Labatt USA and Goose Island Honker Ale

Labatt Prohibition Series' Bourbon Barrel Ale? Huh?
What SORCERY is this? I have never seen this product
before and I have worked at the Beer Store part-time
and full-time since 1991. Well, keep reading to find out

I was stocking the shelves at my Beer Store recently when co-worker Marie called me over to the empties room.

She handed me a stubbie - a shorter but wider bottle style used uniformly by all Canadian breweries between 1962 and 1982. In 1983, Miller High Life was introduced to Canadians in a long-neck bottle and basically, due to its frenzied popularity, it changed all beer bottles across this country to all shapes and sizes once again. So at first, I assumed, "Wow, this is an old beer."

I mean, whenever someone from my high school on Facebook scans an old high school photo, the closest table is invariably littered with stubbies. If I'm actually in the photo, I'm usually face-planted on the table... surrounded by stubbies. Good times. Reading this, you are, no doubt, thinking, "Well, clearly this guy was an Honour student!" If by that you mean on occasion I would honour a teacher by showing up for class, then hellz yeah, I was an Honour student.

But back to this bottle. I examined the bottle closely. It couldn't be an oldie-goldie because it was twist-off and back then all our bottles were "church key", meaning, "someone better have a bottle opener or Bob's using his teeth again and last time, that ended in a hospital visit." There's a reason that all those super-sophisticated high-tech telescopes looking for signs of intelligent life in the universe are always pointed away from Earth.

Also, the bottle, as you can see, is listed in ounces, not millilitres so you know instantly, it's from America. Only three countries in the world don't use the metric system - the USA, Liberia and Burma. I am fairly certain this little beer bottle didn't make it all the way to Oakville, Canada by way of either Liberia or Burma.

The Genessee Brewery in the High Falls area of
Buffalo mades a line of beers for Labatt USA, which
we cannot get up here in the Great White North.

So, of course, I thought, "Which of the many Labatt breweries scattered across this great land is making this unique beer and shipping it directly south thus giving only Americans the chance to try it? Bastardos!" So Marie went on Google Hunt and found a link for Labatt USA - like this beer, a company completely unfamiliar to me. "It must be brewed up here," I told her, "because I know Labatt has no breweries in the States." Well, once again, I managed to be both right and wrong in the same sentence. This happens to me with alarming frequency and makes taking advice from me a total crap-shoot. You have to figure out which half of what I said is actually great advice and avoid the other half, which will instantly lead you down the path of ruin and despair.

Labatt does not have a brewery in the USA but this beer is, in fact, brewed down there under contract at the Genesee Brewery in the High Falls neighbourhood of Buffalo.

Well, Labatt-brewed Goose Island Honker Ale bills
itself as an "English-style bitter" and since I have
never had the Chicago Honker Ale to compare the
two, I decided to pit this beer against two others,
London's Fuller's ESB (the world-wide gold standard
for the style) and Nickel Brook's craft Equilibrium
ESB. How did it fare against these two bad boys? Uhh...

Do you know what this means? It means Labatt, a brewing giant here, is also a contract brewer. something usually associated with small craft brewers. To put it in perspective for my American friends, imagine if you will, Anheuser-Busch contract-brewing a specialty line out of, say, Wellington Brewing in Guelph, Ontario under the name AB-Canada? As Spock would say, "Fascinating, Jim." (To which Kirk would likely reply: "What... did...YOU... say?") To that end, Marie's boy toy Ernie has a sister visiting from the north-east USA in a couple of weeks and Marie has put her on a Level-Five Labatt Prohibition Series' Bourbon Barrel Ale Hunt. I'll let you know if the hunt is successful.

But since we're already talking about Labatt so let's keep that ball rolling for a bit. As I last reported, Labatt (by virtue of its association with Anheuser-Busch) has the rights to brew a line of beers from Chicago's beloved craftie Goose Island, which was purchased a while back by AB. I talked at length about the Goose IPA that landed here in mid-April in my last one. Once again, this week, I got Goosed when our Labatt delivery arrived - this time by Labatt's take on the Goose Island Honker Ale. But there was an inherent problem this time. When I tried the Labatt Goose IPA, I had, in fact, imbibed the real deal from Chicago in Las Vegas two weeks prior.

I have to wonder what Chicago Goose Island's, well,
imposing Brewmaster Jared Jankosi thinks about
the Canadian take on his beloved American classics?
Because, frankly, I think his beard could beat us up.

