The Bar Towel

Another good score with a seasonal from this brewer. Based on an amber ale and the orange is not overpowering or sweet or synthetic... the orange is really down-played and subtle and it actually enhances the great hop mix on this one ( Styrian Goldings/fuggels-saaz).....takes you a few sips to start detecting the orange in any volumes. The citrus tastes ride well in the hop profile...but this ale also has a decent malt complexity...some Maris Otter, crystal and cara pils with some unmalted wheat flake for dryness in finish and fullness in body.

Well put together ale.

Oh and for the marketing guys from OBA it should get "best packaging" gold award for it's neat silk screened bottle and orange foil cap wrapper.

Sounds tasty, and tasteful. Not listed at LCBO.com, but presumably it will be one fine day...?

shintriad wrote:Sounds tasty, and tasteful. Not listed at LCBO.com, but presumably it will be one fine day...?

Ya know shin, I got the feeling this stuff will fly off the shelves probably before the hit and miss LCBO inventory DB is listing it or adjusting stock levels...I don't think it will come in in big numbers if they distribute widely...when at the brewery I talked with Peter and he said he suspected we "might" see only a few bottles outside the major GTA stores....if you want to be sure to get some I recommend going to the brewery store.

If there is a star or GTA broadsheet review of the ale, kiss it gone in a week or so.

Is this on draft anywhere yet?

Hey Pootz, I live downtown so it's not a huge imposition to hit the big LCBOs...hopefully I'll be able to snag a bottle or two before it sells out.

If it does indeed sell out, I suppose it'll send a good message to the system and to local micros.

JerCraigs wrote:Is this on draft anywhere yet?

Yes. It's a C'est What. I had a half pint last night. I found the orange to be very, very subtle. I was underwhelmed by this brew. It would be interesting to see it in a blindfolded lineup test with other similar ales to see if the orange flavour is really noticeable at all.

I had a pint at Volo. Tastes like malt liquor to me.

It's also available at Smokeless. I had another half pint last night. Same impression as before.

lister wrote:It's also available at Smokeless. I had another half pint last night. Same impression as before.

Not a hop bomb eh? another let down

pootz wrote:Not a hop bomb eh?

Far from, tastes more like a mediocre Pale Ale and I also got no orange from it at all.

Strange, I detected a crapload of orange peel, I actually thought it was a bit of overkill. The pale ale base tasted a bit dirty to me, though...that was my primary complaint.

Maybe it has something to do with expectations... I really didn't expect much... and I really enjoyed it:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/94 ... /?ba=Derek

It was relatively fresh, and it followed a Nickel brook bock & a pilsbock (which was more like malt liquor), so that may have skewed my impression. I love bocks, but this was definitely my favourite of the night.

Seems most tasters put it in the 3-3.5 range.....where it belongs...no it's not an US styled micro "big" beer...it's fairly tame by these standards.....and yes, I agree it's time for some craft brewer here to venture forth and test the waters with a "big" US styled micro double IPA or Imperial wheat or even an IPA that can deliver 65IBU with +16plato to match.....but this isn't it and I don't think it was intended to be.

A decent mild amber with some natural citrus to it... all grain and craft brewed...nothing more or less.

So, let's not make the mistake the OBA judges did and compare apples with oranges

I agree with pootz. I would love access to a double
ipa or imperial wheat. I picked up some Bell's Wheat Love in the fall and really enjoyed it. But hey we've got the award winning Steelback.

I picked up a couple of bottles of this today, and I'm drinking one right now. It's not bad - a mellow and well put-together ale, and as pootz notes, the orange is quite subtle. Honestly, if I didn't know they'd used oranges & peel in the brew, I'd think that the citrus notes just come from the hops.

As an aside - my wife had a few sips, and said that it reminded her of what Keith's used to taste like about 20 years ago when she lived in Halifax and the pub at the original brewery used to let her and her friends drink there underage. So I guess Keith's really was a decent ale at some point in the not-so-distant past.