Good news in Stratford?

The town is already famous for its Shakespeare festival (which we highly recommend), but I saw news this week the Stratford Brewing Company may be looking to expand.

The Stratford Beacon-Herald reports brewmaster Joseph Tuer and his wife Rebecca Hill may be moving into an old car dealership in the town.

"Hopefully with the new building and more space, I'll be able to hire a couple of people," Tuer told the newspaper, adding they'd also like to open a retail outlet.

Best of luck to them.

Wellington Ce'da Bitter Blue

I mentioned Wellington’s Ce’da Bitter Blue around Father’s Day. Wellington used it to help kick off Ontario Craft Beer Week. 

The intention was to get around to reviewing it before now, but I’ve been putting it off. 

The beer itself is an English bitter with blueberries and aged on cedar boughs. Certainly not your run of the mill creation. Also not your run of the mill name - I know Kate really hates the location of the apostrophe and really thinks it should be Ceda’ not Ce’da since they’re replacing the “r.”

The beer pours an clear orange colour. When I poured this beer there was absolutely no carbonation. I thought when I tried it back in June there was somewhat more - maybe not. I’m wondering if there was something wrong with the canning process. I did notice while looking through the beer there’s some sediment suspended in the beer - I think that’s leftover bits of blueberry.

Putting my nose in the glass I can smell some berries and flowers and maybe a touch of cedar.The first time I tried it, I don’t remember tasting any of the blueberry. I was curious if the blueberry flavour had developed at all.

Unless my memory’s playing tricks on me, the blueberry now is much stronger. And at the end of the beer, I get some bitterness and cedar. I’m not getting too much malt. The fact that it has that berry taste, is flat and there’s not much malt taste makes me think this is more like juice than beer. It’s not really working for me.

(Wifey note: I haven’t tried it since we bought it back around Father’s Day, but it didn’t work for me either. Fruit and beers rarely work, in my opinion).

Even though I wasn’t a fan of Wellington’s Ce’Da Bitter Blue, I’m happy they brewed it. I think it’s great that they’re trying out new beers every month and doing something different. Not every beer is gonna be a hit and that’s fine. I’m hoping they discover different things with each new brew - and that’s only going to lead to better beer in the future.

Amsterdam Oranje Weisse

Yet again, I'm at work, and Jeff has decided to have a beer. But he made a rookie mistake just after removing this bottle from the fridge. Read on to learn more!

Amsterdam has released a new beer called Oranje Weisse - in their words, “an unfiltered Flemish style white beer.”

Let me start off by saying I completely screwed up pouring this beer. After having poured the beer. I read this nice note on the side of the bottle: The Weisse Roll: Prior to opening, lay the bottle on its side and gently roll back and forth.

This isn’t the first weisse I’ve had out of a bottle but I’ve never done “the roll” before. A quick search on Google reveals that its suggested for pretty much all unfiltered wheat beers. So don’t do what I did and just pour it into your glass straight from the bottle - otherwise all that yeast stays in the bottom of your bottle and isn’t distributed through your beer. And that yeast provides a lot of extra flavour.

A quick side note: I know some people don’t like the yeast suspended in their beer. For some people it causes some intestinal problems - for those who want minimal yeast, not rolling your bottle will cut down on a lot of that.

Anyways, so the Oranje Weisse I poured (without the yeast) is a yellow straw colour. Had I included the yeast, it would be much cloudier. The head dissipates pretty quickly, leaving a small ring around the edge. The beer has a nice banana and spice smell. Even though I have next to no yeast in my pour, the beer still has lots of flavour. There’s banana, coriander, orange and clove. I think these beers (weisses, hefe-weizens, wits) are good beers to introduce to people who don’t like more run of the mill beers but like fruity coolers. Granted they’re not sickeningly sweet like most coolers, but they do offer that fruitiness and show off just how different beers can be.

I’ll likely be buying this beer again. I like the one I had tonight and I know its only going to taste better after pouring it properly (what a rookie mistake).

Brasseurs Du Temps

Ottawa didn’t have much in the way of brewpubs, but we did discover another brewpub in Gatineau called Brasseurs Du Temps (BDT). So we walked across the bridge from our hotel to the pub (maybe next time we’d take a cab - it was about an hour walk) to check it out.

Here, as usual, is Jeff’s take on the brewery and brewpub.