But I have never sampled the Honkers Ale out of Chicago. What am I gonna compare this Labatt version to? Well, the bottle says it's an "English-style bitter" so I figured why not pit it against Fuller's ESB, out of London, England and my local crafties Nickel Brook's Equilibrium ESB? Did I deliberately stack the deck with ringers against the Labatt's beer? Of course, I did. If you wanna play in the Premiere Craft League, you best be ready to pull up your Big Boy Brew Pants. Okay, much like it's Chicago counterpart, the Honker is a lighter ale, clocking in at just 4.3% but they did, well, goose it a little with 30 IBUs (international bitterness units) just as the Chicago one does. Some light fruit on the nose and light bitter tweak on the tongue make this a decent though not at all outstanding session ale. Spanking #1 came at the hands of the Equilibrium which packs some power at 5.5% and 43 IBUs. Bready on the nose, this begins hoppy on the tongue but slides quickly into a caramel maltiness. Nicely done! Okay, let's turn that Honker around for a roundhouse kick to the nards, courtesy of Fuller's. At 5.9%, this ESB is a legend in the industry and very much my favourite British beer thus far. A nifty fruit burst on the nose, slyly spiced on the tongue, this is pretty much the yard-stick for ESBs worldwide. Outstanding, as always.

Seen here is the now-gone Labatt's Brewery on King St East
and Ontario Street in Toronto. A little piece of Canadiana.

However, I want to make one clarification here. The ESB is far from my favourite beer style. I have had a few for the purpose of this blog but they're one-and-done beers for me. Perhaps a true Brit like Upstairs Simon might have a more favourable opinion about the Honker Ale. And frankly, I do applaud Labatt for at least trying to break out of the mainstream mold with a couple of outside-the-corporate-box Goose Island beers. These two beers will never make the millions that their Budweiser does. Neither will they ever steal away any real segment of craft beer drinkers. So while the results may be C-minus, the beer behemoth should get an A+ for effort. And to be honest, I have purchased the Goose IPA a couple of times since. It's not really an IPA by my standards but it's really a pretty good little pale ale. Also, Labatt, take heart - my co-worker Jay-Dawg tried the Honker on tap and loved it.

Okay, I've make it this far without mentioning an IPA (besides Goose, which was in passing) so I'm gonna keep that trend going and look at a couple of other styles I have recently.

Now this is a nice pale ale, the Royal City
Brewing Company's (Guelph) Dry
Hopped Pale Ale.  A Kylie choice for me.

There are a few Beer Certainties in my life. One is I will put in five days a week at the Beer Store and will continue to do so... until I win the lottery. Two, I will be at Nickel Brook Brewing at least twice a week to fill growlers with their nectar-of-the-gods Headstock IPA and will continue to do so... until I win the lottery, in which case, I will then fly around the world drinking the best craft beers from every country. And three, I will always stop at Rib Eye Jack's Ale House on Thursdays for their Mini-Cask Night, hosted by their talented beer technician Kylie and will continue to do so... until I win the lottery. In which case, I will buy a castle and get contractors to seriously gouge me (because I'm filthy rich) throughout the process of converting it into Donny's Bar and Grill, the biggest craft beer bar in the world. That castle will also be located in Hawaii because screw winter. Then I would hire Kylie for a stack of cash taller than she is, let her run it while I travel the world drinking the best craft beers and shipping crates of them back to my Uber Cool Craft Castle. If you think I'm putting too much faith in a lottery win, go work for a few decades and then get back to me.

Well, the point is I trust Kylie's judgement because my tastes mirror her own - IPAs, big and bold, please. So when I pop in on Thursdays, after I've tried the Mini-Cask, I have occasionally said to Kylie, "You pick." (The Force is strong in this young Padawan.)

So from where in Quebec does
Brasseries Des Quatre Lune hail?
Try Oakville. It's Trafalgar Brewery.

Thus far, she has plunked some outstanding IPAs from Waterloo's Innocente Brewing and Barrie's Barnstormer Brewing (and Pizzeria - not joking) in front of me. The other week she surprised me by putting down a Royal City Brewing Dry Hopped Pale Ale. A pale ale? From Kylie? (I quickly bolted outside to see if it was suddenly raining frogs, goats and lizards.) Now I have heard of Royal City out of Guelph but honestly only the name. A quick Google search turned up that it was started by two guys, Cam Fryer and Russ Bateman, This place is small, like Ant-Man small. Fryer did some time at Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto but not as a brewer. The pair is evidently self-taught, brewing up batches in their homes before starting their own nano-brewery a year ago. So when the pair say they do small batch brews, trust me, that's all they do.

And how was the Dry Hopped Pale Ale? At just 5.1%, it packed a nifty 59 IBUs which gave it light fruit on the nose and just the right touch of bitterness on the tongue. A small batch with a big-ass taste! Gotta meet these guys. Quite a story.

