The Bar Towel

So I think the tap list for Friday and the next few days should be:

Habits Saison (New World Saison)
Habits X Liberty (Smoked Saison)
Habits X Indie Ale House (Farmhouse Ale... not-really-brett Trois and Claussenii mixed fermentation)
Habits X Indie Ale House (Jarrylo Dry Hopped Saison)
Amsterdam Lorraine (Lichtenhainer... smoked sour cab franc barrel aged)
Indie Ale House Broken Hipster (Wit)
Liberty Village Gose Buster (Gose)
Nickel Brook Headstock (American IPA)
Northwinds Rooster Tail (American Pale Wheat)
Pommies Farmhouse Cider (Cider fermented with Saison yeast)

The Indie Beers are the same base with one going clean (with mix of our saison yeast and their wit yeast) and getting dry hopped and the other being mixed fermentation. The Smoked Saison is using house smoked (apple wood) wheat malt for half of the malt. Habits Saison is a light, bright saison with a little (just a little) Amarillo dry hop.

Anyway. Should be lots around for a few days... though I might drink all the Lorraine. Sorry.

Sadly I can't make it tonight, but I will try to pop in this weekend. With that great of a tap list, it would be awesome to have some taster option available. I wish more places did that.

The Only Cafe does it best. Even when they're busy they very happily do it and only charge $10 for 5 5-oz pours, quite a deal. Indie Ale House on the other hand, kind of annoys me. They have a base price, and then they add a $1 surcharge for many of their beers, so it can very quickly add up to $15+ tax for less than a pint equivalent.

napoleon wrote:Sadly I can't make it tonight, but I will try to pop in this weekend. With that great of a tap list, it would be awesome to have some taster option available. I wish more places did that.

The Only Cafe does it best. Even when they're busy they very happily do it and only charge $10 for 5 5-oz pours, quite a deal. Indie Ale House on the other hand, kind of annoys me. They have a base price, and then they add a $1 surcharge for many of their beers, so it can very quickly add up to $15+ tax for less than a pint equivalent.

We're actually working on getting some proper flight boards made and getting our glassware into a more consistent form (so you can order anything in 12/16/20 oz - only within resaons on the 20 oz... not like 6.5%+ stuff - or a 5 oz sample - something more like barhop). When we relaunch as more of a brewpub in the fall that's in the works.

We already do some samples we just need to standardize it a little. In the works as we transition from gastro to brew pub.

napoleon wrote:Sadly I can't make it tonight, but I will try to pop in this weekend. With that great of a tap list, it would be awesome to have some taster option available. I wish more places did that.

The Only Cafe does it best. Even when they're busy they very happily do it and only charge $10 for 5 5-oz pours, quite a deal. Indie Ale House on the other hand, kind of annoys me. They have a base price, and then they add a $1 surcharge for many of their beers, so it can very quickly add up to $15+ tax for less than a pint equivalent.

Weary of that also, a set of flights has promotional value and IMO should not cost double by volume. Not a terrific amount of work involved outside peak hours, and people drinking flights will educate their palates and come back to new favourites. Better yet, why not price any or a specific flight on special, to get people to try stuff at very low buyer risk? Bars might want to consider, what are you trying to achieve in the big picture - charge more per oz on flights, or reduce consumer resistance? That's for most people - I am assuming guys like us are the fringe, but we too would be more likely to drop by a place on a week night if we could get a flight of the special one-offs. It just seems like a great idea and I would support it.

All that natter aside I love Habits and the saison is quite something, as is the Amsterdam Lorrainne. What a gem this place and I'm liking the area.

Belgian wrote:

napoleon wrote:Sadly I can't make it tonight, but I will try to pop in this weekend. With that great of a tap list, it would be awesome to have some taster option available. I wish more places did that.

The Only Cafe does it best. Even when they're busy they very happily do it and only charge $10 for 5 5-oz pours, quite a deal. Indie Ale House on the other hand, kind of annoys me. They have a base price, and then they add a $1 surcharge for many of their beers, so it can very quickly add up to $15+ tax for less than a pint equivalent.

Weary of that also, a set of flights has promotional value and IMO should not cost double by volume. Not a terrific amount of work involved outside peak hours, and people drinking flights will educate their palates and come back to new favourites. Better yet, why not price any or a specific flight on special, to get people to try stuff at very low buyer risk? Bars might want to consider, what are you trying to achieve in the big picture - charge more per oz on flights, or reduce consumer resistance? That's for most people - I am assuming guys like us are the fringe, but we too would be more likely to drop by a place on a week night if we could get a flight of the special one-offs. It just seems like a great idea and I would support it.

All that natter aside I love Habits and the saison is quite something, as is the Amsterdam Lorrainne. What a gem this place and I'm liking the area.

Just an updated FYI. You can do a flight of these four beers all week (hopefully the farmhouse holds out... it's being hit hardest). Flights should be arranged in order of how we'd have them tasted (with the smoke last, since it's the boldest flavor). You can ask for a sample pour of anything thought. We're waiting on proper sample boards and glasses, so they're all in 5oz OCB glasses. Though, our pour is only 14oz to start with, so maybe just get all four in 14 oz! :p

We've done promotional saison flights before (I believe it was ours, Paysan, Amsterdam Leaf, and a Northwinds) for like $8? That's like $2 for 5 oz, which is pretty competitive with Bar Hop.

Either way, we're currently working on revamping our whole pricing model for flights and creating some set flights with a few more of our beers so keep the feedback coming about even what you'd like in the ideal case. Should be more organized soon, either way. But for now. Flights of these one-offs all totally possible. Thought our guided tastings are only arrangeable by Bar Towel private message! :p

Just a little update on our taps over here. Tapping a collaboration with Escarpment Labs today. Somehow I haven't drank all the Lorraine yet.