BDT is right on the water with a great patio for a hot summer day - which is what we were having when we were there. The brewery had 12 of their offerings on tap - not a bad selection. We ordered the “L’Horloge” (the clock) which is a tray of 3oz samples of each of their beers.

Et la Lumiere Fut! was the beer suggested to try first - a pale ale at 5.5% ABV. It poured a golden straw colour and had nice lacing. The beer had a pear nose which followed in to the taste with a touch of honey. The finish was dry and floral. This beer was very drinkable - but not bland.


Next up was Le Bouillon de la Chaudiere: A weizen at 5% ABV. It was a lighter straw colour and rather opaque because it’s unfiltered. I got clove and spice on the nose and the taste was undeniably banana. The beer menu said to notice ginger; I couldn’t find it but Kate could. I quite liked it and had another pint of it, but it was too spicy for Kate.

The ESB 1821, a 5.5% ABV extra special bitter, was the next beer in the list. It had a hazy apricot colour with a good amount of lacing. When I tasted it, I got a lot of bubblegum sweetness. It was too bitter for Kate. I thought the bitterness was lacking and couldn’t stop focusing on the sweet. This beer was a miss for both of us.

The patio.

The fourth beer was L’Allumante - a 5.5% ABV nut brown ale. It had an orangey colour with a hazelnut and caramel aroma. The hazelnut really carried through in the taste. There was a nice caramel that lingered at the end, but it wasn’t too sweet. It had a great mouthfeel and was another really drinkable beer.

Mille Neuf Cendre was a rauchbier at 5.5% ABV. The name is a play on words in French and alludes to the great fire in Hull in 1900. Since this is a smoked beer, it automatically smelled like summer sausage to me. On the upside, it was the most pleasant smoked beer I’ve had. The smoke taste wasn’t over the top and there was some honey to help balance out the smoke. Kate liked this one, I didn’t though.

The stout (a pint after the clock was done).

La Nuit des Temps is BDT’s 5% ABV stout. It poured a dark brown/black and smells roasty like a stout should. The taste didn’t disappoint with it’s delicious roastiness and coffee flavours. The bitterness from the hops finished the beer like black coffee. There was a little bit of nuttiness in there as well. It was Kate’s favourite of the twelve.

BDT offers a 5% ABV raspberry pale ale called La Framboyante. It had an orange-pinky colour to it. The beer screams raspberries in the aroma - as the name would imply. But to me it tasted like a cordial, not a beer. The drying finish was definitely like biting into raspberry seeds as the menu suggested. Kate absolutely hated it. I wouldn’t order it again, but I’ve also had worse.


By the time we go to Dumduminator, an 8% ABV doppelweizenbock, Kate was more than a little tipsy. I think she was dehydrated from walking to BDT in the heat. (Wifey note: What? Me? Tipsy? Never! And that was a long walk.)

Continuing with the Dumduminator, the beer poured an orangy-brown colour and a ring of lacing remained through to the end of the beer. Dumdum was all about bananas. When I smelled it, I thought I was diving into banana pudding. The beer tasted like bananas foster: Banana, caramel and alcohol. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it - Kate didn’t like it as much and struggled to finish it.

The "clock" of samples.

The ninth beer on our beer clock was La Saison Haute (7.5% ABV). It had the colour of apple juice. And while the beer had been sitting outside for a solid 15 minutes already, lacing remained. The nose had pepper, floral and slight orange notes. I didn’t get the explosion of citrus the menu promised in the taste but I did get the pepper. I did notice some lemon on the finish - this wasn’t one of my favourite beers.

Trois portages was the next beer, a 9% ABV tripel. It poured a hazy orange colour. The nose was very fruity but not bright. It was more like drying fruit. The taste was super sweet. Way too sweet. The menu said there was some bitterness that kicked in at the end but I found no relief from the sweetness. It was like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer asks a Brazilian to make him the sweetness drink possible. This was absolutely my least favourite beer.

The penultimate beer was the first IPA on BDT’s menu: Au Pied du Courant - an American style IPA at 6.5% ABV. It poured a nice amber colour and even though it was the 11th beer, it still had lacing. The nose was promising with citrus and pine. But then I got pepper in the taste - not what I was expecting from an America IPA. There was some biscuit malt at the beginning and a bitter finish as expected, but that’s all it is: Bitter. There’s not much flavour in the end. I was disappointed and Kate couldn’t finish hers. At this point, Kate was pretty much sauced. (Wifey note: Hey! You’ll catch up to me soon enough in this post, sir. Jeff was sauced by the time we left.)

