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What’s up with beer this summer?

Jennifer Tamse, the London native recently named an honorary beer knight by the Confederation of Belgian Brewers, is Beertown’s director of beer and beverage. She curates beverage selections for Beertown, a group of 10 beer-focused restaurants in Ontario.

She says there are four dominant trends:

Near beer: Tamse highlights the key driver of consumers making healthy choices. Non-alcoholic beers have been around for decades, but their taste was dreadful compared with the real thing. That’s no longer true. Low-alcohol choices have broken through with new brewing approaches, producing IPAs, dry-hopped sours and stouts.

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Lagers: Craft breweries are “perfecting the art of brewing classic lagers,” Tamse says, pointing to breweries Side Launch of Collingwood and London and Godspeed of Toronto.

Hunt for the next IPA: Each year there’s a fresh iteration, Tamse says. There’s milkshake IPA brewed with lactose, the brut IPA with champagne inspiration, the sour IPA, juicy IPA and versions of a West Coast IPA.

European beer culture: Belgian, German and British beer customs such as serving from side-pull facets and cask-conditioned ales are inspiring Canadian breweries to do the same, Tamse says.

NEW AND NOTED

Forked River reset the needle and reintroduced Sparton Press, the pilsner partnership with Speed City Records and named in homage to a defunct vinyl record manufacturer in London. The new batch was dry-hopped with American hops — Cascade, Amarillo and Mosaic. Packaged in 473 ml cans, Sparton Press is 4.7 per cent alcohol.

Heeman’s and Anderson Craft Ales have combined talents for a new bumbleberry sour beer. The mixture of Heeman’s strawberries, blueberries and raspberries is in 355 ml cans and on tap at the brewery. Anderson brewers are also preparing for Eight Years of Beer, its annual birthday party on Aug. 10 with 30 taps of beers from Anderson and friends.

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Broken Rail has Petal to the Medal, a pale ale. Broken Rail used hibiscus and rose hips along with Citrus hops. 

Shakespeare Brewing brought back its Coffee Pale Ale brewed with grounds from Baden Coffee.

Neustadt Springs has a hard seltzer, Bootlegger Bubbly. It’s made with moonshine, spring water and added flavours. The name is an acknowledgement of a chapter in the brewery’s history. Neustadt also aged its Raspberry Lager in rum barrels as part of its Cellar Series of bottled beers sold only at the brewery.

Grey Matter in Kincardine constantly rolls out intriguing small batch beers from its “lab”. In the past few weeks the brews have included a mystery beer, an altbier, an English bitter  and a Belgian saison/IPA split.

Wayne Newton is a freelance journalist based in London.

BrewsNewsTravels@gmail.com

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