See that staggeringly good looking thumb?
That's my thumb. What's it holding? A
pair of tickets to the Burlington Beer for
me and Beer Bro Glenn. Got beer???

I found a small beer, hiding in the back of my fridge recently - something called a Brasseries Des Quarte Lunes Saison Automne. For those not fluent in French, this means Four Moons Brewery's Autumn Saison. Saison is also French for season but it's a light summer beer style, as well. And to my French high school pal, Lubin, I translated that without assistance. (He's gonna be pretty proud of me.) Naturally, I assumed that brewery was from Quebec. Beyond the name, it was a regular-sized bottle that was actually corked and caged - that's pretty French right there. Well, not only was it not from Quebec, it was from the most whitebread, Anglo community in Canada, Lubin's and my hometown of Oakville. Trafalgar Brewery makes it and while I bought a huge load of their beers, just prior to their seven medal win at the Ontario Brewing Awards a few months back, I had clearly forgotten this one of those when I reviewed the lot of them. Some were good, some less so, one outstanding (more on that one in a minute.)

So once I spent 10 minutes getting the wire cage off (a blow-torch may or may not have been used) and yanking that damn cork out with my molars, how was it? Well, here's the thing. This poor beer got an eight on RateBeer and zero points for style. That means to RateBeer reviewers, it was the most non-saison saison they had ever tasted. I have never seen this before. So let me say this: like ESBs, saisons are not among my favourite beer style - a little too light for my Hop Ho, Stout Slut tastes.

To all of you the college and university
graduates in Canada and the USA, let me
say congratulations on completing the
easiest part of your life. Now come join
us in the working world. But I will say
this. While you can take the boy out of
college, this graduate shows us that you
can't take the college out of the boy...

But dammit, I liked it. Perhaps being a non-saisony saison helped it? Beats me. It's an Autumn seasonal, meaning it had been sitting in my fridge for a long while. But they use some funky Belgian yeast in it so it's nicely fruity on the nose, lightly spiced on the tongue. Hell, I'm going on RateBeer and giving this a 100 on both points and style, just to mess with the Bell Curve. Is it a 100 beer? Oh gawd no, not even close! Just being a RateBeer anarchist. But it wasn't bad.

Okay, as we wind down (and frankly, I can't believe you made it this far), a quick Burlington Beer Festival Twitter story. So one of the Beer Fest folks, likely the co-organizer, Wayne Brown, takes to Twitter and asked Trafalgar Brewing, "Hey, what are you bringing the the Burlington Beer Festival?" Trafalgar tweets back a nice assortment. Then I butt into the chat. "Mighty Oak, Mighty Oak, Mighty Oak!", meaning their delicious Imperial Brown Ale, which is, for my money, their best beer. This goes back and forth for a while - all good, clean, wholesome fun (usually outside my wheelhouse) - until Trafalgar finally tweets, "Okay, for you, we're bringing Mighty Oak!" Behold, the power of social media! But I felt bad because they're doing me a serious solid so what do I do? I get on there and tweet, "First 20 people who see me and say hey get a sample of Mighty Oak on me." (Kids, don't drink and Twitter.) Now granted no one knows me or what I look like but my word is my word. I will buy 20 extra tokens, give them to random strangers but they have to sample the Mighty Oak with that token! See more information about the July 17-19 event that is gonna to be talked about for decades to come at: burlingtonbeerfest.com.

And so for me, this pretty much means the
same weather every night for decades now

Okay, this train is out of gas. Wait, do trains use gas? Seriously, I don't know - I've seen coal being used in movies but those were cowboy flicks. And speaking of movies, I watched Air Bud with my son last night. And yes, while it is impressive that a Golden Retriever can play basketball, I feel bad for the poor kid who got benched so a dog could take his place on the court.

Next up is the annual Canada Day Brew Ha Ha! But just before then, Stevil St Evil will be gifting Neil Miller, New Zealand's Beer Writer of the Year with a little Canadian Care Package. In that package is a Great Lake's Brewing Thrust! An IPA, a Highlander Brew Co. Blacksmith Smoked Porter, a Muskoka Mad Tom IPA and Twice As Mad Tom Double IPA, a Flying Monkey Smashbomb Atomic IPA, a Collective Arts' Rhyme & Reason Extra Pale Ale, a Central City Red Racer IPA, an Underdog Brewing All Or Nothing Hopfenweisse, a Cameron's RPA, a Phillips Cabin Fever Imperial Black IPA and of course, a Headstock IPA. Anyone getting a sense of what Neil's favourite beer style might be? And while it will be June 30 to us, in New Zealand, it will be Canada Day so there's a couple of extra Canuck trinkets in that care package. Okay, guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here!! Until next time, I remain as always...