Readers in the local area may have noticed I have yet to write about the Kingston Brewing Company, more commonly called the Kingston Brew Pub. It's just that I have not got a set of photos that capture the place more than anything but I popped in mid-afternoon today and made a start.

I have been going to the Kingston Brew Pub for more than a decade. When we lived three hours drive away, during LBK (Life Before Kids) we planned long weekends around meals there. Now I work a block away and am happy because of it, even to pop in for the lunch special or a cup of coffee mid-afternoon. The beers on tap are mainly their own but they do have McAuslan Oatmeal Stout and Guinness - based on the belief, I think, that now one can improve much on these examples of the styles. There is a bloggers meet up tomorrow evening there at 5 pm so I will have more thoughts and notes on a couple of ales after that.

Later: Ok. I never took any notes. I blabbed about blogs and failed to note the Winter Whallop or the Dragon's Breath IPA. But I did get a couple of pictures of the upstairs.

This is somewhat depressing news given my inclination towards quality real ale:

Kirin to enter market for '3rd-category beer' this spring

Thursday, January 13, 2005 at 07:00 JST
TOKYO — Kirin Brewery Co said Wednesday it will join three other major Japanese breweries this spring in offering a product known as "the third-category beer," a beer-tasting alcoholic beverage that is in a lower tax bracket because of its ingredients. The beer-like beverage accounted for about 5% of sales of beer and the like in 2004, underlying a growing demand for the new beverage, said Kirin President Koichiro Aramaki. (Kyodo News)

...related to the drink that is:

In an attempt to provide more convenience and variety for consumers, the Ontario government is planning a major overhaul of liquor laws that could include the sale of beer and wine in corner stores. Finance Minister Greg Sorbara said yesterday a panel will look at all aspects of the sale and distribution of alcohol in the province. "The current system is a patchwork of policies and agreements dating back to the 1920s and the end of Prohibition," he said. His announcement comes just weeks before Ontarians will start bringing wine into some restaurants. The government passed legislation allowing that freedom last month. Sorbara said the panel will consider several possibilities, including breaking up the Brewers' Retail monopoly that operates 436 Beer Store outlets, franchising some liquor stores beyond the 196 "agency stores" in rural areas, and expanding the 395 winery-run wine shops.

You may have noticed there is a lot of talk around here about Belgium. The fact simply is that there are more indigenous styles and more small brewers in Belgium than any other country. Other lands may have had as many (...maybe...) but they have fallen by the wayside, overtaken by mass manufacturing. To a greater degree than anywhere else, Belgium has refused that urge. If you are going to talk about fine beers you are just going to have to accept that as a fact. Gregory Noonan of the Vermont Brewery and Pub in Burlington Vermont wrote of a dubble recipe he included in his Seven Barrel Brewery Brewers' Handbook:

Belgian monks, and the commercial breweries that copy this style, invariably brew with dark candi sugar rather than dark malts to color and flavor their brews...The yeast strain should give a hint of butteriness (diacetyl) to your brew. This beer always seems to come out beter if you shave your head in the fashion of a monk's tonsure and speak French while brewing it.

Bornem Dubble, Chimay Red, Ommegang, Unibroue's Maudit

One of my favourite styles of all of the Belgian Ales is the dubbel and I have found four to discuss.

• Bornem Dubbel: 8%,330 ml in a mixed six from the brewer, Van Steenberge - here is the brewer's web page for the beer. I was a bit surprised by this one as I had awful expectations after the amber ale. The beer poured with a big loose beige head like stiff beaten egg white...except it was beige. It was the lightest dubble I have had - not unlike 50% Chimay Red and 50% Newcastle Brown Ale. In the mouth there is some heat but less spice than I would have liked. I am happy to report that there were no off flavours but unfortunately not enough flavours. The yeast was balanced with a decent biscuity aspect which was balanced by a herby twiggy rustic hoppiness. I am not certain whether there was much orange peel which there really ought to be. All in all not really poor but a bit lifeless for a dubbel. Advocatonians seem to like it a little more than I do. Well, at least no one call it "raisin bran" like with the amber.
• Unibroue Maudit: 8.0%, 6 x 341 ml at the Beer Store year round. Compared to the Bronem, this is the real thing. Pie pastry yeast, orange peel and spice. Heat and dark brown rich. Unlike the roughness of the Bornem's hops, these are rightly frail and antique. I did not get a great head off the pour and, compared to my recollection of the corked 750 ml bottle, this twist-top standard 12 341 ml bottle was maybe a bit weaker than I would have liked. Maybe just a weak capping...or is that the dreaded effect of the Sleeman buy-out? Michael Jackson wrote in his Great Beer Guide:

  Maudite is a darkish interpretation of the style; fruity spiced (orange peel, corriander, pepper?) and dry.

  BAer like - but call it a Belgian strong ale?!?!
• Chimay Red:7% single 750 ml at the LCBO. Hot but less than the Maudit, similarly medium bodied. A rocky beige head. The first taste is malty but clearly cut with drak candi sugar. It is musty and oaken, burlap hops which rim rather than cut the malt with a brown bread crusty structuring as well. The fruity flavours are fig and a small bit of raisin, orange peel is definitely there with nutmeggy spicing. In the yeast there is a core of pear juiciness. This is one of the great beers and another tomorrow might let me know more. A real monk-made Trappist ale, the monestary apparently has broadband. One advocator actually thought yeasty cloudiness was chill haze - the other 99.99% are in love.
• Ommegang: from the woods near Cobleskill and Cooperstown, NY. This is a great brewery of distinct intention and it shows in its self-titled dubble. Forget the brewing, look at the location! We hunted the place out last summer and the setting was almost intimidating in its clean intention to assert Belgium in the north-end of the Appalachians. The beer is a real assertion as well. Plum and dark chocolate from the get go which hides the heat a bit which at 8.5% is the biggest of the four. There is a bit of leather, cinnamon and butter. Then there is something else that you realize are the hops - delicate and fine, autumnal woods. Great. Greater than the Chimay Red I just had? That is worth consideration.

