Jim Barr, our correspondent from Ayrshire Scotland, has forwarded some great notes on five brews from the old country, three of which are organic.

• Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted: Apparently Champion Beer of Britain, 2003 in its cask conditioned form. This is a honey coloured beer with a lot of flavour, “hoppy and vanilla-ish” said the wife. Sharp with soft edges to it, bitter but in an extremely pleasant way, and a pinch at £ 5.00 for 4 bottles from Morrison’s. 4.2%abv. The bottle says its bottled with a 1/3 less carbon dioxide than most beers which results in a fresher more natural beer. Who am I to disagree, it was a great beer. Here is Harviestoun's home on the web.
• Caledonian Golden Promise Organic: Claims to be the world’s first truly organic beer. Nice pale gold colour, is the best I can say about, both the wife and I thought it was disappointing, insipid even. Not a lot of flavour at all, I wouldn’t buy it again. Here is the page on the web for this brew.
• Black Isle Yellowhammer Organic Bitter: From the highlands of Scotland, produced by a micro-brewery near Inverness, what a difference between these two organic ales. This was superb, dark, toffee flavoured, slightly sweet, soft and a big flavour. I will go out of my way to buy this stuff again, and to try some of their other beers. 4.0%abv. Check out the website here.
• Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer: Honey coloured Edinburgh brewed, caramel flavoured beer but a bit too sweet for my liking, in the 330ml bottle, its okay but I really couldn‘t swallow a lot of it. 6.6%abv. They, too, are on the web.
• Broughton Border Gold:Yet another organic beer, golden colour with a taste I would have expected of a darker brew. A burnt sugar, sort of treacle like flavour, with a tart after-taste, full hoppy flavour, not at all unpleasant. A site to check out as well.

The siblings are in town for early uncles and auntie first Christmas. I stocked in well over the last month or so...and then we all get sleepy after a big sherry trifle and only open a couple. I will just have to work through these over the next few days - a Belgian, three English, two central New Yorkers and two Californians. Click on the pic for the better view. I have already reviewed the Old Foghorn and will tie my review of Chimay Red into a comparison post on Belgian Dubbles I am planning. It is, nonetheless, going to be tough being me for the next few days...

• Middle Ages Wailing Wench: Far right in the photo. Middle Ages Brewing is Syracuse's own micro of distinction, one distinction being the kooky medieval branding. Wailing Wench actually caught my eye for the exact replication of a fantasy of a few of my pals from 20 years ago - cleavage and 8%. Kind of fits into the Hercules and Rocket Robin Hood TV cartoon running joke in my life. Good to find out that the ale does not have to rely on the branding for sales. Dark malt, spicy hot. I found lime juice, cinnamon and burnt sugar with a bitter greens finish. The creamy tightly bubbled rocky head head held up throughout. Brother #1, who got half, thought it was as close to mowing the lawn as a beer can get. He has not had Ruination IPA. Big with heavy body but worthy and balanced even with the volume at 11. All advocatonians and I give it 100% - a classic American Double IPA. $4.19 USD for 22 oz at the Galeville Grocery.
• Rouge Santa's Private Reserve Ale: Third from right. I maybe should have had this one before the Wailing Wench. It is a little fresher and one notch lighter at only (only!) 6% making it a bit of a transition mentally. Nevertheless, this is probably the first Rouge I have not absolutely loved from the first sip. It has tannic bitter greens over a fairly unlayered and unmassive maltiness. This is odd as the brewery states that at least six different high quality malts go into the beer. All I get is one recessed biscuity note which sits oddly, leaving an impression of a big bitter arugula salad with one animal cracker crumbled on top. These massive beers are fairly common in the US and it must be difficult for a brewer to find their point in the market, their reason for being in the game. The name makes you think of holiday ales like the far inferior Old Fezziwig by Sam Adams but there are not figgy pudding spices or other references in the beer. Santa must just be a hop head with a taste for arugula. $3.79 USD for 22 oz at the Galeville Grocery.
• Harvey's Elizabethan Ale: Second from left. Vintage 1998, bottle 3508, 275 ml, $3.99 at Party Source, Syracuse. I swished and poured the yeast at the bottom of the bottle in the Belgian style leaving a cloudy rich brown look topped with a very fine beige foam on top. The smell is all spice, yeast and mellow heat - not unlike a Belgian dubbel. It is creamier in the mouth than a dubbel, however. Full and rich with wonderfully balanced hops. The yeast component of the flavour is particularly fine, giving a sense of baked Christmas goodies - mincemeat pie in particular. It has an oily texture like an oatmeal stout but much heavier body than most of those. The low end of the beer advocate reviews makes me think there might be some significant bottle variation but for my money this is worth that risk. This will easily take the best part of an hour to sip through.
• Harvey's Christmas Ale: 275 ml, $2.99 at Galeville Grocery, Syracuse. Fourth from right. Nowhere near as interesting as the Elizabethan Ale. Spend the extra buck. The aroma is very nice with rich malt and fine Goldings candycane hop. But that is it. No head at all. Virtually still. Heavy raisin or fig malt with some heat of alcohol but no real layering in the taste. Burnt toffee. 8.1%. Not real ale as there is not scum of yeast at the bottom, where all that good flavour and spice lay with the Elizabethan. Reviewers who say port-like have never had decent port. It is like the inside of a candy bar, caramel. Santa deserves better. Santa will get at least an Elizabethan Ale from me if we ever meet.
• Middle Ages Druid Fluid: Second from the left. I bought a four pack of 12 oz bottles of this for about 8 dollars US and I am wondering if I have ever had a better buy in terms of quality for price. A barleywine with a big hoppy edge. Fantastic. 9.5%. The brewery describes it in these words:

  An epic barleywine, made in the tradition of British Farmhouse Brewing. Lavished with a velvety blend of six different malts this is a warming beer with a lush mouthfeel. The complexities your discriminating palate will detect are ever changing as this barleywine matures. When young, an assertive hop character predominates and with age the beauty of the big malt balance unfolds.

  So...I am guessing this is something of an infanticide - but it is loverly. The malts are rich and, unlike the Harvey's Christmas, not cloying at all despite the extra 1.5% of heat in the bottle. It has that juicy quality that overcomes all - extremely moreish. The hop has a bit of citrus and a bit of menthol. One advocatron calls it a "session barleywine"! Between this and the Wailing Wench, I am looking forward to many more of Middle Ages's brews.
• Thomas Hardy Ale: 8.5 oz for 4.49 USD at the Party Source, Syracuse. Lovely pure big malt. Made by O'Hanlon's, it has its own website. Pours still leaving only a thin white ring at the edge of the of clear rich brown liquid. For 11.7% it is not hot though there is heat. Fig and date, hot apple butter, thick malt cut clean by pine-mintish hops. To have a basin would be a wonderful thing, to soak legs of lamb and to help me soak that leg of lamb. It is like sherry or balsamic vinigar - concentrated. Maybe between an oloroso sherry and a twany port. Add 60% water for an ale. In the mouth it becomes floral if you swish and swish but, still, shy of maple syrup. Fantastic - beer rebuilt in a way or, as the name would suggest, rediscovered. The Beer Advocators consider. From 2004, bottle # 33676. Time might open it up like an inky rich red wine. The yeast is like tasted cake, eggy in a way. Rum and egg nog is not far far away. The fruit in the grain fills the aroma after half an hour - dried peaches and apricots, pears and apples. Wonderful.

Chocolate, licorice and heat. 7.2% Baltic porter, an artifact of a style. Heavy malty dark with a strong woodsy hop edge over the roast. $2.99 USD at the Party Source, Syracuse.

Two devils for two snowman

Two more from Stone Brewing of San Diego: Double Bastard Ale and Smoked Porter. A couple of months ago, I reviewed Arrogant Bastard here and Ruination IPA here.

The Double Bastard poured deep tea in colour with a beige head. It has the richness of Arrogant Bastard simplictor with something more of the hop whallop of Ruination. It is hot with massive malty flavours of tobacco, leather ballglove, apple butter and fig. Heavy body. At 10% alcohol it ought to whallop but it is a well blanketed bat that strikes. Comfort then good night. Here is what the advocation is saying.

The Smoked Porter was deep garnet, its rich smokiness not overwhelming and not really much in the finish. Below the molassesy deep malt there was some surprisingly fresh grape juiciness, then cola, then dates all laced with the reek. At 5.9% is is one of the more modest Stone brews. Not one of the BA'ers has a bad word to say about it. I think I had a pint of this on tap when I was in Vancouver in 1998 at The Whip, one of the nation's finer spots, with my pal Robyn on a Saturday afternoon before we retired to Granville Island Market for rhubarb pie. Maybe these happy happy men who teach a beer class at UBC are occassional Whiperonians.

One golden summer more than a decade ago, I had a job that meant I had to spend some time visiting various parts of Atlantic Canada. This included my only extended stay in St. John's Newfoundland and with it a meal allowance that got me to and through The Ship Inn, Erin's Pub, Water Street and a spot in George Street I think with sofas giving an excellent view of the NATO fleet crews brawling down below on a beery Tuesday night. It was only years later in 1996 that Quidi Vidi Brewery was founded to seek to capture 4 to 5% of this busy local market. This might equal 25% of a similarly populated market so it is a goal that should see them stay in business.