The last beer was a big beer: Diable au Corps, an imperial IPA at 9.5% ABV with 100 IBUs. I had been looking forward to this one all day. Could this IPA redeem the performance of the Au Pied? It was an apple juice colour that amazingly still had a cap of head after 30 minutes. I got citrus on the nose and had citrus for taste... and the end was bitter - but the 100 IBUs is counteracted with a wall of sweetness. And the sweetness lasts and lasts and lasts. Kate would not drink more than a sip. I was really looking forward to an imperial IPA and I was really disappointed. This was a close second for worst of the day.

Overall, the brewery has a great selection of beers: Twelve beers that cover a wide variety of tastes. Plus, they also have guest taps for other craft brewers - I like the sense of comraderie. The beers have what I think are a definitive Quebec spin to them. I’d recommend Le Bouillon, L’Allumante, La Nuit des Temps and Dumdum over the rest - and I’d avoid the IPAs if you’re expecting a west coast IPA. And like I said earlier, this place has a great atmosphere and it’s miles ahead of the Clock Tower Brew Pub - and only a couple of miles away.

So take the extra time and get to the Gat for BDT.

(Wifey note: If you’re going with a group, this pub offered this cool table at the front of the restaurant that had a tap at a table. We were both pretty impressed by that. As well, Jeff has decided “Get to the Gat” should be the new tourism slogan for Gatineau - but now that he’s put it in this blog, I don’t think anyone would pay him for his idea.)

A waitress going to the patio.

Black Tomato restaurant, Ottawa

Whenever Jeff and I go on vacation, I try to plan a couple of beer-related outings. Ottawa, for some reason, does not have very many brewpubs or breweries (which surprised me considering it's our nations capital and more than one of our politicians has been known to enjoy a drink now and then).

I called Hogsback Brewery - a new player in the city - but they don't have a brewery yet, they're just contract brewing (was super impressed the guy called me back and left a message after I contacted them, though).

Other than that, there was Kichesippi - but it was a bit far from our ByWard Market hotel and to be honest, neither Jeff nor I had a whole lot of interest in going there.

So instead, I searched for restaurants that had local beers and one that came up more than once was the Black Tomato. I saw several posts on different websites boasting about the restaurant's impressive beer list, so both Jeff and I were keen to have dinner there.

Too bad it didn't live up to the hype.

Don't get me wrong - the food was great, but the beer selection was lacking for what we were hoping for. We wanted to try different Beau's beers, but they only had the one (the one beer everyone has). Jeff was hoping to get some good eastern Ontario beers, or some from Quebec, but alas - no such luck.

He did have his Mad Tom IPA from Muskoka Brewery and admitted it changed his mind about the beer. In fact, I think he had two of them with dinner. He told me he felt he had been too harsh on the beer the first time around and it was really growing on him. Perhaps it's his new summer beer? (I was told maybe, but he'd been itching to try Garrison's Hopyard, and he's had that beer since we returned and I think he's now in love with that beer ... but that's for another post).

I had Neustadt's Mill Gap Bitter. It was awesome, as was expected - but I was a tad disappointed to get a beer that I can get any time we go see my family in Grey County.

Jeff tried Hogsback Vintage Lager and unfortunately said it was pretty forgettable. I think this could be because it's a new brewery trying to please - and it takes a few years and a few batches for breweries to really experiment. I expect to see more from this brewery in the future.

So, a bit disappointing on the beer front, but the food was excellent.

We did hear about a place called Vineyards, which also apparently has a huge selection of beers, but they don't come cheap (and, note, things like Bud Light appear on this list). We didn't make it there, unfortunately, but it might be worth a stop next time we're in the city. Something to look forward to, I suppose.

Clock Tower Brew Pub

Not a great photo - sorry it's blurry.

Over Canada Day weekend, we went to Ottawa. It was the first time celebrating Canada Day in the nation’s capital for both of us. Neither of us was ready for the crowds. But as is tradition on our travels, we made time to visit some brew pubs. 

The first one we went to was the Clock Tower Brew Pub - we stopped by the Byward Market location. Here's Jeff's take on the place.

