Grand River Galt Knife Old Style Lager

Earlier this week, Jeff enjoyed a Galt Knife to the mouth - the beer, of course. Here are his thoughts.


The Galt Knife is another beer from Grand River brewery that I didn't care for too much the first time I had it. I'm not sure why that is. It's now my "go to" beer when I'm at our local pub (The Wooly). I like to start off with the feature tap to try something new but for the second pint - or if I know the feature tap isn't so great - I'll get the Galt Knife pretty much every time. It is a great beer on tap that drinks well by itself and goes with lots of pub food.

But this time I'm having it in the bottle that I picked up from the LCBO. It pours a nice, light caramel colour and has a decent amount of carbonation - more than I seem to remember it having on tap. The beer has some nice biscuity flavour followed by some bitterness from the hops - nothing over powering but definitely there. I'll be honest, I think the flavour was better on tap. Maybe I drank the beer too cold. 


I'll try to be a little more patient next time.

One of the things I really like about this beer is that while its 4.4% abv - what a lot of people would consider a lighter beer - it still has flavour and doesn't taste watered down. Grand River has quite a few quality beers that are lower in alcohol but not in flavour. It's nice to see someone brewing flavourful sessionable beers. I've read quite a few beer reviews where people will say a 6-7% abv beer is sessionable but I'm sorry, you can't have 3 or 4 (or more) of those bigger beers and not be feeling some effects.

One thing I'm not sure of is why the Knife is called a pre-prohibition style lager. I'm sure there's a reason for it - it'd be nice to find out.