Cat and Don's Most Excellent Amsterdam Adventure

Cat looks up at one of the humongous vats
at the new Amsterdam Brewery in Leaside

For a brewery that won three golds, a silver and a bronze, not to mention Beer Of The Year for their Spring Bock at the 10th Annual Ontario Brewing Awards last Spring, you'd think I'd have no problem finding Amsterdam Brewery. I mean, their address is published on their website, I have Mapquest.com - should be an easy A-to-B fluid motion. So when my friend Cat asked if I needed directions for a tour we were taking on Saturday, I laughed that hardy, typically-male "I don't need no stinkin' directions" laugh.

And of course, I got lost. Seriously lost because Mapquest sent me off the Don Valley Parkway one exit too soon, making their subsequent directions useless. In fact, what the "one exit too soon" does do to your travels is send you further away from your destination. You know that super-panicky feeling that overwhelms you when you innately sense you're moving further away from beer, rather than towards it. You sense a "disturbance in the Force"? No? Just me? Okay, then... (Liars..) So this (heavy sigh) led to several phone calls to Cat, who laughed and laughed, stopped laughing briefly and then laughed and laughed some more... and eventually she got me turned in the right direction. Easy for her - the recently-opened brewery, nestled in the Leaside community of Toronto, is a five-minute drive for her. I was driving in from the suburban wilds of Burlington... with faulty directions and stubborn male stupidity as my navigators. I've always believed that beer lovers were born with a beer compass within.

Took me a while to find Amsterdam Brewery but when I did,
clearly I was in my happy place. Beer as far as the eye can see!

So after eating sufficient crow, (say three Hail Mary's and five 'I'm an idiot's, my son...), suffice it to say, we didn't make the 1 pm tour. Fortunately, the brewery holds them every hour on the hour on Saturday so we could simply wait until the 2 pm tour and well, if you're gonna be stuck somewhere with some time to kill, where better than a brewery? So we nestled up to the tasting bar and got a preview of what we were about to see in the brewing process.

Our guide, an amiable and outgoing fellow named Chris, walked a rapidly-growing collection of us through the brewery, explaining each step as we went along. I knew a good chunk of what he was explaining about the actual brewing process from my stint at Toronto's Beer Academy but I knew little beyond that. When it came to the bottling and canning process, as well as their volume and distribution, I knew nothing and drank it all in with rapt fascination. We learned Amsterdam, which will turn 30 in 2016, cranks out the equivalent of 300,000 cases of beer a year in bottles, cans and kegs. In Toronto, that puts it just behind only two other craft outlets: Mill Street Brewery and Steam Whistle Brewing. According to Chris, when they bought Peterborough's Kawartha Lakes Brewing 10 years ago, they not only continued their line, they brought the KLB brewmaster in to make it. He remains with the company to this day. (The award-winning KLB Raspberry Wheat has a huge following during the warmer months and for my money is the best fruit-flavoured beer out there. Muted sweetness and wheaty goodness.)

The Amsterdam-jammed  inside of Cat's beer fridge,
 which is conveniently located beside her Lazy-Boy
 chair in the living room. Ironically, my beer fridge is
 located, ahem, roughly 12 steps from my Lazy-Boy.

When it came time to belly up to the sample bar, we got to try all the beer we'd heard about, including the KLB Raspberry Wheat, as well as Boneshaker IPA and Natural Blonde, both of which I have heaped liberal praise on in previous blogs. Their 4.1% 416 Lager is unfiltered (much like Boneshaker) so there's a very light natural cloudiness to it with a grassy aroma and a very very light citrus hop to it. Great summer session beer. Their Wee Heavy Scotch Ale threw me with its very earthy aroma but this 6.2% brew has a nice malty finish - definitely a cold weather beer. The nicest surprise of the samplers was their Big Wheel Amber Ale. I'd had it a few years ago and just kind of forgot about it. This 5% offering is lightly hopped, just 19 IBUs (international bitterness units), relying more on its imported malts. Burnt malt gives it a crisp, clean taste. It's one of Cat's favourites as her beer fridge (right) will attest. But the one I wanted to get my hands on was their Fracture Imperial IPA, a 9%, 115 IBU hop bomb that they sold in their retail store.

Why? My buddy, Glenn, who recently made the foray into IPAs (not gonna say it was this blog that sent him down this path... *cough cough*... it totally was...) bought one and said all he could smell was pot. That's not surprising as Chris explained to us that numerous hops came from the same botanical family as marijuana.

Amsterdam's uber-cool ceramic swing top growlers

I could see where he was confused. Its aroma is pine, pine and more pine but yeah, if you think pot while you're smelling it, that certainly comes to mind. Granted, that just begs the question: why was Glenn thinking of dope? Citrus and tropical fruit dominate the taste, which is outstanding. It scored a couple of points higher than Boneshaker on RateBeer (95 vs 93) but Boneshaker had a huge edge on style point. So naturally, as well as the singles of Fracture, I also grabbed a case of Boneshaker IPA and singles of their Autumn Hop Harvest Ale and KLB Pale Ale. I'll let you know one night when I crack open a quiet beer... followed by 11 incredibly noisy ones. (They say you can't always get what you want. And yet, every time I want a beer, that theory goes down the crapper.)

