Tag Archives: 650mL

Seattle Cider – Oaked Maple

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Seattle Cider Oaked Maple

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As you can tell, we’re having a hard time getting back into the swing of things here at Bad Rider. But your regularly scheduled reviews have returned! (Hopefully. More or less.) First up in the new year, a cider I tried earlier in the winter which made me immediately think, “I have to review this because it’s so strange.”

My last interaction with maple in cider was Woodchuck’s spring seasonal, which was (to my own great surprise) not particularly to my taste. Usually I will be first in line for anything with maple and brown sugar.

Perhaps it’s something specific to maple in cider, because this Oaked Maple is also…weird. It starts off well enough, with a straightforward apple aroma and some of the oak notes underneath.

When I taste it, I get maple — but scarcely any sweetness. Which is bizarre, right? Maple should be sweet! I have a hard time wrapping my head around something tasting like maple but not being sweet the way maple-flavored things generally are.

Other than the strange non-sweet maple taste, Oaked Maple is fairly tart, and a little bitter. The bottle copy says it’s fermented with oak chips and raisins, and there is something of wrinkly dark fruit about it, an aftertaste like raisins picked out of a cake.

Seattle Cider needs to keep their website up to date (AHEM), as it currently only lists Pumkin Spice and PNW Berry as the available seasonals, but you can still use their locator to track yourself down some cider here.

Seattle Cider – Three Pepper

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Seattle Cider Three Pepper

It looks so unassuming, until you take a whiff.

Being the kind of person who doesn’t usually take their Thai/Indian/Mexican food crying-spicy, I was dubious about this cider the first time I picked it up. THREE Pepper cider? I asked myself. It’s only one bottle, you can handle it, I replied. To myself.

After I tried it, someone doing their own exploration of regional cider offerings asked me how it was, and in the months since I recommended it they’ve apparently been drinking almost nothing else.

If you’re already ambivalent about the idea of drinking pepper cider, the aroma isn’t reassuring: it’s an immediate dramatic hit of jalapeno and capsaicin.

To my surprise, though, this cider is more bark than bite — when you actually take a sip you get mostly a medium-sweet cider, with some fresh pepper flavor and fire that hovers around the outside and eases in toward the finish.

The heat from the peppers lingers in the aftertaste, and the quicker you chug it down, the more it’ll make itself known, but over the course of a bottle it never gets to the point where it bothers me.

I’m a bit at a loss trying to think of what kind of meal you might pair it with — something else spicy, probably, but not so spicy you want your drink to save you.

Track down some Three Pepper for yourself here. It says small batch/limited edition, so you may have a hard time finding any, but I’ve seen it in my local store for months, so then again maybe not.

And now for something completely different

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In the chocolate vs. vanilla wars, I'm siding with Seaport.

In the chocolate vs. vanilla wars, I’m siding with Seaport.

I know you’re all wondering about the Pumpkindrome, but my expert panel (well, “expert”) has yet to convene. So, in the meantime, here’s something else I’ve been enjoying when I get sick of squash.

The Specs: Lighthouse Brewing Co. (Victoria, B.C.) Seaport Vanilla Stout
5.5 per cent ABV, 650mL, limited release

 

Actually, speaking of sick, this is a beer I was fully expecting to be irritated with by the end of my first pint.

If no one had told me what the special ingredient in Lighthouse’s special edition stout was, I feel fairly confident I’d have figured it out on my own. With a strong whiff of pure vanilla on the nose (think extract, not candy) and an equally strong vanilla finish, it’s hard to miss.

But my first impression of Seaport was less “pure Madagascar vanilla beans” and more chocolate bar. With its notes of coffee and mild chocolate combining with the vanilla finish, Seaport tastes like nothing so much as a Crispy Crunch-Coffee Crisp hybrid. (Americans, I believe you call such items ‘candy bars’ and do not experience the joys of Coffee Crisp. For this I can offer only my apologies.)

Given these are among my favourite chocolate choices, I was predisposed to enjoy this beer, but I figured after about half a glass I’d start to get irritated. As I’ve mentioned in past, really sweet beer is decidedly not my thing.

But, here’s what I noticed on further sipping — Seaport isn’t a particularly sweet beer. The vanilla is deceptive, offering the illusion of sugar where there is none and acting in the same way citrus notes do in other varieties of beer. With vanilla to cut the usual heaviness of stout, this beer doesn’t get heavy and stays light on the tongue.

