Beer

Here is an interesting item that is making the day of a lot of homebrewers out there. Last year when Bruce Oland passed away, he donated to the Dalhousie archives a huge treasure trove of old material from the Keith's brewery. For those not in the know, Keith's got bought by Oland's in the 1920s, and then Oland by Labatt in 1971. As a bit of an aside, the Oland family brewing tradition has another branch which ends at today's Moosehead breweries in New Brunswick.

Homebrewers have always bristled over the "India Pale Ale" moniker on Alexander Keith's flagship beer. Those who know beer, know that this beer is most decidedly NOT an India Pale Ale. An IPA should be a fair bit darker in colour, and significantly more bitter from hops, and higher in alcohol. Here are the full details on the style, from the Beer Judge Certification Program website. That tells you what certified beer judges look for in an IPA. Incidentally, the style of beer gets its name from the fact that it was brewed hoppier and higher in alcohol to survive the trip to India, to supply the British troops there when they were colonizing India. Both alcohol and hops are a preservative. Alexander would have been one of the brewers shipping his beer overseas at the time.

Homebrewers have always said that there is no way in heck Alexander Keith brewed a beer that was anything even remotely similar to the beer which today bears his name.

Here we go again, one of the owners of the Ontario Beer Store is taking a small Ontarian brewery to court. Again. This time Budweiser(tm) is taking Brick Brewing to court over "Lime Beer". Last time around it was Brick again, being taken to court over stubby bottles under the pretense that they are "non-standard". Nevermind that Sleeman bottles are too.

What do you mean "one of the owners?". "The province owns the Beer Store, doesn't it?".

Nope. The beer store was traditionally owned by Molson and Labatt, about 50/50. Somehow Sleeman managed to wedge itself in for about a 10% stake, leaving about 45% for each of the other parties. OK, arguably that makes sense - the Ontario Beer Store owned by Ontarian breweries. What's wrong with that?

Well, the biggest thing that is wrong with it, is that none of those 3 breweries are Canadian-owned anymore. So the Ontario Beer Store monopoly is entirely owned by foreign mega-corporations. Labatt has been bought out by Belian Interbrew, since renamed to InterBev - the same company which bought Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser(tm)). Molson is now owned by Coors in the US, and Sleeman is owned by Sapporo of Japan.

So far this year I've been brewing mainly German-style beers with a quick stop in Belgium, so today it is something British inspired. I've still got a half keg of Belgian Wit, most of a keg of a German Dunkles that has been lager for a good 5 weeks already, and 4 kegs of Koelsch-eh, 2 in the fridge already and 2 not. So time to change things up a bit.

Normally I stick with very simple grain bills, but had a bunch of odds and ends to use up so this is what I came up with. I don't expect much character from the small amount of Smoked malt that I used - used it mainly because I needed more base malt and did not want to use up any of my 2 Row because I have other plans for it next weekend. Note to self - buy more base malt.

• 4.6 kg pale ale
• 2.3 kg Weyermann Dark Munich
• 400g Fawcett Malted Oats
• 400g unknown base malt :-)
• 500g Caramunich III
• 1.7 kg Weyermann Rauch/Smoked

For a total of 10kg

My last batch of Koelsch-eh started off fairly well inside of 24 hours, and is now in the fermentation grotto at about 14C

On Sunday I brewed again - another Koelsch-eh and in fact the same recipe as last time except for 2 minor factors : (1) I adjusted the pH of the liquor by adding 1ml of 75% phosphoric acid to 58L of water, and (2) I forgot the whirlfloc in this last batch.

But basically it goes like this :

Grain Bill

• 9 kg OiO 2 Row Malted Barley
• 1 kg local organic flaked barley (sourced from Mountain Path)

I finally got around to stringing up my hops bines - oh man, I waited way too long to do this! What a mess! The thing is, I have my roof being reshingled and wanted to wait until that was done because I was afraid the hops would interfere with his work. But finally they just got way too unruly sprawled all over the ground and I had to deal with them. I've got a whole bunch of Hallertauer that I've had for about 7 years now, and some new Nugget as of the last year. I figure by next year they should be producing just about enough to keep me self-sufficient in hops.

When stringing hops you have to use some sort of organic twine like baler's twine. I've tried synthetic ones but the hops just can't cling to it - they grow up so far and then their weight causes them to slide back down again. I simply have come hooks and eye screws screwed into the 2x4 on my eaves, and stakes in the ground below. I use a double length of twine and twist the two lengths together.