My poor friend Kevin tried a Mad Tom IPA
for the first time and got Gus Fring-ed. 

Another buddy, Kevin, also emailed me a few days back to say he had dipped his toes into the IPA waters after years of drinking traditional Canadian fare. So what's his first IPA? Uhhhh, wow - Muskoka Brewery's Mad Tom IPA. One BIG step up from what he's used to. I was actually afraid for him. Hell, I was afraid for his entire family. So I emailed him back, asking, "Did it blow the top of your head off?"

His two-word answer: "Sort of..." But he attached a picture of Breaking Bad drug-lord Gus Fring (Kevin and I watched the entire series over the course of a month at virtually the same time) with his face, well, half blown off from the last episode in Season 4. Ummm, way too late spoiler alert? That's good old Gus on the right there. Crime doesn't pay. He should have opened a craft brewery. Regardless, the other night, Kevin continued his sojourn into craft beers and was thrilled with Flying Monkey's Hoptical Illusion Not Quite Pale Ale, which reminded him of an English Bitter. In fact, he drank the entire stock the restaurant had, which was only two, but still, we can all shout with pride, "Kevin drank them dry!!!"

Okay, a couple of corrections from my last blog... and I can't believe I've written this many without a single mea culpa to date. In my last blog, I said that Steam Whistle's unique green painted-label bottles were re-used 20 times, as opposed to 12-15 for the industry standard. The brewery was quick to correct me. It's actually a staggering 45 times, three times the industry standard!

Turns out that Black Oak Brewery has
been taking loving care of Lone Pine IPA

The next correction came from Aaron Spinney, the head brewer of Sawdust City Brewing in Bracebridge. I had said their Lone Pine IPA was brewed in the Brewmasters Course at Niagara College. Uhhhh, not quite. The college was cited as the source brewery by RateBeer, where I got the info and it turns out that's not quite the case. Here's Aaron's message...

"Loved the article. I'd just like to clear up one thing about our Sawdust City Brewery. We brew all our brands (Lone Pine included) at Black Oak Brewery in Etobicoke as our facility up North comes to a completion. In 2011, while I was in school and Sam Corbeil was teaching there, we did a few batches at Niagara College for testing. I've been personally brewing this since I started with Sawdust back in April. Prior to my arrival, Sam and the boys at Black Oak have been brewing our elixir.

Keep up the good work, wicked blog. And remember don't be shy to contact us for any information or questions you have for us. This industry is a very friendly and open and we love sharing... And drinking.

Enjoy the beer, keep on blogging!"

Wow, cool. Good on Black Oak... whose 10 Bitter Years Imperial IPA will be getting some serious praise here in the near future. And thank you, Aaron, for being so cool about my gaffe. (Note to self: buy more Lone Pine IPA... I really like the head brewer... he's good people.)

Hey, hey... look at what KC got me for Christmas!

Okay, last blog I promised to review the Lake Of  Bays Mocha Porter, Flying Monkeys The Chocolate Manifesto Chocolate Milk Stout, Brewery Ommegang's Game of Thrones' Take The Night Stout, as well as their Hennipen Farmhouse Saison. But a very cool brewery tour interrupted that. The good news? I've had three of the four so next time, okay? Quick question: are there ANY bad porters and stouts? Seriously. I know it's cold out but... geez, I am loving these winter beers. Gotta be the chocolate. No rush... we all know I'll pop a tasty brew or five and write a blog (or go on Facebook) when I have nothing better to do in a few days. Unfortunately, I also do that when I do have better things to do. Like cleaning Donny's Bar and Grill. The dust bunnies are starting to steal the beer. Thieving dust bastards.

Okay, shout-outs! First up, of course, is Cat who did the Amsterdam Brewery tour with me! You rock. That was a blast! Mill Street next. Next on deck is my friend, KC, who, like me took a wee break over the holidays. Well, folks, she's bad and she's back. Check out her very funny Confessional of a Former Fat girl at: I'm Back, Baby!

Two comedy troupes take a run at beer and they're both funny. First up is comedy group Nacho Punch, who run the piss out of craft beer geeks here at: Hipsters Love Craft Beer And well, I love craft beer so I'm not gonna let that funny video go unchallenged. So here's Random At Best taking a run at commercially popular brews: An Honest Beer Commercial. That one has some language so watch around young ears.

QUICK ADDITION: Cat reminded me to say that you can get 25-packs (yes, 25) of Big Wheel or Natural Blonde at the Amsterdam brewery for $32.95 plus deposit. Jump on that, people... not sure how long that's gonna last!!!

Okay, folks, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain...

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