January 27, 2007 -- I understand that Canadian beer drinkers are supposed to bow in profound appreciation whenever our nation’s newspaper of record, The Globe and Mail, deigns to cast its gaze upon anything beer or beer-related. But still, it would be helpful if on occasion the words printed had at least a little meaning.

Take, for example, the article “Below-zero brews” in the paper’s Saturday, January 27, edition. Trumpeting that, this year, some of Ontario’s brewers have released seasonal beers to “fill the void between sophisticated single-malt whiskies and childish hot chocolates” – never mind the condescension contained within the notion that beers can’t be “sophisticated” – the folk at Globe Style decide to sample five such beers and report their finding. The brands chosen are Old Credit Brewing’s Holiday Honey, Great Lakes Brewing’s Winter Ale, Neustadt Springs Brewing’s Big Dog Porter, Trafalgar Brewing’s Celebration Ale and the Molson-owned Creemore Springs Brewing’s UrBock.

Okay, so far so good, now let’s look at the reviews.

For the Holiday Honey, we find that the honey flavour is “surprisingly subtle” and “smooth and light,” which tells me pretty much nothing about how the beer tastes. Further on, after the declaration that this brew is “not syrupy like most honey beers”(huh? which honey beers would those be?), Holiday Honey is described as “slightly nutty and not too sweet,” which at least tells me a little something about the taste.

Further along, we have the Winter Ale, which boasts both the longest and most facile description, beginning as it does with an account of the way the bottle looks – a redundancy, considering that that same bottle provides the illustration for the piece – and ending with an appreciation of the ale as a beer that would be “perfect ‘post-tobogganing.’” Along the way, there is precisely one descriptive: “cinnamon flavours.”

Big Dog Porter and Celebration Ale are each lucky enough to get two descriptives in their reviews, respectively “coffee flavours” and “some nuttiness” and “sweet” and “very citrusy.” If that’s not enough for you, the Big Dog is also billed as having a “long, cold finish” (again, huh?) and Celebration lauded as “dark and smooth.”

The final beer, Creemore’s UrBock, receives a review that is positively misleading, stating that it is “heavy” (with a rather modest 6% alcohol, it’s not), “dark” (more like rich amber), and has a “strong aftertaste that sticks to your tongue” (thus describing the beer equivalent of sticky toffee pudding, I presume). In terms of its taste, the beer commercial-worthy descriptive is “sweet malty flavour” and nothing more.

Sadly, this kind of reporting is typical of when non-beverage writers decide to turn their hands to beer and demonstrative of the lack of respect the art of brewing tends to receive in the mainstream press. (Notable Canadian exceptions, I should add, include Josh Rubin in The Toronto Star and Aonghus Kealy in the Toronto edition of The Metro.) By way of comparison, flip the page and in his “Wines and Spirits” column, Beppi Crosariol describes the Babich Black Label Sauvignon Blanc as “lighter in body but still powerful and exuberant” and containing “big notes of gooseberry, tropical fruit and herbs” ending with “crisp acidity on the long finish.”

That’s about as many or more descriptives as are contained in the entirety of the beer story. And that’s one of the wine critic’s shorter reviews!

Search The Real Beer Library For More Articles Related To: Old Credit Brewing, Great Lakes Brewing, Neustadt Springs Brewing, Trafalgar Brewing, Creemore Springs Brewing

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