Cheers! Local beer at LCBO
Posted By NATASHA MARAR, Times-Journal
Politicians at Queen's Park know about St. Thomas's own Railway City Brewing Co., and now the company is hoping others will, too, when its beer hits LCBO shelves next week. The small Curtis Street brewery, which started last year, makes around 5,000 litres a month of its Iron Spike Blonde, Copper, Amber and Light ales.
In May, its Amber ale was selected as one of seven Ontario craft beers to be highlighted at the Legislative Assembly for 2009-2010. "But a lot of people are still surprised that St. Thomas has a brewery," said Paul Corriveau, vice-president of sales and marketing for Railway City Brewing Company.
So for the past nine months, it has been working with the LCBO to move its product into stores. Railway City Brewery currently sells its beer to bars and restaurants in St. Thomas, London, Stratford, Sarnia and Chatham as well as to a few establishments in Hamilton and Toronto.
Belmont farmer Cheryl McLachlan is a fan of Railway City's beer. "We actually stumbled up on it," she said. "We were sold by the fact that it is made right here." "As farmers, we are the same way (about eating local), and it is a very good product," she added.
Railway City Brewery makes its beer in six 1,000-litre copper and stainless steel kettles. There are also several smaller kettles for brewing speciality batches. Its beer is unpasteurized and has no preservatives, giving it a better taste, according to Corriveau. But that doesn't mean the it's less safe than pasteurized beers. Beer has natural stabilizers -- hops and alcohol -- explained Barbara Ziola, Railway City's head brewer.
"The higher the alcohol content, the darker the beer and the less susceptible it is to bacteria," she said. "The biggest thing with our beer-- it's the culture of drinking fresh beer. You can taste the malt."
Blonde is the brewery's most popular kind of beer, Ziola said. It's is a very full-bodied beer, while Copper is the company's mid-range product with a little more carbonation. No matter the type, it's all made straight from the grain.
"Our process is very manual. We're dumping 50 litre bags of grain in the mash mixer and stirring it with a paddle," Ziola said. "It's very much a craft."
Railway City Brewing hopes to interest customers by offering a new type of beer each month. The beer will be custom brewed in small sample batches of 50 litres beginning in August. The first batch will be called Dead Elephant Ale, Ziola said.
"It's a brewer gone mad," she remarked. "Beer is fun. You can't take yourself too seriously."
Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 533 Location: Toronto, ON
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:52 am Post subject:
Bobsy wrote:
sstackho wrote:
"The higher the alcohol content, the darker the beer and the less susceptible it is to bacteria," she said.
What the deuce?
I was looking at that too Rob. Do brewers think consumers are stupid, or are the brewers stupid? I don't know but that is a giant load of bullshit. Their beers would be mediocre if they weren't hot messes of infection.
Joined: 10 Aug 2001 Posts: 3818 Location: Parkdale
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 11:30 am Post subject:
Bobsy wrote:
sstackho wrote:
"The higher the alcohol content, the darker the beer and the less susceptible it is to bacteria," she said.
What the deuce?
I suspect this is probably a misquote on the part of the writer. There's no way even an amateur brewer would say this.
Believe me, I've been misquoted - and seen other people misquoted - in the media enough times to know that it happens more often than not. And unless it's someone by like Josh Rubin who actually knows something about beer, I take pretty much any beer-related article I read in the mainstream press with a boulder of salt.
Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 469 Location: Riverdale
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:59 pm Post subject:
Bobsy wrote:
Shawn - how on earth do you come across this stuff?!
Well, you see I was a long time reader of the St. Thomas Journal (there has NEVER been a better reporter than Ralph Emerson) before they were taken over in the 50s by those big-city St. Thomas Times with their fancy words and colour pictures. After the merge, I steadfastly refused to purchase the new "Times-Journal" (note which name they put first), but I will occasionally read it online which doesn't cost me a penny, but I usually don't enjoy the crap that they call "news" these days. It's all geared towards the kids today that just go around chewing and popping gum in people's faces all the time and always keeping those eye-pods in your ears, trying to drain out everything around you with music, not paying attention to the world around you, and what awful music, with your rap and your punk and your metal and your hip-hop, back in the old days if you were white and listened to Chuck Berry you'd be shot on sight, 'cause rock and roll was new back then, I remember your father got into it for a period, almost formed a band and everything, but the teenagers back then, that's when, that's when they got all rebellious-like, when I got back from the war, I know it was hard on your dad me being gone during his formative years, but I got back and he pretended he didn't even know me, just strutting around with his rock music and his leather jacket, fast cars, back then cars were huge and there was no oil crisis, heck we didn't care a fig about the Saudis until Carter came along and got us scared that the oil was running out, just like the Global Warming hoax they're trying to frighten us with today and people don't realize the number of conspiracies in this nation.
Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 105 Location: Port Stanley, ON
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:33 pm Post subject:
Hey, a story from my neck of the woods!
Ya, you gotta love (as we call around here) the "T.J"....
Having had their beer (and living 10 min from the brewery)...all I will say is - they better do something once a month with specialty beers to catch attention.
Based on their current offerings, I simply drive past it to go to London to pick up my Southern Tier and Dogfish head (and PumpHouse Blueberry! yum!)
Last edited by Dokta Owange on Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 06 Feb 2005 Posts: 4598 Location: Hamilton, ON
Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:20 pm Post subject:
Dokta Owange wrote:
Hey, a story from my neck of the woods!
Ya, you gotta love (as we call around here) the "T.J"....
Having had their beer (and living 10 min from the brewery)...all I will say is - they better do something once a month with specialty beers to catch attention.
Based on their current offerings, I simply drive past it to go to London to pick up my Southern Tier and Dogfish head (and PumpHouse Blueberry! yum!)
Im also about 10 minutes from the brewery. I really like the amber a lot. It is a full bodied and earthy brew with good fruit and malts. The summer draught is good too, but the batches I had were hopped up from what I think they had planned on regularly offering. But I hear ya, if they had a more interesting portfolio, I'd be there more often than I am. _________________ Leafs fans are a special type of sports fan. And by special, I mean pretty gay!
I was just thinking how incredibly difficult it is to get an "Amber" Ale around here. Or a "Blonde" beer. Or a "Copper" Ale with a little more carbonation!!
"The higher the alcohol content, the darker the beer and the less susceptible it is to bacteria," she said.
What the deuce?
I was looking at that too Rob. Do brewers think consumers are stupid, or are the brewers stupid? I don't know but that is a giant load of bullshit. Their beers would be mediocre if they weren't hot messes of infection.
I think she was referring to the RRC Iron Spike ales and not as a general rule. The fact the Iron spike ales go from 4.3% for blonde to 4.4% for copper to 4.9% for Amber probably was the source of the comment. _________________ Gambrinus rules!
Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 7009 Location: I Heart TO
Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 9:55 pm Post subject:
Still - it reads like a brainless PR generalization, the kind of factoid nonsense people are apt to repeat, which is really too bad.
An average consumer reading this may already know Duvel is strong and Hockley Dark is not, and they may unfortunately think this quote is silly.
All this aside, I always look forward to trying new Ontario brews. Muskoka Dark and Muskoka Hefeweizen are a few examples of very encouraging 'everyday' local beers. _________________ In Beerum Veritas "... Misuse of Literally Makes Me Figuratively Insane..."
Joined: 01 Nov 2004 Posts: 467 Location: west side
Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject:
Belgian wrote:
Still - it reads like a brainless PR generalization, the kind of factoid nonsense people are apt to repeat, which is really too bad.
An average consumer reading this may already know Duvel is strong and Hockley Dark is not, and they may unfortunately think this quote is silly.
All this aside, I always look forward to trying new Ontario brews. Muskoka Dark and Muskoka Hefeweizen are a few examples of very encouraging 'everyday' local beers.
I don't know, many people I talk to think Guiness is a "heavy" beer only because of the colour....
Muskoka hefe in a can is good. Haven't tried the dark in some time.
Still - it reads like a brainless PR generalization, the kind of factoid nonsense people are apt to repeat, which is really too bad.
An average consumer reading this may already know Duvel is strong and Hockley Dark is not, and they may unfortunately think this quote is silly.
All this aside, I always look forward to trying new Ontario brews. Muskoka Dark and Muskoka Hefeweizen are a few examples of very encouraging 'everyday' local beers.
I don't know, many people I talk to think Guiness is a "heavy" beer only because of the colour....
Muskoka hefe in a can is good. Haven't tried the dark in some time.
the whole muskoka lineup is top notch. the lager is the best value in ontario IMO
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