Stouts: John By Imperial Stout, Scotch Irish Brewing, Ontario

jbis1This is a great new stout from the Scotch Irish Brewing branch of Heritage, the eastern Ontario makers of a very good IPA and a solid, if only seasonal, porter. There is much talk about this one over at the Bar Towel, the province’s beer fan forum, with a little discussion of whether a 6.7% beer can be called an Imperial stout.

Does it matter? Not really. The labels and gradations of beer are as fluid as what is in the glass and what is in this glass is a full bore stout with plenty of the hallmarks of the style. The brew is deep and dark with a narrow brown edge showing when held up against the light. The tan head fades to a thin rim. In the mouth there is a mass of Dutch salty licorice over dark chocolate with some toast and prune treacle, if such a thing exists, underneath. It is all infused with the minty hop that opens up in the finish.

I think this is an excellent example how big need not mean skull-splittingly strong and that Imperial stout can mean grand and not just alcohol ridden. Seven BAers give firm support.

Beer At Yule: La Moneuse SWA, Brasserie De Blaugies, Belgium

We’ve had a look at a few beers from Brasserie de Blaugies: Darbyste , a fresh figgy saison (that I was calling a lambic for some reason); Saison d’Epeautre spelt saison; and La Moneuse, their rustic straight up saison. This is the final of the brewer’s four brews to try. It’s an upgrade of La Moneause, their 8% special winter ale or SWA from the 2004 bottling that I have held in the now very attractive stash from last winter to this one.

After the cage was removed, the cork barely needed a touch to pop out of the mouth. The beer pours a slightly clouded amber butterscotch with a fine thick rich off-white head. Fabulous in the mouth, a great pale ale starting out with a light pear-lemon sour tang followed by honey apple juiciness morphing into pale malt bread crust grain subsiding into a hint of white pepper and pear at the end of the end. There is a hint of nutmeg in the yeast but the whole thing is pretty restrained and keep in balance.

Plenty of BAer love. A really wonderful saison that you should hoard and keep to yourself.

The Friday Bullet Points Of Christmas

Here we are. Another Christmas is upon us and the worst Friday for the idle clock watcher. What to not do when there may not be much to actually do? Eat candy canes in the morning, feel ill and ridden with guilt in the afternoon.

  • Sad Tech Update: Twitter as best bloggy app thingie of the year? Worth having the italicized statement that it “matters“?? While it is sweet to read that some people believe that some others don’t “get it” when, in fact, something just sucks and/or sucks time, how it is possible to think that something as useless (if usable) Twitter “matters”? Love matters. Health matters. Twitter is a place on the web for people who cannot sustain sufficient attention to write, comment upon or even read a blog. The content-driven internet without the obligation of substance. Warning: thought-fraud is afoot. Look out for consultants. Observation: Snood was the last great addition to the world of computing.
  • Update: David updates his post on Catholic rights and I respond sorta thusly with less than success technically speaking so I repeat myself:

    As much as to make sure I comment here as anything, Catholic rights seems a very odd concept to me but, as you will say, it is there plain as plain can be and most likely it is the lack of relation to me that makes me scratch my head. These rights are like PEI being a province, a fact of positive law making it so regardless of the need. But unlike PEI, Catholic rights now seem unbalanced as they are not balancing against their former nemisis – Victorian era Protestant power. Left to its devices, PEI would become Anticosti – but would Rome in Canada fall so easily? In the secularized Canada, is it not the faithful against the materialist shallow Hitchenites as much as the violent puritanical terrorist hijackers whether of Oklahoma City or 9/11? But could there be general Christian rights to state funding, to acceptance as a minority? If not, can Catholic rights (surely now a sub-set homogenous within the whole of the shrinking Canadian patch of Christendom) be anything other than a historic quirk locked into our Constitution? This is not to be anti-Catholic so much as contemporaneously contextual, something admittedly the constitution and perhaps the Church cares little for.

  • Speaking of the workplace, is boredom the natural outcome of the technological miracle of the last 40 years? Not only have we not received out jetpacks, we have not entered into that leisure society that was promised as someone has to answer the phone – or at least record their voice mail message – every single day.
  • Are they morphing into one? Pete Roger Rose-Clemens? Is Schilling that nutty?
  • From meany-pants to Mr. Drip. Please oh please can we be given an effective Federal opposition communications campaign under the tree this year?
  • Wow – doing the right thing actually is a heck of a lot less painful than doing the wrong thing.
  • Rejoice! Now there is more Europe for neocons to crap on. The most successful economic and social experiment since WWII is taking in the poor and making them kings. What will this mean for the dirt poor guy on the bus in Poland who looked at me like I was from outer space when I was there in 1991 teaching in a small Baltic city, when bootlegged western shampoo that smelled like a flower instead of industrial effluent was just showing up in the market?

