Ottawa Foodies

Dropped by the Brewery after visiting the Vankleek Hill Festival of Flavours. Lots of great news:

* At the Golden Tap Awards Beau's WON BEST ONTARIO BREWERY 2008.

* For the 2rd Year Running Lug Tread WON the Golden Tap Award 2008 for the Best Beer in Ontario (outside the GTA). This is the third win in total for Lug Tread at this annual event.

* Golden Tap Awards will be given out on Friday, October 24th at The Manx vendor 567 (winner of the Best Bar in Ontario).

* Beau's featured in a recent issue of Ottawa Magazine.

* Beau's to be featured on CTV-Ottawa's Regional Contact later this Fall... date still to be confirmed.

* Festivale Plus available for sale at the Brewery while supplies last.

* Oktoberfest Beer coming in October... details to follow.

* Beau's Party at the Elmdale House Tavern vendor 1274 on Saturday, September 27th will feature the Beau's Band the "Oh Yeahs!"

* The Brewery has added a new reach in cooler in the store, with cool signage, and filled with Bottles and Growlers.

* New Beau's promotional merchandise is on order / arriving... Mason Jars, "Farm" Hats, Toques and Scarves.

* Brewery now carries Thomas Riding Wing-It Products (Thomas is the chef at Sam Jakes Inn in Merrickville).

Steve one of the co-owners was gracious enough to let the local brewers' club have their annual malt shipment delivered to the brewery along with their own regular shipment (shippers will generally only ship to a place with a proper loading dock). Last night we went out en-masse to pick up our malt and check out the brewery.

I arrived fairly early and was greeted by Steve and a complimentary glass of Lug Tread. He left soon thereafter since he was apparently on "night shift" with all the bottling they had ahead of them. After loading up our metric tonne of malt into various vehicles, we hung around and chatted with Steve's dad Tim, and several of us helped with bottling the ceramic bottles of Lug Tread. I was reminded of why I as a homebrewer only lasted 1 year at the bottling game before investing in a kegging system. That was over 10 years ago now and I haven't looked back :-)

We all had a great time, and were treated well by our hosts. Though it was not a completely charitable event on their part since we walked away with several hundred dollars in beer in addition to our malt. My own tab topped $200 for a 20L keg of Lug Tread, and 5 growlers of Lug Tread and Bogwater.

Beau's is a great place for a weekend daytrip. Vankleek Hill is a nice town that I had never stumbled on before, a bit of a gem in Eastern Ontario... having a brewery doesn't hurt either.

Beau's Brewery isn't exactly the most polished place in the world, it is after all a working brewery. There's a small storefront through the front door, attached to the brewery, which you can see into. Offers some nice brewerania (coasters, pint glasses, assorted Beau's clothing) but, most importantly, beer. Samples were offered from a tap behind the counter with friendly explanations of both brews. Both lugtread and bogwater were for sale in growlers and 750mL ceramic swing-tops. Brewery tour was offered and was well worth the time. A short tour with an overview of the process. Highlight was samples from the fermenting tanks, letting us check out both brews at various stages of the process, great to see the beer develop. I'll head back sometime!

Golden Tap Awards

2008 - LUG TREAD - BEST BEER 2008 (Outside the GTA)
2007 - LUG TREAD - BEST BEER 2007 (Outside the GTA)
2006 - LUG TREAD - BEST BEER OF THE 2006 FESTIVAL

Ottawa's new favourite session beer (or at least it seems like that sometimes), Beau's seems to have had alot of success getting their beer out there. Any decent bar will have Beau's on tap and when I ask for craft beer at fine restaurants, Beau's is usually one of the few they actually have.

Not the most prolific style in the NA micro-scene, Beau's deserves props for this shot at the continental kolsch. Keeping with Beau's overall image, the first thing that comes to mind when sampling lugtread is barnyard... that sounds bad, but it isn't. Lugtread is all about very grainy, sweet, juicy malt that puts you in mind of the fruitiness of an English bitter and the crispness of a German lager. Hops play second fiddle with some really nice floral aroma and faint herbal taste.

This is a very easy drinking beer. Tasty enough to appeal to your beer geek, but familiar enough not to scare away your average punter. The Capital Region is lucky to have this so widely available.

YAY Elmdale -- I'll be right over! Here's the man responsible... the Master Brewer Matthew.

I do know that the church has always been heavily involved in one way or another with the production of beer, but have not heard this particular story. And with all due respect to Steve, I am always extremely skeptical about stories like this which come from breweries - even trusted micros. They tend to seriously over-simplify things like this (usually as a result of the marketing department, though that's not likely the case here). In fairness, within any given context breweries typically don't have time to tell the full story, or don't have an audience who really cares about it. And they will of course leave out parts that might mean they sell less beer.

One of the hugest factors that I've always read about in switching to hops was the fact that hops have natural antiseptic properties, and brewers noticed that beers brewed with hops would keep longer. This would of course be something that your local brewery making gruit beer does not want to tell you because they don't want it being misunderstood as meaning the beer they are selling you might be bad. Keep in mind that back when gruit was being used we didn't even know simple things like how boiling the beer kills germs and so forth. So I especially don't want to give the impression that Bog Water is any more likely to be bad than any other beer - because with a modern brewery it simply is not.

Here is a good little article from Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit which confirms this story but also echos my comment on how this tends to get oversimplified.

Captain Caper...
See you tuesday for another pint....
Cheers

I got a whole mouthful of nicely toasted malt. A good balance of the bitters (springing from the sweet gale and almost burnt malt) and the residule sugars.

I certainly got the chocolate notes as well as the floral wiffs. In fact the chocolate notes were so present, for me, that I remarked to my friend "This beer is the first and only beer I would like to try a chocolate bar with".

There is a lingering complex finish that the brewmaster should be proud of.

Mind you, this brew is not for the feint of heart or should I say palette. It's a 'full meal deal' when it comes to the nose , the front and back end as well as the finish.

Like I find many of good dark ales, they are more for supping than quaffing. If I want to quaff, I'll go grab a Beau's LugTread.

A throw back to earlier times, Bogwater was released for Valentine's day (2008). It uses sweet gale harvested from Northern Quebec in place of hops and is a strong, brown ale.

Alongside dark, fruity German malts on the nose you get the myrtle. Spicy, very floral with an almost medicinal herbal note.

It's nice that the sweet gale doesn't take this beer over. Malts are blended very well to give you vinous, dark fruit and some chocolate sweetness with a bit of roasted bitterness. Sweet gale is interesting. Taste matches the aroma of the sweet gale very well, the bouquet-like floral note, the herbal spiciness. You also get some really forward pepper notes though. Beer does a fine job hiding its alcohol content. Last finish gives some really nice maple notes. Really interesting and refreshingly adventurous. Available in growlers and 750ml swingtops from the brewery and several local restaurants/bars.

Was introduced in the Summer of 2008, and sold exclusively at Ontario Festivals (like the Franco-Ontarien Festival in Ottawa) and thru the Brewery (when available). A more intensely "Festivale Plus" was revealed later in the summer and sold at the Brewery and again at select events.

I had a "sample" of the original Festivale, and I enjoyed it. "The Man" had a glass of Festivale Plus at the Vankleek Hill Festival of Flavours late September, and he liked it a lot, but Beau's Lug Tread is still is favourite!