Kingston #BeerFam 2020 Brewery Tour 1.0

The Host With The Most: When Josh Hayter, genial co-owner of
Spearhead Brewing, hosts a Brewery Tour, well, he doesn't screw
around. Enlisting the help of Tourism Kingston to pick up our
lunch (which will be described in great detail here) and Kingston
Economic Development to foot the tab for dinner, we ate like
royalty... but drank like court jesters. One day, six breweries and
probably the best-run Brewery Invasion ever. Hats off to Josh...

Way back at the beginning of November, Greg, Kimmy and I organized and run the 905 Halton-Hamilton Craft Brewery Invasion. We all thought it went very well, as did the participants. Everyone had a blast. Granted, "Hey, let's go to a bunch of breweries and drink all day..." well, it turns out that's a remarkably easy sell. Go figure.

We were glad we did it. And to that, I would like to add one very important caveat. I personally am very frikkin' glad we did it before Kingston.

Because when Josh Hayter, co-owner of Spearhead Brewing, picked up the ball to organize February 22nd's Kingston #BeerFam 2020, geezuz, he ran the length of five football fields with it. For starters, I checked back in my DM with him and he started planning this early last October - four months ahead. Like I said, the dude doesn't screw around. He quickly enlisted Amanda, the brewery's social media liaison among other duties, to help out (there was an ongoing debate, albeit friendly and chirpy, about who did more) and man... whatta day!

At Stop #1, Daft Brewing, their head brewer Ryan found a high
perch to talk beers with our group of 20, which basically took
over the sizable horse-shoe shaped bar. Which what we pretty
much do at every Brewery Invasion. The brewery had only
been open for just three weeks and I gotta say, it has a pretty
eclectic starting line-up. Colourful as hell and chill atmosphere.

Using his status as the most powerful businessman in Kingston (he's never ever claimed that - I'm totally projecting that onto him), he quickly enlisted Tourism Kingston and Kingston Economic Development into helping with the meals - first lunch at Kingston Brewing Company (much more on that coming) and then dinner at Spearhead.

We also had this sharp-ass white bus shuttling us from brewery to brewery (including a very necessary washroom), courtesy of McCoy Bus Service (the owner is a shareholder in Spearhead) with a great driver named John. Josh wisely waited until Spearhead, our last of six brewery stops, before dropping a glass onto our large table and suggesting we all throw something into the tip pot for John. Oakville Brew Crew's Greg was there when John got the tip and reported he was thrilled. Not surprised. Because the day only cost us our purchases at the six breweries, I saw nothing but $10's and $20's being crammed into the glass from all of us. Hey man, John kept a bunch of drinking fools safe from 11 am to 9 pm. No easy feat. Gotta reward that shit.

So here's the thing. When the Ottawa thugs - Matty, Joel and Ben - organized last Summer's Ottawa Craft Brewery Invasion, we already knew about the great craft breweries there. Same when Kimmy, Greg and I organized the Halton-Hamilton Craft Brewery Invasion at the beginning of November. Everyone knew these breweries either through Beer Mails or Twitter posts. But none of us knew much about the craft scene in Kingston beyond Spearhead, to be honest. Josh was about to change that.

Actually, Stop #2, Stone City Ales was a place I was quite
familiar with but had never visited. A friend of mine used
to go visit friends in Kingston a few times a year and she
would always bring me back 1 litre howlers of Uncharted
IPA and Ships In The Night Oatmeal Stout. So I was very
pumped to finally visit here. They had some real beauties!

He wanted to show us that Kingston was a thriving craft brewery destination city. We had no real idea to what extent. But, my friends, we were about to learn.

We all gathered in the lobby of the Delta Waterfront Hotel until Josh showed up at 11 am to get our party started. Okay, Roll Call: Greg and I from Oakville; artist-cartoonist David from Hamilton, homebrewer Graeme from King City, Glenn, Jeff, Candice and a few others from Oshawa, Paul Peezy from Newmarket, our favourite engaged couple, Curtis and Nichole from Guelph and April and Chuck, the public faces of Waller St Brewing in Ottawa plus a healthy handful more that I didn't recognize. In fact, despite tons of tweets and correspondence between April and myself, I didn't even recognize her for certain. I went out for a smoke with five people in the lobby and came back in to 20 people. I was pretty certain it was April and Chuck but I didn't want to walk up, say, "Hey April!" only to discover I was talking to Sue Somebody. I'm sometimes a little over-cautious on account of being wrong so very often.

