So Do Non-Political Beer Boundaries Make Sense?

So, does this idea make sense? Does it make more sense to describe regions of good beer by ignoring political boundaries? If you think about it, there is no real reason to relate saison to France rather than Belgium just because of the Treaty of London of 1839 and other non-beery factors.

Canada is a good example. Just as beer needs peace, beer needs people. Canada's people are not evenly spread so we find beer only in the bits where there are people. We only find brewing where there are enough people. If you click on the link above, an image taken from The Beer Mapping Project and handily upgraded in lime by me. You can clearly see that there are three good beer regions in Canada with a few outposts. Mainly, it's all in the St. Lawrence watershed, the Maritimes and the southern Rockies. Northern Ontario? Nada. Labrador? Nuttin'.

If we go one step further and compare St. Lawrence and the Maritimes to what is happening over the border to the States, you can see some patterns. The Gaspe gap extends into northern Maine. The upper reaches of the St. Lawrence proper are comparable sites of little brewing. But, just as with the fishing industry, you may see Nova Scotia connected to the Boston area and southern Maine. You may see Vermont connected to Quebec and their shared winter traveler trade.

Do the beers have connections? Is there a zone of extra maltiness that everything north and east of Lake George New York share? Perhaps a bit more interest in stouts? Do the brewers on the Great Lakes have a deeper interest in lager due to their shared immigrant past? Or other affinities more important? Shared attendance to trade and fanboy conventions? The name of the guy who taught you to brew?

Comments

Gary Gillman - August 28, 2011 7:55 PM

Excellent thinking Alan, and the regional links are definitely there, sometimes stretching beyond what one would think. Peter Austin from Ringwood in England assisted both Granite Brewery in Toronto and Geary in Maine to set up their plant, for example...

Today the links are often closer, e.g. the influence of APA from Washington and Oregon on numerous B.C. examples of the type. It took a while, B.C. was tenacious to U.K. tradition in this regard for a long time, as in so many others!.

But again I doubt the typical range of beer in a good Buffalo, NY craft beer is that different from its analogue in Toronto. And surely it works the other way, I'll bet the obsession with Belgian ales in Quebec has influenced a few beers on the other side of the border. And that can be, not just beers brewed there, but beers becoming available in well-stocked beer retailers. And vice versa.

Gary

Alan - August 28, 2011 9:25 PM

Maybe it is more networked than just a borderless map but, like the origins of punk in the Pacific NW, it is about ideas and not boundaries.

Apparently the good folks who set up Middle Ages in Syracuse are also part of the Austin information chain, which explains their beers' buttery goodness.

Alan - August 28, 2011 9:29 PM

But, having said that, the pre-existing determination of what stands for "good tasting" in any community also must count for something. Craft beer must align with what the community already knows is good.

Gary Gillman - August 28, 2011 9:50 PM

Yes, and I could cite examples locally here. For example, there is a certain "brown ale" Ontario taste IMO. Hockley Dark has it, Wellington County Ale has it (maybe started it), Black Oak Nut Brown has it, and Amsterdam Brown Ale too.

Sure they are not all identical but they share a certain profile, and one I haven't quite encountered in the same way elsewhere. It's a subset of the St. Lawrence Watershed taste IMO since Montreal has some examples.

APAs are coming on strong here too now but in this case I find it harder to distinguish them from their U.S. avatars.

Gary Gillman - August 28, 2011 9:59 PM

On the brown ale, I should include Granite's Old Peculiar, and Upper Canada Dark Ale (still made I understand).

Alan - August 28, 2011 10:51 PM

I would differentiate the Granite brew from the others as it is really a Maritime import in the big picture. I drank buckets of that in the 80s in Halifax. But UC dark is the ur-dark of that Ontario style.

Gary Gillman - August 29, 2011 11:19 AM

Certainly that the Halifax location of the Granite brewpub preceded Toronto's by some years. Presumably the Peculiar started in Halifax, but it fits in well with the others mentioned. All of these are a take on English brown ale. (Nor by the way has Peculiar at the Granite ever reminded me of Old Peculier in England).

Upper Canada Dark Ale is an interesting case. I only started to like it after Sleeman bought it. Before that, it had a banana-estery note that was never my cup of tea so to speak. Some said at the time it had a Belgian influence, but if so I think that was accidental. After Sleeman started to brew it, it had a good clean chocolaty taste, not complex but well-flavoured with some decent non-aroma hopping. I've seen it occasionally at restaurants and bars in the Queen Street and University area in Toronto; it isn't widely available but you can find it, in bottle too sometimes I think.

It represents more the first generation of Ontario craft brewing but is very valid for that and I suspect once the infatuation with very assertive APA and DIPAs wears off these browns will get more attention.

10W 30 by the way is yet another beer in this style, IMO. And I'd argue the same for Muskoka Dark Ale.

Alan - August 29, 2011 1:32 PM

Good points all. Muskoka's take is attracting a lot of my attention recently. Not really sure why it stands out for me but I do agree that this somewhat unique presence in Ontario is both legitimately local and, can't we now say, traditional good craft beer.