When I reached the end of the glass, it was disappointment I felt, not relief. Lighthouse has done something a little different and decidedly tasty here.

Pumpkin Head vs. Crooked Tooth

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Week One: Fernie versus Phillips

This October Bad Rider’s beer section is pitting gourd against gourd in a battle to determine which B.C. beer is king of the pumpkin patch. Welcome to Pumpkindrome, Week One.

The Challengers: Fernie Brewing Co. Pumpkin Head Brown Ale (5 per cent ABV, 650mL) versus Phillips Brewing Co. Crooked Tooth (5 per cent ABV, 650mL)

We begin our epic showdown with a battle of light and dark, sweet and more-sweet, pumpkin and …wait, where’s the pumpkin?

If Pumpkindrome were a battle of smell, Fernie would have the match after one whiff of the pint glass. With a moist pumpkin and spice aroma, Pumpkin Head smells like a slice of pie that’s been lingering on in the fridge a couple days past Canadian Thanksgiving. Crooked tooth, meanwhile, offers a light nutmeggy scent, but none of the pumpkin funk.

But, when it comes to flavour, Fernie’s offering can’t make up to its pre-sip hype.

Where I was hoping for notes of cinnamon, allspice and sweet, cooked pumpkin, all this dark beer had to offer me was sugar. To its credit, it was a rich, brown-sugar, fall-style sweetness — seasonally appropriate, at least. And as far as brown ales go, if you like your brew mid- to very-sweet, you’ll find nothing to complain about here.

You just won’t find any pumpkin.

Phillips, on the flip side, offered me a taste quite like what I would have expected from Fernie, based on smell. Crooked tooth is a pure slice of pumpkin pie, with a slightly sweet pumpkin custard flavour and mellow spicing.

While the Phillips website claims ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg in the brew, it’s the latter I noticed most, which actually seemed to work quite well. While your standard pumpkin spice fare can get abrasive and heavy from cloves and cinnamon, a light touch of nutmeg adds some depth to the sweetness without overwhelming the pumpkin.

This time around, it’s no trouble to pick a winner. After all, if your pumpkin beer doesn’t taste of pumpkins, what’s the point?

Phillips moves to round 2.

Howling for You (Barkerville Brewing)

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Barkerville, that dog is too cute and you need to be stopped.

Barkerville, that dog is too cute and you need to be stopped.

The Specs: Barkerville Brewing Co. (Quesnel, B.C.) Hound of the Barkerville Brown Ale
5.9 per cent ABC, 650mL, regular series

 

I didn’t initially intend to review this beer right now. In fact, had it not been for last weekend’s Prohibition ale review, I might have given the little brewery in Quesnel that could a few months off before returning to their lineup.

But, a couple nights after reviewing that nice, but totally average brew, I found myself needing a brew that could stand up to both latkes and stuffed peppers and discovered the brown ale I’d been hoping for.

On the face of it, Hound and Bootlegger look pretty similar — same deep amber colour, though much less head and overall carbonation on the former — but there are surprisingly few points of commonality on taste.

Where Bootlegger is wheat bread, Hound is a much more interesting loaf.

Starting with a deep, roasted malt flavour and rounding out into a quick hit of pluck hops, it’s in some ways a much simpler beer. Where Bootlegger offered hints of citrus and sugar, Hound offers a straight-ahead nuttiness and virtually no sweetness.

With the slightly hopped finish, you’re not weighed down by the darkness at the front of the sip, and with no sugar the lack of acid isn’t an issue — there’s no syrupy tones to cut through.

Once again, Barkerville’s done a solid rendition of a standard. And, in case you were wondering, it indeed stood up beautifully to peppers and potatoes. I’m on my second bottle in less than a week, and if that’s not a seal of approval I don’t know what I can do for you.

Good versus average

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Prohibition Ale

That blindfolded pig is on every bottle, btw. Cheeky, Prohibition.

The Specs: Prohibition Brewing Co. (Kelowna, B.C.) Bootlegger Ale
5.5 per cent ABV, 650mL, regular series

It’s the straight-ahead, nice-enough beers that are really the hardest to write about, and such is the case with Bootlegger Ale.

After a summer featuring quite a lot of pilsner, pale ale, hefeweizen and PBR (What? You have to take something to all-night barbecues) it feels a little strange to be drinking an ale this dark.With its deep amber colour, Bootlegger feels like a properly fall beer in most respects, save its carbonation. Beer this fizzy seems like a summer concern. I’ve been having a bad week for pouring beer to begin with, but I’ve not built up a head like this on a pint in a while.