When he arrived, Josh was looking resplendent in his Sin City Brewing bowling shirt from Las Vegas (they had some kinda deal where if you bought a couple of pints, they throw the shirt in for, like, 10 bucks) as he herded us like the slow-moving cattle we are onto the bus and it was off to Stop #1 - Daft Brewing.

Curtis captured this selfie of him and fiancee
Nichole at Stone City Ales. Afterwards, when
I was asking Brew Crew members what their
favourite memories of the day were, Nichole
said simply, "Seeing everyone from the Brew
Crew again." And this is why we all love her.

When we arrived, I checked out their beer menu and saw... no IPAs? Once they resuscitated me, using a nearby defibrillator, I carried on best I could. (They very recently added Bingpot NEIPA so, you know, carry on. Too late for me but the rest of you will be fine.)

Now at this point, Daft, owned by Adam Rondeau, had only been open three weeks so yeah, here's a brewery just starting to spread its wings. And what a cool set-up. A former muffler shop (I believe) so it's got those big bay doors that can be opened in the Summer. And they had a lot of fun on the interior with the bright colourful cartoon paintings. Awesome place!

Okay, one of the things Josh set up with all the breweries we visited was that they would offer up tasters, displaying a variety of styles and Daft was in the game. Now, the Brew Crew can correct me if I'm wrong (and I will edit this accordingly - or not. It's a crap-shoot) but I'm pretty sure we got their Never Nude Tangerine Sour, the True Level Fiesta Gose and (boy, I remember this one) Coffee Is For Closers Coffee Milk Stout. I liked the first two - fairly typical but solid for their style - but geezuz, that Coffee Stout? Okay, you know how in a lot of Porters and even some Stouts, you get that coffee background?

Candice, second from bottom right, passed her phone to brewer Ryan to
get a pic of the whole Brew Crew from his high perch at Daft Brewing. 
That would be owner Adam Rondeau crouching down behind the bar in
the centre of the photo there. Just an excellent start to a fantastic day.

Usually mixed in with some licorice or chocolate? This tasted like a cold black cup of coffee. Not a little... a lot! It was actually quite jarring. I'm betting an espresso drinker like my brother would be all over this one. So kudos for taking that extra step to Daft. It could be a polarizing offering but hey, you're new to the game so you gotta stand out. This would do it.

But this was funny. I grabbed a pint of their Oat Dirty Bastard Oat Stout afterwards (which I very much enjoyed) and while talking to brewer Ryan, I found out it was a brewery collaboration with the winner of a Homebrewer Challenge that Daft had set up. I told Ryan I quite liked it and he told me that the Challenge was a lot of fun for them. But when it came to the actual beer, there was a slight hesitation on his end.

Jeff, left, wearing his stylin' Wavemaker Brewing shirt
(Cambridge brewery) talks beers with Josh Hayter, the
organizer of the Kingston #BeerFam 2020 brewery
tour. Josh and Amanda did a fantastic job with all this.
Here we all were at Stone City Ales, the second stop.

"When we were brewing this, there's probably a couple of things I might have done differently," he noted. Nothing huge, he added. A tweak here or there. When he saw me grinning, eyebrows raised at his pickiness, he shrugged and chuckled, "I know. I know."

But here's the thing. That just shows me Ryan is absolutely 100% a craft brewer. They are protective of both what's in their tanks and brewing the way they believe something should be brewed. Right down to the very smallest of details. And that's a good thing. A very good thing.

So Daft Brewing was just the beginning of the day. And as bright and colourful and fun as they are (they really are), things were just starting. Great start, though! As Graeme said to me afterwards, a early-day highlight was, "Seeing Daft so fresh and them talking about pushing the envelope (style-wise) to start." Tell you this for free - on this day, Graeme was truly in his brewer's wheelhouse but we'll get to that further along.

Okay, let's all hop back on the bus for Stop #2, Stone City Ales.

