Wednesday, May 25, 2011

So Many Breweries, So Little Time

It's been a while since I last posted, but its not due to a lack of beer drinking.

Southern Tier

On April 30, I joined an eager bunch of Ontarians on a quest to visit Southern Tier brewery in New York. The excursion was organized by the Ontario distributors for Southern Tier, Roland + Russell. An excellent blow by blow can be found on the Great Canadian Beer Blog. In this photo you can see John shoveling hot spent grains which have since been devoured by some farmer's lucky cows. Yay!



Izumi Sake

Earlier this month, the first sake brewery on the East Coast of North America opened up nearby. Izumi, the Ontario Spring Water Sake Company, is located in the Distillery District. I stopped by to try out (and buy) as many varieties of sake as I could. The sake is unpasturized and extremely fresh - an experience one rarely has in these parts. I tried out their Nama Nama, Genshu Nama Nama, Teion Sakura, and a rather interesting variation that was the result of their first brew called Demondori Musume (during which they were still getting to know their new chilling equipment). There are rumours that they will occasionally offer Kassei-Nigori - which is taken directly from the vat during fermentation when the sake is just right, resulting in a slight effervescence.




Amsterdam Brewery Open House

And just this past weekend I hopped over to the Amsterdam Brewery for their open house to promote their current seasonal, Oranje Weisse. It was a wonderful low key event with perfect weather. Nibblies were available as were samples from the tap, and a demonstration was given by several cyclists on optimal loading of a 25 pack onto a bike.


With all of these brewery visits (and purchases of fermented products) I am afraid that I haven't had a chance to play around with my beer much. Stay tuned, however, for even more experiments with coffee and beer, including comparisons of different beers with coffee and different coffees (and brewing methods) with beer.

Kanpai!
Your Beerista

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