As far as taste goes, it’s fairly sweet with a bit of acidity to keep it from being fully weighed down. I wouldn’t say I found either the hops or malt of it particularly pronounced, though they’re both present and distinct.

And… that’s about it. Yup. Review over. Go home.

There’s not a thing bad about Bootlegger, but I can’t get worked up one way or another.

Were I a Kelowna-ite looking to support the local craft brew scene, I’d probably order this one with food sometimes. But, as a Kamloopsian I don’t know if I see much call to pick this one up on the regular — and no, that call has nothing to do with the supposed rivalry between the Tournament Capital and the Little Apple.

Bootlegger is the wheat bread of beer. It may be a good every day pick, but it’s not going to compete with a showcase full of macarons and cream puffs.

(That’s not entirely metaphorical, actually. Drinking it felt an awful lot like eating a slice of darker bread. Again, a perfectly pleasant job, but who writes home about the bread basket?)

Ultimately, it’s a strong enough showing that I’m happy to investigate Prohibition Brewing Co.’s other offerings, but I don’t know that I’ll be back to this well any time soon.

Creative Anachronism

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Uncommon sky, meet common kitchen counter.

The Specs: Whistler Brewing Co. Big Sky Uncommon Lager
5 per cent ABV, 650mL, seasonal

 

We’ve got more than 90 breweries in B.C. these days, and yet here I am back at the Whistler Brewing trough.

What can I say? Big Sky has a dandy story. Quoth the bottle copy:

“Back in the 1890s, before refrigeration and modern brewing techniques, lagers were hot fermented in the warm western climate — much like an ale is today. What was common then is uncommon today.”

Whistler promises as “hop forward clean finish” and I have to say, they’ve delivered. This is the most literal interpretation of hop-forward, clean finish you could hope to find.

On taking a sip of Big Sky you’re immediately hit with all of the beer’s flavour. And where the back of the sip, your end notes, your aftertaste, should be there’s… nada. Instead, you have the strange experience of the hop taste just sort of evaporating out of your mouth, even as you still feel like you’re drinking. It’s like Jesus in reverse — beer into water, with maybe a hint of metal.

It’s pretty entertaining. The slower your sip, the more pronounced the experience is. It took me entirely too long to get through a glass of this stuff because I was trying to see how far I could push the sensation. And you don’t have to worry about feeling weighed down when you’re through your first pint. Big Sky is its own palate cleanser.

But, I feel like the punch of beer flavour at the front doesn’t allow for complexity. The toasty and hoppy flavours end up trampling all over each other, stifling their best characteristics. I found myself wishing Big Sky could cool its jets, give me more time to get a handle on its flavours before everything swept away.

Faults aside, if you can still track down a bottle (this was one of Whistler’s summer releases, though I found a good batch of it at one of my local stores) I’d give it a go. Makes a heck of a party trick if you’re the right kind of dork.

Beeriarchy

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Yeah, it's even kinda pink.

Yeah, it’s even kinda pink.

The Specs: Tin Whistle Brewing (Penticton, B.C.) Strawberry Blonde Ale
5 per cent ABV, 650mL, seasonal (I think. It’s hard to tell with this company)

This is the story of a good beer that made me think bad things.

I was about halfway through my first glass of Strawberry Blonde Ale when it first popped into my head: “This is a girl beer.”

This beer — this nice, very drinkable beer — was making me sexist.

It’s odd, because I’ve reviewed many a fruit beer on this site and this has never occurred to me before. Raspberry beers in particular are mainstream for all genders.

Yet there’s something about this light, somewhat sweet, not too bitter strawberry beer that makes me vaguely embarrassed about recommending.

Maybe it’s strawberries themselves. Your usual beer berries are assertive, tart. Raspberries and blackberries. Strawberries are more commonly found in creamy pink liqueurs and wine spritzers.

And there’s no denying that this is a strawberry beer. As with my last Tin Whistle selection, Peach Cream Ale, this is a beer that tastes exactly of its eponymous fruit. The strawberry here is so potent I would have sworn I could feel seeds grinding between my teeth as I sipped.

But, Strawberry Blonde is also fairly smartly balanced. Where other berry beers can get weighed down by their sugar, blonde ale is light in the mouth, with a finish of beery bitterness that I was not expecting.

It strikes me as a good gateway beer. The brew you could hand the friend who drank a lot of Boone’s Farm or Arbour Mist in their misspent youth, but never developed a thing for beer.

