Portside Amber Premium Ale

[old faithful]

This offering by Trafalgar Brewing of Oakville has been around for some years. Until now I never felt any bottle I bought (usually at Queen's Quay or Summerhill) was in really good condition but the other day I tried again and picked a great bottle, dated to June 5 so probably recently brewed. This beer is extremely good, it tastes like a cross between the cask Fuller ESB, and cask Greene King's Abbot, ales in England. Portside Amber has the Fuller beer's appealing cherry-like estery quality and Abbot Ale's distinctive spicy hop taste. Very impressive. On cask Portside Ale would be sensational. But bottled it is very fine and retains a nice yeasty quality despite being filtered.

This is beer brewed by people who know exactly how traditional southern English-style ale should taste. Keep it up.

Gary

[pootz]

Where would you rate it on the RB scale? 2.5-3? Higher?

I had contemplated trying it but the ratings on RB all suggest it's another mediocre effort from this brewer ...like the bland Elora efforts. I'm sick of paying top dollar for weak forgettable micros so I passed it by for a year or more at the stores.

[SteelbackGuy]

It's good!
I havwnt rated it, but if I did and remember correctly, somewhere like 2.5-2.8 for me. I still enjoyed it.

Now the new fix beer, well I dunno......

[old faithful]

So much depends, for a micro product in particular, on getting the product in good condition. Rating systems can be helpful but for me are general guides. I'll often wait a year or so if a beer seems not what it should (or "can") be and then try again. The Portside Amber I bought at Summerhill the other day is much better than any bottle I previously sampled. Either the recipe has been tweaked or maybe this is the first time I've tasted the beer in really good condition. Anyway, it is very good. I used to try to buy at the brewery for much of my micro buys but that is not feasible for me now. So I try as The Brewer counselled recently to "read the codes" and as a general rule, the further ahead the expiry date the better the beer seems to be. Sometimes that is not so, e.g. recently I bought a London Porter (Fuller) expiry dated in December of this year. I had had one a few days before expiry dated in June '05. Against expectation, the older brew tasted better. In this case, age may have improved it, which I think can occur occasionally even if a beer isn't bottle-conditioned. But again I find beer, except maybe if it is a strong specialty such as, say, Eisbock or one of the strong Unibroues, is best sampled as new as possible. It is funny the things you remember or that influence people, maybe not always logically (although I think in the case of 5% abv beer freshness never hurts). An early issue of All About Beer contained an article about a small brewery in Northern Michigan which was selling bottled-conditioned beer. AAB asked the brewer whether he liked the bottles to be aged for any particular period. He said the beer could be good after quite a time but it was best "right off the line, sweet and fresh". That statement always stuck with me and I've found it to be true. Most beers are expiry dated today and it is possible therefore to be assured of a certain degree of freshness. Expiry codes are not a guarantee (because other factors of course can affect quality) but generally in my experience buying at least three months in advance of the expiry date (I'm thinking here specifically of unpasteurised micro beers) assures a high level of freshness and then I can assess the beer fairly because I am tasting it at its best.

gary