Kate and I both went for the sampler of five beers: Raspberry Wheat, Kolsch, Wishart’s Bitter, Clocktower Red and Bytown Brown.

The raspberry wheat was served with a wedge of lemon. There was some head and strong carbonation. My first sip tasted like raspberry jam - that did not work for me as a beer. So I added a squeeze from the lemon; that worked nicely to brighten up the flavour. It was a refreshing beer... but I likely wouldn’t order it again.

The kolsch was the colour of apple juice and very clear. My glass had next to no carbonation while Kate’s had tons.The taste is inoffensive and a little bland: It is definitely light and the hops are VERY subtle (read: non-existent). Switching my glass with Kate’s, the beer tasted significantly better and the finish was a lot drier. Did I get a glass that was left out or something? (Wifey note: Aren't I nice for giving him my glass? I wasn't a huge fan of this beer anyway ...)

Wishart’s bitter was a caramel gold colour and had a malty biscuit nose. It had a good bitter finish, although not much in flavouring hops from what I can tell.

Clocktower Red had a nice ruby/brown colour. There was some pine and floral notes in the nose - finally some finishing hops. It had caramel malt flavour with some pine hops and finished bitter. This was my favourite beer so far ... Kate hated it. (Wifey note: It's true, I was not a fan.)

The Bytown brown was a deep brown colour as the name would suggest. The aroma and taste were pretty much the same: sweet and nutty. The finish was a little bitter to help offset the initial sweetness. This turned out to be Kate’s favourite - although I think she would characterize it as “least worst.” I didn’t think it was bad, although I wish they had been more aggressive with the flavour.

All in all, the beer was pretty forgettable. I’m not sure if it was a location thing (I don’t believe they actually brew the beer at this location) or if it was timing thing (maybe they were stock piling beer in preparation for the long weekend and we just got some old product) or what, but I was expecting better offerings.

Spearhead Brewery Hawaiian Style Pale Ale & Cheshire Valley IPA

When Kate and I were at the Wooly for Father’s Day, I saw posters around the bar announcing that Spearhead Brewery would have their Hawaiian Style Pale Ale available on tap at the Wooly starting June 23. I had heard rumours about Spearhead on the Bar Towel forums - at the time, all that was definite was that it was a new brewery opening. I made it a point to make it to the Wooly on the 23rd to see what this beer was all about.

Hawaiian Style Pale Ale is a west coast pale ale with the addition of pineapple juice. It’s naturally carbonated, unfiltered and unpasteurized. It’s relatively strong at 6.5% ABV and has a bitterness of 60 IBUs - not the booziest or bitterest IPA out there, but not a slouch either.

The beer was served in a tulip glass and had a thick, rocky white head. It was a beautiful hazy apricot colour. It was nice to get the beer served in an appropriate glass - the tulip glass really concentrates the aromas of the beer. I wish I had a proper tulip glass at home; it’s amazing how different a beer can taste from different glassware. My one complaint about the serving was that it was served too cold. It was excruciating to wait for the beer to warm up.

As I mentioned, the glassware helped appreciate the beer’s nose: nice pine and grapefruit with a hint of sweetness. The initial flavour was honey and caramel; the middle was a nice bitter zest taste; and the finish was decidedly bitter with grapefruit rind. I looked for the “tropical finish” the brewer mentioned but I couldn’t find the pineapple. It might be just too subtle for me. Although after drinking the pint, it seems pretty light on the tongue.

It is a very nice addition to the Ontario market.

The second beer, the Cheshire Valley IPA, was a total surprise find - I had no idea it was going to be on tap. I’ve had a couple of beers from Cheshire Valley - all beers are contract brewed at Black Oak Brewery - and every one I’ve had so far has been good.

The bubbles on the head of the CV IPA are much finer than on the head from the Spearhead. The head isn’t as thick but there’s a good amount of lacing and it sticks around until the end of the pint.

The Cheshire Valley was at a disadvantage in aroma due to the glass - it was a nonic pint glass. Plus, I had nachos in between which definitely affected my palate. I did get a subtle citrus aroma. The taste starts with a good amount of caramel malt flavour. That’s balanced out by a decent amount of bitterness and spiciness from the hops. The spiciness lingers after you’ve swallowed - I’m pretty sure that was the beer and not the nachos. Another solid beer from Cheshire Valley.