Maybe that’s the problem. I think of craft brew as a lot of things — but craft beer for people who don’t love beer? Sounds almost sacrilegious.

Obviously, that’s a bullshit attitude. A craft beer can be inventive and well-brewed and still appeal to those who aren’t living a 24/7 malt-and-hop lifestyle. Otherwise, all we end up with are trends like that one a few years back, when every IPA had to be so hoppy you couldn’t force half of them down without a glass of water as a chaser.

So give Strawberry Blonde a shot. Hell, if you really want to double down on the girly, serve it with a salad heavy on green vegetables, which seem to pair well. Both are delicious.

Girls have good taste.

Poppin’

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Hoyner Pilsner

With apologies to Community, “Pop pop!”

The Specs: Hoyne Brewing Co. (Victoria, B.C.) Hoyner Pilsner
5.5 per cent ABV, 650mL, regular series

This pilsner’s got a pedigree.

At least, it has a good advertising campaign — its own little flag on the shelf, proclaiming “best in class Okanagan Fest of Ale 2014!”

Being kitty-corner to the Okanagan here in Kamloops, I figured if it’s good enough for my fellow regional beer snobs, it’s probably good enough for me.

If the way I’m backing into this review hasn’t tipped you off already, I’m not sure that turned out to be true.

It’s not that Hoyner Pilsner is bad. Certainly, it’s not in the same league as my last review, which I still think about with baffled head shakes.

In a lot of ways Hoyner’s a great pilsner.

It’s nice and light on the tongue, with just enough of an acid feel to keep it bright. It’s a beautiful colour, foamy enough that it still had a few millimetres of head by the time I was nearing the bottom of the glass, and the sort of beer that pairs spectacularly with a sweet potato veggie burger (I got hungry with about 1/4 of the bottle left).

I think I’d like it a lot, if it didn’t taste so damn much like Corn Pops.

I checked into this, and I’m not the only person to identify a “cereal” taste to Hoyner, but here at Bad Rider we like to dig deep, which is why I spent much of my drinking session trying to come up with the best possible breakfast analog.

Bright, corny, slightly sweeter than you really want it to be — buy me a mini cereal box and transport me back to Grade 5. Corn Pops.

If you like your beer a bit sweet, this might really do it for you. But in my case, there are only a few scenarios where sugary beer is a winner. I found myself wishing for a bit of bitterness on the back end, something to break up the corn flavour.

As I mentioned earlier, the veggie burger did a bang-up job of diluting the cereal taste, and I suspect carnivores would enjoy it with burgers or some sort of sandwich.

So, if you’re looking for something with some industry cred to serve at your final barbecues of the year, Hoyner’s worth a try. But for straight drinking I’ve got other pilsners closer to my heart.

Shallow Drinker Failure

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electricunicorn

Even the magic of the Christmas mug couldn’t save this guy.

The Specs: Phillips Brewing Co. (Victoria, B.C.) Electric Unicorn White IPA
6.5 per cent ABV, 650 mL, seasonal

It’s a rare, rare day when a truly undrinkable beer passes my lips. You know, the kind of beer where the only proper response is a dismayed face and resolve to get through at least one damn glass of the stuff. For research.

That the first truly bad beer on this blog is coming from Phillips is a shock to me. Phillips’ Blue Buck is one of my go-to craft beers. While I don’t love everything in their lineup equally, nothing has ever led me to believe they’d be capable of… of…

Let me put it this way:

The entire time I was grimacing my way through a glass of Electric Unicorn White IPA, all I could think was, ‘what’s the weird fruity note I can taste alongside all that grass?’

I’m not sure exactly how an electric unicorn differs from the regular type — laser beam eyes, if the bottle label is to be believed — but this IPA tastes exactly like what I’d want to feed to a horse with a horn on its head and undefined magic lightening powers.

What I originally thought might be a grapefruit aftertaste turned solidly pineapple juice after a couple sips. The grassy note, meanwhile, resolved itself into a taste I remember from rolling around in the hayloft of my grandparents’ barn.

Pineapple and hay.

If this sounds better to you than it has to anyone I’ve described it to so far, congrats! Apparently you’re the target audience for this beer.

You and the unicorns.

It probably serves me right for picking a beer simply because its label looked like something that one guy on every university campus who’s still really into Grateful Dead would use decorate his dorm room.

I never have had much time for The Dead.

I should have taken it for the warning it was.