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Twelve Months of Beer (and Other Fine Flavours) in 2006 - January 2007January - I started 2006 with a visit to Quebec, where the good folk at La Face Cachée de la Pomme were kind enough to introduce me to the many sides of ice cider, what is sometimes marketed in the United States and elsewhere as apple ice wine. Made in broadly the same way as is ice wine - except that, in most instances, the apples are allowed to freeze in the frigid Quebec weather after being plucked from the trees, rather than being left to freeze on the limbs - ice cider is the concentrated juice of the frozen and pressed apples, fermented slowly and deliberately. The result is a nectar that's something quite beyond compare, even, or perhaps especially, to a fan of traditional cider. To my knowledge, La Face Cachée's Neige brand was the first such bottle of apple ambrosia to be produced and marketed, and to my taste, it still ranks among the very finest. February - What would a February be without a Cheers Beverage Conference, the largest hospitality-focused drinks show in the United States? So off I went to Irvine, California, to try once again to impress upon restaurant and bar operators the importance of serving flavourful beer in the finest form possible. And you know what? I think I actually got through to some of them March - Thailand might not be the first nation that springs to mind when beer is mentioned, but as I found during a week-long stay in Bangkok in March, the Thais certainly do like their brew. It's just a pity that more of it isn't of the quality of Singha or the very enjoyable, German-style beers of the massive Tawandang German Brewery brewpub. April - From the heat and humidity of Bangkok I flew to the cold and snow of Helsinki, a severe case of weather shock that was happily mitigated by a plentiful supply of good Finnish beer, including the excellent Lammin Sahti, tasted post-sauna from the traditional, juniper wood haarikka. In fact, the potent, classically Finnish brew, banana-ish and fruity-spicy with a distinct note of juniper already present, almost made the ice and freezing temperatures enjoyable. May - As much as I enjoy travel, it's nice to spend some time at home, too. Which is how I came to host the esteemed British beer writer, Tim Webb, in Toronto for a night. Aside from being a most enjoyable evening, it served as reminder that some of my local brews, such as the beautifully Bohemian King Pilsner, the unabashedly Teutonic Denison Weisse and the very Canadian Mill Street Coffee Porter, are indeed worth the trip to Toronto. June - It was a month for moving office and home, so no travel was on the schedule for mid-summer, save for an early month return to the Mondial de la Bière in Montreal, a beer fest that has unquestionably positioned itself as Canada's largest and perhaps finest. It was there that I reacquainted myself with the beers of Switzerland's Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes, courtesy of visiting brewer/brewery owner Jérôme Rebetez, and was delighted by the experience. His sage-flavoured La Meule is indeed a Swiss beer to be reckoned with. July - The Oregon Brewers Festival was an event I had too long missed, it being at least a few years since my last visit, and so I returned to Portland for a sunny, summer weekend of beer enjoyment, and a reminder that those Pacific northwest folk really know what they're doing when it comes to beer. An added bonus was the discovery that the Rose City might be America's best when it comes to dining with beer, even outside of such notoriously beer-friendly restaurants as the incomparable Higgins. August - A day and night in the Ontario theatre town of Stratford, to see the opening of a highly enjoyable production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, served as a reminder that, no matter how much we urbanites may think the craft beer revolution is universal, it tends to be a quite different scene once the bright lights of the city fade in the rearview mirror. Aside from a couple of glasses of the local Stratford Pilsner, a lager I wish carried a little more hop punch, I stuck to wine. September - The Great American Beer Festival's 25th anniversary edition proved to me that an old dog really can learn new tricks. See November's feature for details. October - Rather than going on the road this month, the road came to me in the form of Whisky Magazine's internationally hyped "Whisky Live!" show, which after having been staged everywhere from London to Johannesburg, made its first ever appearance on Canadian soil in Toronto. Pity that some of us, myself included, left the event feeling more than a little underwhelmed. November - Living up to my long-uttered declaration that I didn't care who made the beer, so long as it was good, I flew down to St. Louis to visit the HQ of Anheuser-Busch and check out the wares of their technically impressive pilot brewery. And sure enough, while some of what I sampled, like the almost burnt-tasting Schwartzbier and somewhat clumsy but still in development Vienna lager, failed to excite, others, such as the splendid, toffee-ish Doppelbock and fruity, soon-to-be-released sorghum beer, were most impressive, even delicious. December - After years of wanting to attend, I finally arranged my schedule so that I could visit Essen for the Kerstbierfestival, a magnificent and justly well-regarded Christmas and winter beer fest. Highlights were numerous, but perhaps none more so that the Rochefort "Cuvée 2006," which I was told was nothing more than the malty, chocolaty Rochefort 8º bottled in a magnum. That being the case, it's remarkable what conditioning in a different-sized bottle can do, since this spectacular ale was notably richer, rounder and spicier than the 8º I know so well. A reminder that, in beer as in life, all is not always as it might initially appear. Feature Articles
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