That’s it for now. Someone has to get to work to wait for the Yule buffet to begin.

Nuclear Politics In Ottawa II

Update of Hilarious Consequence: haha-ahahaha-haha-(cough)-hahah-(cough, gasp, cough)-haha-(falls on floor, cough, wheeze)-haha-ha-ha…ha…

This is getting weirder. Apparently the loyal Harper-appointee who was not so well experienced quit so was used by other loyal-Harperites when the failings of Liberal-appointees were not, you know, sufficiently fail-y. And how do the Harper-ites use their own? Blame him!

Michael Burns told The Globe and Mail he submitted his resignation as chair of the Crown corporation on Nov. 29, before the medical isotope crisis stemming from the Chalk River shutdown became public. His departure was announced last Friday with no explanation, but was soon linked by a key cabinet minister to the Chalk River situation. “I was quite taken aback two weeks later when I heard my resignation had been accepted by the Prime Minister in the midst of the crisis,” Mr. Burns said.

Health Minister Tony Clement has since connected leadership changes at AECL, including the replacement of Mr. Burns, a Vancouver energy executive and onetime Tory fundraiser, as well as the appointment of a new CEO, with the need to give the organization better management. “Well, maybe they do [need better management],” Mr. Burns shot back. “But this is a clumsy piece of political opportunism. If they’re going to do it, they could do it with a little more skill.”

I am sure our rural overlords understand why this is someone else’s fault. That’s what makes having overlords so great.

Porter Season: Raspberry Porter, Southern Tier, NY, USA

All things have to come to an end and the season of porter is no different. The deep freeze has come here at the east end of Lake Ontario and autumns turning leave and harvest are long gone. Tripels, Christmas ales, imperial stouts and barley wine will be everything until the snow banks begin to recede under the stronger sun ten weeks or so from now.

Southern Tier’s raspberry porter is one of the best fruited beers I’ve had. A strong true and jammy thick raspberry scent pops out from under the cap, the same taste melding with the cocoa roasty malts, soft water and cream yeast in the mouth. A cheesecake of a beer without being phony or overly sweet. The quality confirms again my ever growing suspicions about this brewer. Too many BAers fear small berries.

Craft Or Kraphtt: Sam Adams Scotch Ale, Boston Beer, Mass

Stan was rightly giving me grief the other day or at least a lesson in life when I spoke of the Sam Adams line of beers. I didn’t mean to be mean and I am a delicate flower in the face of such dressings down – but, as you all know, I am working with what I am thinking about beer pricing and value. To that end, I’ve suggested five general categories of beer quality. What is the goal of the five point scale? I suppose it is as useful as a Top 25 Brewers list or using the numbers 1 to 10 to rate a beer: it is a means to give order to things. And it is supposed to give order based on deeds not claims – sure, subjectively (as that is the essence of the experience of beer) but not to bash as I live in a post-sticks-and-stones universe. Further, taking up the challenge of Matt at Rutgers, I drove into another country and bought up not six not eight but seven different Boston Beer brews to make sure I had a clue.

Scotch ale is something one would think is very important to a Scot yet it is neither the national drink or the other national drink. There are plenty of examples in the archives and they share that sweet, toast and smoke malts the style is known for. Surely a nod to style that is otherwise defective can send a beer teetering from craft down into kraphtt, no? So – what with this one, 5.4% with a best by date of April 2008? If smell alone could win the day (and who amongst us has not thought that thought before?) this one would surely stand proud as craft with the deep apple butter aroma it gives off. Chestnut ale under a rocky lacing tan head, goes down in a rich wave of sweet malt (butterscotch, pear, apple butter, licorice, and maybe even blackcurrent) tempered by the burnt toastiness of blackened malt with a hint of twiggy hops, perhaps Fuggles, in the end. A lovely brew. “Tha’s a braw bricht brew the noo!” Oor Wullie would say…if he ever grew up to be old enough to try one.

A solid effort and one that makes me offset the same brewer’s white ale over there on the other side of line between craft and what is not quite craft. And, as part of a variety twelve pack for 14.99, great value. 19/20 BAers agree.