Bellwoods Brewery - Witchshark

During a recent trip into Toronto to see my co-workers, Jeff and I made a side trip to Bellwoods Brewery.

We just wanted to hit up the retail store, which is good because the tasting bar was absolutely packed. It was a Sunday afternoon and Bellwoods was clearly the place to be. (A co-worker told me there are often line-ups outside the brewery before it opens.)

So Jeff picked up a few different beers, but the one he tried this weekend was Witchshark, an American-style double IPA that has hints of mango, grapefruit and pine.

It seemed to be love at first sniff - Jeff had just opened the bottle, hadn't even taken a sip yet, and he was already commenting on how awesome the beer was. He said it had a great citrus and floral nose, as well as a rocky head.

"Rocky head?" I asked.

"It's big bubbles," he replied, then maybe a tad exasperated with me, "It's what they call it." (Wifey learns something new every day.)

He said it had that "awesome copper-orange colour," a nice caramel start, and he could taste the piney hops.

"It's definitely imperial," he said, and I joked, "So you like it?"

"It's good, yeah," Jeff said. "I probably wouldn't have tonnes of it, but it's 9%, so you don't have to."

P.S.

Dear Bellwoods staff,

Thank you for letting me change our daughter in your washroom, even though we weren't in the tasting bar. I am terribly sorry for knocking over the growler of water at the front door with my diaper bag. I will be sure to bring my husband back to your brewery again so he can make up for it by buying more beer. Thanks! OBW

Imperial Amber Nugget Nectar by Troegs Brothers

Have you ever called a beer "juicy?"

My husband has now.

During a trip to the U.S. for work, he picked up the Imperial Amber Nugget Nectar by Pennsylvania brewery, Troegs Brothers.

"My God, it's so juicy," he wrote to me in an email. "So deliciously hop juicy. And while it's 93 IBUs, I don't find it to be enamel-destroying. It is incredibly drinkable, in spite of the high bitterness and 7.5% alcohol. Seriously, I think after the first sip, I just kept thinking, 'I love you I love you I love you I love you.' Oh so damn good."

In a later email, Jeff admitted he was going to be very sad when that beer was done, then told me it was "a religious experience."

Whoa!

"Would it be wrong to have it for breakfast? Only because it's a work day," he said, jokingly (I think ... probably not).

The Nugget Nectar is a seasonal - only available in February and March.

"Man, did I get lucky," Jeff said.

Yes, yes you did, honey.

Beers while out and about

Jeff and I have been out and about in Guelph enjoying some pretty delicious beers lately.

Apocalypse Later Imperial Black IPA

From Great Lakes Brewery, Jeff had this beer at Baker Street Station in the can.

It was a nice black IPA, Jeff said - roasty and hoppy. (I forgot to get his comments during the actual tasting about a week ago, so he doesn't remember exactly what he loved - but he liked it).

Black Lager and a Pompous Ass

This was Jeff's first chance to try a beer from Silversmith Brewery in Niagara Falls and he had it while at OX - a restaurant we hadn't tried before, but which quickly won Jeff over with it's pretty good beer selection.

The Black Lager from Silversmith just got better the warmer it got. He liked it - the roasty-ness and the hazelnut were great. He would have had a second pint of it, except OX also had Pompous Ass Pale Ale from Great Lakes Brewery. That beer smelled really good and was sessionable, Jeff said.

The Matador

Matador Imperial IPA aged on Spanish cedar

From Flying Monkeys, Jeff had this one at the Woolwich Arrow (or just The Wooly). This is the brewery's 8th anniversary ale and we went to the pub on Friday night specifically to have this beer (plus I wanted some of the restaurant's delicious salt and pepper wings).

The cedar was subtle, Jeff said, but it added something to the beer. It didn't taste super boozey, despite being 11.4%.

Get Forked in London

There's a new brewery in London called Forked River. It's set to open this spring.

Canadian Beer News reports they'll have two beers to start - Capital Blonde and Riptide Rye.

Check them out on Facebook and Twitter.

Beer in Boston

Jeff and I started watching the TV show Fringe on Netflix. The show is based in Boston, and seeing the landmarks makes me think of our trip to Boston a few years ago.

We saw Boston Common, ate some seafood and visited Harvard and MIT, but because I'm blogging about it, you know we also had some beer.

