You couldn’t pick a better day for sitting around and drinking beer with hundreds of your closest friends. A bright sun was broken only occasionally by a passing cloud and a light breeze, and the breeze was from some direction that somehow missed the millions of litres of raw sewage floating past.
Thirty beer and food booths were placed on the Boardwalk behind Garrison Brewing, and in the adjacent Pier 20. The set up worked nicely, at least for the afternoon session I attended—close enough for easy taste testing, but not so close as to present problems moving around.
Vendors were gracious, the crowd congenial. The beer was cold.
To the nitty-gritty. Here are my notes on the beers tasted, at least as best I can decipher them a day later:
Bruce-Ashley Group.
Moretti.
My rating: 5 of 10.
My review: Yea, whatever.
Greene King IPA.
My rating: 8 of 10
My review: Complicated, in a good way.
Bellhaven Twisted Thistle IPA
My rating: 4 of 10
My review: Too malty.
Mainbrace.
Warsteiner Premium Verum.
My rating: 6 of 10
My review: Yea, whatever. You could drink this beer all day long, but why would you?
Innus and Gunn Brewing Co., Edinburgh Scotland.
Innus and Gunn Original Oak Aged Beer
My rating: 8 of 10
My review: Surprisingly, this works. Complex with a smoky flavour. But don’t drink more than one.
Gahan House Pub and Brewery.
Sydney Street Stout
My rating: 7.5 of 10.
My review: Onion-y, like straight of the dirty onion-y. Mmmmmmm.
Windway Imports.
Stiegal Bavarian Lager.
My rating: 6.5 of 10.
My review: Steve says, “Nice beer for sitting around drinking all day.” I agree, but ya know, I wouldn’t write home about it or anything.
Windward Imports.
Erdinger Weissbier.
My rating: 4 of 10.
My review: I don’t like wheat beers for a reason: they suck.
Windward Imports.
Affligem Blond.
My rating: 4 of 10
My review: Too much shit going on there.
Great Lakes Brewing.
Devil’s Pale Ale, 666.
My rating: 9 of 10.
My review: This is a great beer, right up there with Propeller’s Bitter.
Trafalgar.
Korruptor.(16% alc.vol)
My rating: no rating
My review: What was I thinking, drinking a barley wine?
Critical Mass.(17% alc/vol)
My rating: no rating.
My review: Who are we kidding here?
Wellington County.
Wellington Special Pale Ale.
My rating: 8 of 10
My review: There ya go.
Grand River Brewing.
Galt Knife Old Style.
My rating: 5 of 10.
My review: Steve says, “tastes like all the fucking shit I drank in the 60s.”
McAuslan Brewing.
Cream Ale.
My rating: 7.5
My review: Ray says, “Yea, 7.5. But, best cream ale there is.”
Pump House Brewery.
Dementia.
My rating: 8 of 10
My review: Even more hoppy than the SOB, but it works because the underlying [unreadable, and unguessable— I think I was just making shit up by here]
Pump House.
SOB
My rating: 7 of 10
My review: Bit more hoppy than I would have liked, which kinda surprises me.
Shipyard Brewery, Maine.
Shipyard IPA.
My rating: 7 of 10
My review: They didn’t fuck it up.
Sebago Brewing, Maine.
Frye’s Leap IPA
My rating: 8 of 10.
My review: Hoppy but not too hoppy.
Rudders, Yarmouth.
Rudders Red.
My rating: 8 of 10.
My review: I’m giving this props because it doesn’t totally suck like most red beers.
Blue Heron Extra Special Bitter.
My rating: 9 of 10.
My review: They hit it with this. Hoppy beer done right. Watch these guys in the future.
Port is an Storm Porter.
My rating: 8 of 10.
My review: Wow. Where’d that come from? Is this really as good as I think, or have I simply been drinking for three and a half hours?
Planter’s Pale Ale.
My rating: 7 of 10.
My review: Light for a pale ale, kind of in that ridiculous American/Keith’s fashion.
In addition to being a first class news editor, Tim “Brewskay” Bousquet is a top notch home brewer.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
Geez, Tim. If you are going to review beers, and actually score them, well, just because you don’t like wheat beers is not a good enough reason to trash a perfectly fine example of the style. You have to get past that. But you did get the Sea Level stuff right, regardless of how much you had had by then. The Blue Heron is totally balanced and yummy.
Hey Brewnoser, I’m not the expert… just some dude, ya know? Opinions, assholes, etc. (or is it the other way around?)
The credits claim you are a “top-notch home brewer” so one expects you should know what you are talking about. Instead the article reads like you got so shit-faced you couldn’t even read your own notes, and you slam wheat beers just because you don’t like the style. Nice journalism there.
Don’t have much of a problem with the wheat beer slam. The bottled versions pale in comparison to a fresh wheat beer. To the point where I wouldn’t buy a bottled wheat beer, because relative to the same product, fresh and on tap – they do suck. And he’s up front about it, so the reader can judge for themselves.
And most homebrewers I know are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to beer. The NSLC clowns in particular know next to nothing. I brew my own beer, and I can tell by the above post that Bo Gus couldn’t keep pace with me for a second when it comes to beer knowledge.:)
reviews aside, it’s nice to see something like this happening in Halifax. especially on the Pier. doesn’t sound like it was a drunken gong show like beer fests I’ve been to in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary either. Or was it?