loaded with fully grown men dressed in orange. The staff were happy to please and, though busy, a pleasure. One thing I liked is that the place smelled like beer. Not fried food and not smoke.

 

 

 

 

The real surprise of the night was the Syracuse Pale Ale on tap, a revelation of simplicity and quality over complexity and gimmick. If I had one beef it was the understocking of lower alcohol styles. There are some great milds and ordinary bitters out there and, unless you are aiming at getting plastered, a session of 8% to 10% beers is a bit much. Even with that being said, as with Clark’s, the Blue Tusk is all about the quality and handling of real ale but with the hubbub that you sometimes want with your brew.