Cory at Boing has linked us all to a recipe for a beer that is claiming it is licenced under creative commons license. The beer is called Vores Øl or "Our Beer." The odd thing about this - and an example of the wacky thinking about copyright being spouted at Boing - is that a beer recipe is not really copyrighted or copyrightable. Recipes, as sets of instructions rather than the expression of the instruction or "a work", are not really property. Only as a fixed literary published work would the expression of the recipe be potentially protected. Has Boing been sucked in?

One of the reasons we do not know much about the manufacture of porter in, say, 1810 is that breweries protect their recipe book archives as trade secrets and hide them from public view. If they did not the information would not be protected - because they are not subject to intellectual property law. They are merely ideas, not expressions, and an idea is not copyrightable. They are exclusive through secrecy rather than property. You know this because you can mix up much of the expression of a recipe, reorder the ingredients and twig the process and get the same result. Some technical processes relating to brewing that are patentable, like Labatt and its ice beer, but that is different. But one of the joys of homebrewing is the realization you can maintain a yeast strain cultivated from a favourite beer, tap into your well, grow and malt your grain and pick your own hops. Beer is literally free if you are free enough to make it.

For all the hype about the loss of freedom due to strict copyright law enforcement, is this a knee-jerk reaction making that which is free actually less free by implying that the creative commons applies to the actual common property of us all? True open source is the stuff we all have access to and can do simply out of human dignity. Beer making is one of those things.

It is interesting to watch Canada's sugar-pop-beer market battle these days in light of the success of discount beers. The main maker of the low cost lagers which are grabbing a share of the market is Lakeport from Hamilton, Ontario. A new CEO has been appointed at Lakeport who has been a player in their success:

A native of Hamilton, Ms. Cascioli was recruited to Lakeport in 1999 as the company was struggling to emerge from bankruptcy protection from its creditors under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. At that time, the company was saddled with an inefficient plant, poor reporting systems, inadequate financing and a costly legal dispute with the parent of Ontario's The Beer Store retail chain. Since then, she helped grow market share by 400 per cent and turned the 200-employee brewer into a profitable concern. Lakeport -- the maker of the Steeler, Lakeport and Brava banners -- controls 6 per cent of Ontario take-home beer market, which excludes sales in bars and restaurants.

Here is a report from the front line - the very counter in Bury St. Edmunds from Paul, the owner of Beer²Go, a type of beer store that would be illegal in most of Canada and perhaps some of the USA - certainly Pennsylvania - though it is essentially the same idea as the Party Source in Syracuse, New York. I would be a very happy man indeed if I were near such a selection. Click on the pictures for larger views.

It's been an interesting first four months in our beer shop. Thankfully we seem to have been warmly welcomed by the paying public.

Our range of beers we stock is constantly changing. On the ale front we stock a number of beers from East Anglian brewers (most of which are bottle-conditioned), City of Cambridge Brewery being my favourite. Hobsons Choice (their flagship beer) is a delicious golden ale which will stand up to any similar style of beer brewed in the west country. Parkers Porter is a rich dark beer with just the right amount of bitterness (I don't care much for very bitter beers). Their Jet Black is a perfect mild, a well balanced slightly chocolately, slightly hoppy without being bitter (otherwise of course it wouldn't be a mild !). Another popular local ale is Woodfordes Wherry - it's a very good example of an East Anglian session beer - never too bitter. If you want bitter then you need a Yorkshire beer. Nothing subtle about a Yorkshire beer!

When someone first walked into our shop and asked for Charles Wells Banana Bread Beer, we thought how disgusting. But we put some in stock, it sells well and of course we just had to try it. It's actually quite good. Goes well with Chinese Take-Away.

Other popular beers we sell from around the world include KEO from Cyprus, Erdinger Weissbier from Germany, Chili Beer (yes chili not chilli) from the USA which is an equivalent to liquid vindaloo and VB from Australia (the bemusingly named Victoria Bitter which is actually a lager and not a bitter - wags those antipodeans).

Of course you can't generalise, because every customer is different, but I have noticed that lager drinkers tend to be very brand loyal whereas ale drinkers seem to prefer to want to try as many different beers as they can.

...you would all get together and arrange for a trip for me to this event:

BEER drinkers from across Britain will head for Manchester at the end of the month, when one of the country's biggest real ale events returns to the city. The CAMRA National Winter Ales Festival, sponsored by the M.E.N., will be a showcase for a huge range of both draught and bottled beers - many from round the world. And the four-day event, which is being officially opened by colourful town crier Barry McQueen, is expected to draw thousands of visitors. Highlights will include the 2005 Champion Winter Beer of Britain Awards, and Tameside brewer Shaws has created an M.E.N. Festival Ale specially for the event. The festival will run from Wednesday to Saturday, January 26 to 29, at the recently-refurbished New Century House in Corporation Street.

Later: Here is the information on the National Winter Ales Festival from the CAMRA site.