The brew is a nice enough. No off flavours like the sour yeast of Big Rock and no lack of flavour like Wellington SPA. There is a touch of smoke and more than a bit of crystal malt in a fairly light to medium body with a bit of a residual honey like coy to it. No head to speak of at all - even the old sink water dissipated immediately, big bubbled and more like soda pop than a beer when first poured. There is an old apple sort of thang happening with the malt that is ok but there is not really anything outstanding either, nothing making me want to go nutty and have more than a couple of six packs pass through the fridge over the course of a year. It is, however, one of those beers to introduce someone to micros - nothing too different or challenging and nothing off-putting or weird. A cut above Wellington SPA in that regard and likely a tiny bit ahead of Big Rock. It is no St. Ambrose, however, I'm afraid. Nine advocatrons review it.

Click on the picture for a bigger view including a nice sense of the corrugated cardboard box. I grow weary of the flimsy box board stuff used by many. And bring back the 2x6 12-pack while you're at it.

A great links page about one person's love of beer from the blog Grow A Brain.

Some weeks ago, I referred to the impending proposal to include beer in a trade retaliation against the US. Here is my submission sent by email today to the International Trade Policy Division of the Canadian Federal Department of Finance. I encourage you to send a similar note to the email address at the end of this post.

I would like to make this brief submission to the International Trade Policy Division on the matter of proposed retaliation one item in the proposed - beer. In my submission, I address four aspects of the proposed surcharge as it relates to beer, tariff item 2203.00.00.

First, I would like to make clear that it is not so much the presence of the item on the list but the failure of the proposal to include a sensible threshold for the proposed 100% surcharge which needs addressing. This dispute is between nations and is in reaction to trade at the wholesale and industrial levels. By allowing the surcharge to apply to imports of items, including beer, by consumers in small quantities, you are not being responsive to anything related to the Byrd Amendment. You are only punishing Canadian consumers and our US retailing neighbours - whose business is made only in tiny part by Canadian consumers. Fees and charges at the border regularly are waived for items bought by individual consumers due to, for example, length of stay. I would ask that the proposal consider making a $200 CND per visit exception to the proposed surcharge if you must impose this surcharge.

Second, that being said, I still would like to point out that the inclusion of "beer made from malt" is a selective category not in keeping with the other items on the list. Most other items reflect a wholesale importation of a product for further production. Canada trades in bulk fish, dried beans and legumes and wood products. Canada does not import bulk beer for further production and, in fact, most brands of beer which appear to be American on Canadian shelves are actually produced under license within Canada. Your inclusion of the item will not affect the trade in the brands of US beers, which is where the wholesale market truly exists. It will only address the fictitious wholesale trade. There is no wholesale dumping of US produced beer on the Canadian market. This would likely be one of the most useless attempts to flood a market ever tried in international trade as Canadians generally do not like US beer. They like Canadian brewed US brands but, as I have stated, this is a separate trade in intellectual property and not malty brew. Please ban Old Milwaukee brewing in Canada if you like. That is a separate issue, however.

Third, even among alcoholic beverages, your proposal is inconsistent. Certain wines, whiskies, rum and vodkas are included in the proposal but not gins, liqueurs and brandies. It would seem odd that bulk spirits of those categories, which might actually constitute a trade item, would be left off the list while beer, unknown to the cross-border tanker trade by the very nature of its production, would be included. Why vile cheap gin should not be included when wholesome craftsmen-like real ales are makes no sense.

Fourth, if you are insistent, make sure the tariff applies only to US beer and not beer imported to the US, resold to Canadians and then brought in. Why should we and Belgian lambic producers both suffer when it is Senator Byrd's problem we are seeking to redress.

In summary, it is my submission that beer is just an easy hit, an item on your check list of standard retaliatory categories which actually has no relation to the aims of your policy. If you insist on including it, please make it apply only at the $200 CND importation level or more. Better still, leave it off. There are only a few beer nerds like me who will be affected, who like to go over a few times a year and buy items of micro-brewed beer that we find interesting. I am glad to pay the premium I do and claim every time I drive south a couple of hours to find something different to share with pals. How the heck will stopping that have any effect on US trade policy? It won't. It will only punish what is little more than a hobby.

Thank you for your time taken considering my submission. I look forward to your response and incorporation of my suggestions if deemed appropriate.

Alan McLeod, LLB, LLM
http://beerblog.genx40.com
Kingston, Ontario