Habits Brewing – Saison – New World Saison – 5.8%
Habits Brewing – Rye'd For Wellspring – Rye Saison – 6.2% (Some proceeds go towards Will Tompkinson's Ride for Wellspring!)
Habits Brewing x Escarpment - Escarpment #2 – Farmhouse – 6%
Habits Brewing x Indie – Jarilo – Dry Hopped Saison - 6.4%
Habits Brewing x Liberty – Fume – Smoked Saison – 5%
Amsterdam Brewhouse – Lorraine – Lichtenhainer - 4%
Liberty Village Brewing Company – Gosebuster – Gose - 5%
Indie Alehouse - Broken Hipster – Belgian Wit - 5%
Great Lakes Brewing – Limp Puppet – Session IPA – 3.8%
Pommies – Farmhouse Cider – Cider - 6%

New beer today. We’ve got six of our saison/farmhouse beers on tap. New high water mark. We do flights!



Habits Saison (New World Saison) – Our Classic Amarillo Dry Hopped Saison
Rye’d For Wellspring (Rye Saison) – Collaboration with Wellspring Charity, Hoppy Rye Saison
Escarpment #2 (Farmhouse) – Collaboration with Escarpment Labs using their brett and yeast. Old World-ish.
Pellon Pekko (Dry Hopped Farmhouse) – Actually a second pitch of the blend from Escarpment #2 just dry hopped with Pekko hops. Cool hop, Pekko.
Fume (Smoked Saison) – House apple wood smoked saison brewed with Liberty Village
Thermidor (Nelson Sauvin Saison) – Loads of Nelson hops with Sauvignon Blanc infused oak. More info about this series at http://www.habitsgastropub.com/revolution

More soon. Working on getting the number of interesting beer increased. Working with GTA Brew's on the Brew Slam and with the People's Pint in the coming weeks. Let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: We've got Sawdust City's Golden Beach, Nickel Brook's Paysan, and Liberty Village's Gosebuster (plus Pommes Farmhouse) on the other tap. 9 beer lines, 7 saions/farmhouse beers.

Rebranding soon. Finally can properly announce!

Going to be Folly Brewpub when we relaunch in October.

Congratulations!

Looking forward to the restaurant relaunch, draft appearing elsewhere and bottles!

Congrats...happy to have more good beer in the neighborhood

I mentioned to Manon, one of the owners of Buster Rhino's TO, that you've received your manufacturers license allowing for off-site sales. She seemed interested in getting some of your beer when it's available.

We will be open Sundays now!

Should be tapping a Farmhouse IPA (two bretts, galaxy and sorachi ace hops) and a Spelt Saison today too.

Update for bartowel folks!

We're currently running a saison/whatever tap takeover for Toronto Beer Week:



We've got this lineup:



With a Rainhard "True Grit" ready to tap if anything dies. Trying to focus on getting more neighborhood (Burdock/Rainhard/Indie/Junction/Bellwoods/Lansdowne) taps as our guests rather than bigger folks further out (who we still love... but there is so much going on nearby!).

Also we (um, I guess me. We have two brewers) were in the Globe and Mail today talking about our friends at Escarpment Labs: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/foo ... e26477958/

In the process of getting to 100% Escarpment Labs blends (should be by the new year, just squeezing the life out of our other house cultures into their generational teens). 100% mixed fermentation brett/sach yeasts. Who needs clean fermentation anyway!? We have apparently 28 isolated different cultures/brett/bugs/sach coming in our next order.

Loads of things in the works too... just got four wine barrels from Westcott Estates which are all going to be filled with Escarpment Bug Blends (one of which is all Ontario wild yeast isolates). Except a Pinot barrel... that gets a mixed fermented Quad.

GTA Brews (homebrew) collaboration this Saturday for Cask Days (mixed fermentation, obviously). Other cask should be a brett l. porter (calling it a farmhouse porter... whatever) which has loads of red fruit and cherry character from the brett and loads of chocolate malt and english character from the malt. Should be nice on cask, since it's nice flat right now. Early samples taste like black forest cake to me, but you know, just malts/hops/yeasts/water. No funky ingredients aside from our brett predilection.

And we should be rebranded to Folly Brewpub by Cask Days. And should have keg versions of both of our Cask Days beers (force carbonated) on tap during Cask Days if anyone wants to compare the cask to the drought versions.

This is what's fermenting right now.



Peach Super Saison is in the brite now and should be on tap by the weekend. Fresh hop saison (Roncesvalle grown!) or the spiced saison (just try to guess what we added to that!) next in line. Then we start getting some sour stuff ready. Got a pinot barrel (Lailey Vineyard, before the big sale) of our saison that's about six months in and ready to move to carbonation... and our first sour barrel (another Lailey pinot barrel) should be ready by the end of October. Bottle conditioned ones to follow when they are ready.

And we probably should get a blog for this at this point... Haha.

Very intrigued by this. I am still in the swallow end with my knowledge of Saisons but I find they are a natural with food pairings. Especially rich food. I will have to come check this out.

alsiem wrote:Very intrigued by this. I am still in the swallow end with my knowledge of Saisons but I find they are a natural with food pairings. Especially rich food. I will have to come check this out.

actually, it's the opposite. saisons are crips and delicate. pair it with food like you'd pair white wines. so oysters, chicken in a lighter sauce, even some pork dishes, and especially seafood. pairs well with cheese as well. ceviche's also a great option for pairing.
i don't recall Habits menu, so i can't speak specifically what it would pair with.
rich food tends to pair with rich beer. e.g. barbeque and quads or porters.