Someone had brought out a specialty Saison and our
King City homebrewer Graeme was all over it. It
seemed that everyone came away from Stone City
Ales with an unknown hidden treasure. In this case,
Graeme was trying the Counterpoint French Saison.

It seems Stone City turned out to be a highlight for various reasons for a couple of the Brew Crew. Everyone's favourite artist-cartoonist David was pumped about the locale. "It was cool going to Stone City Ales and seeing the downtown area." And he's right. Kingston's main downtown strip, perhaps because it's steeped in history, still has that small-town feel. And here was Stone City, as you can see above in the picture, just blending right in. Unless you were looking up at the banners (which I wasn't), you could easily walk right past it (which I did) until I glanced back and saw everyone going in. I wish I could say this wasn't typical.

But in my distant past (so, you know, five years ago), I had become familiar with some Stone City Ales beers. Back then in Burlington, there was a craft beer bar called Rib Eye Jacks (since shuttered) where a young and knowledgeable beer technician named Kylie worked. She had friends in Kingston and several times she returned with one-litre howlers of their flagship Uncharted IPA for me. So even before I entered for the first time, I knew this brewery had the goods, the right stuff.

While the brewery is owned by Ron Shore, I don't believe any of us caught the name of the soft-spoken gentleman who gave us our samplers and then guided a tour into the back.

Spotted while having a smoke at Daft Brewing
was the Kingston Water Tower (which I think
is more for show these days.) Ironically, there
was a Speedy Muffler Shop shown here in the
foreground. The irony is with an average age
of 45 or so (Glenn and I inflate that number)
none of us are particularly speedy these days.

Granted, his name notwithstanding, we had a lot of questions for him. The first few were near-identical. "Could you speak up a little?" We quieted down (nice trick, man - not many can pull that one off), he spoke up, all was good. But some great tasters there for us, as well. Now granted, I'd love to tell you what those tasters were but I neglected to take a picture and now a month later, yeah, right, like I'm going to remember. I wasn't even 100% sure April was April...

That said, I'm fairly certain Uncharted IPA was one. But another I can tell you without hesitation. That would be their Nocturnal Czech Dark Pilsener. Why? Oakville Greg and I, seated at the same table, enjoyed the shit out this one. Just an absolute beauty. Roasty malts, nice medium body (not the norm for a pilsner), light touch of licorice, 4.8% so lighter ABV but certainly not in the Crushable Zone, given the dark malts. Just a fantastic beer.

In the end, I went home with bottles of the Noctural, the Uncharted and the Distant Origin Dry-Hopped IPA. Distant Origin was pretty solid, as well. Containing my two favourite hops - Amarillo and Idaho 7 - the 6% west coaster had some solid citrus in it, a little floral on the nose and a creamy smooth feel. That said, as much as I enjoyed those two IPAs, Nocturnal was the clear winner on the day. Believe me, a pilsner beating out two IPAs is unusual in my corner of the world. But Greg said that beer was a highlight for him as well so, hey, that's gotta be a damn good beer.

Here's a sneak peek at the next blog where Curtis, left, asks me, right, if
I've ever seen a guest brewery list on tap as extensive as the Kingston
Brewing Company's list was. As you can see, I gave it careful thought
before my researched and thoughtful answer: "I dunno." And hey, on
the far left, is that Paul Peezy and King City Graeme? Shit, it sure is...

Okay, back next with my favourite stop of the day, Kingston Brewing Company, where it seems, oh, one or two of us enjoyed lunch. A quick Brew Crew side-story here if I may. (I write this. Damn straight, I may.) Graeme lost his paternal grandmother yesterday morning. His daughter is her namesake. We didn't learn that until last night. He had messaged me, asking about potential brewery visits but I didn't think twice about it. Graeme has forgotten more about beer than I'll ever know. When we all learned yesterday, it turned out Graeme had spent the day, visiting Ontario craft breweries, helping them stay afloat. Pretty cool gesture. And I also noticed we circled our emotional wagons around him quickly, offering support and hopefully comforting words. But that's the Brew Crew. As much as we sometimes chirp each other, it's a tight brother and sister outfit. You're always just there for each other. I saw that last night. More importantly, Graeme did. So, Scooby Doo Gang, it's it, that's all and I am outta here! More Kingston fun coming but until then, I remain...