Actually, we had a lot of beer.

We visited John Harvard's Brewery and Ale House first and discovered a pretty normal brew pub near the Harvard campus. The pub had some regular beers, like their pale ale, but it also boasts a "cookbook" of more than 250 recipes, and specialty taps that change every two weeks.

Samuel Adams is probably the most well-known beer out of Boston. The tour of the brewery is pretty average - you stand in a room and listen to the tour guide, then you move a few feet over to see the brewing area. If you've been on a beer tour before, you won't learn anything new from the tour (unless you want to ask specific Samuel Adams questions).

But it's the final step - the tasting portion of the day - that makes it worth the trip out to this brewery. You will get to try beers you cannot get in Canada. And they're not stingy with the samples, either (just make sure you don't have a neighbour who tries to hog the pitcher). For a $2 suggested donation, it's a good stop.

We went to the Cambridge Brewing Company - which is really just a restaurant. This was my lease favourite stop on the trip (so much so, I didn't even bother to take a picture of the place). But the cool thing here is they use hops they grow on their own patio.

I loved that they gave you paper so you could take notes.

There's more than one, but do stop at a Boston Beer Works. This is very, very important. They have your typical sports bar fare (get the onion rings!), but they also have a lot of beers. There are several locations - we went to the one outside Fenway Park. There are at least 10 beers on tap at any given time and they're all made locally.

Jeff and I had a really good time at this pub and probably could have spent the day there. We tried every beer they had (some more than once) and probably should have gone there for dinner (then taken a cab back to the hotel) instead of going there for lunch and then continuing to be tourists that afternoon - not the easiest when you're a tad tipsy. Or a lot tipsy. Or falling down drunk.

If you have time to stop at only one place though, make it Harpoon Brewery and go for a tour. You will get to try multiple samples during a tour. The "tour" consists of staying in one room, or maybe wandering onto a "deck" where you can overlook the brewery (this may have changed - I have noticed on Harpoon's Twitter account, there have been some renovations at the brewery since we were there in 2010).

We loved Harpoon - these guys knew their beers and enjoyed talking about their beers. When we were there, they had some UFO (unfiltered offerings) along with several seasonal beers we got to try.

The best thing for us about Harpoon - our hotel was a five-minute walk away!

Inside Harpoon - look at all those taps!

Matt's Sleepy Time Belgian Imperial Stout from Beau's

He drank it before I got a picture of the beer.

We lucked out before Christmas when we went into Toronto for the day and made a pit stop at the LCBO on the Queen's Quay - because they had a number of beers there that never made it to Guelph.

Like the Best of Beau's four-pack, which had Patio Saison, Farm Table: Belgian Pale Ale, Screamin' Beaver Oak Aged Double IPA, and Matt's Sleepy Time Beligun Imperial Stout.

Jeff was iffy on the Screamin' Beaver - although admitted it tasted better the warmer it got. I was surprised that I really liked this beer.

But the Matt's Sleepy Time Belgian Imperial Stout was Jeff's favourite of the bunch.

"There's a lot going on in this beer: Mocha, berry jam, burnt toast, herbal hops, licorice ... so much flavour. But it all comes together in harmony," Jeff said.

"I wish I had picked up a couple of these four packs just for this beer - although the other beers in the pack are solid as well. I really wish Beau's standard LCBO offerings (i.e. Lug Tread Lager) were this interesting."

Garrison Winter Warmer

Jeff's sister is going to school in Nova Scotia, so when she came home over the holidays, she was kind enough to bring her brother some beer from Garrison Brewery in Halifax.

In the past, we've raved about the Martello Stout and the Baltic Porter (apparently not on the blog, though) from these guys and Jeff was hoping for more of either beer.

Instead, he got a couple of bottles of the Winter Warmer. The beer has won silver at the national and international level and the website says it's a "strong dark amber beer" that is "brewed with spices evocative of the holiday season."

Jeff isn't a fan of the winter/holiday beers, so he wasn't super stoked about it - although he is always happy to try a new beer.

But those Garrison folks sure surprised him.

"I wasn't overly excited about this beer. I was afraid it would be overly spiced - like hot apple cider full of cinnamon and nutmeg," Jeff said. "But the spiciness is restrained - the cinnamon melds quite well with the demerara sugar in the beer."