TAG | APA
Montréal takes a bit of getting used to.
French is the first language here. Parisian architecture nestles with the brash skyscrapers and wide streets of a typical US city. French-looking coffee shops and cafés rub shoulders with the dual-language ‘Café Starbucks Cafe’ and McDonald’s signs adorned with maple leaves. The roadsigns and large North American cars coexist with a high degree of European cultural activity. And all amongst it is a fierce independent streak. Those in Montreal don’t want to be like the US – or, indeed, the rest of Canada.
Montréal, like many cities, is broken up into many different areas: and I strolled, in the cold, in an area away from the skyscrapers of downtown on the hunt for some microbreweries.
The first, L’amère à boire, brewed all its own beer. The beer menu, proudly advertising ‘ales anglaises, lagers allemandes, lager tcheques’ went into the details of each beer in some detail. I wanted to start with the porter, then realised that if I was to try other beers, this might not be the cleverest plan, so instead, chatting to some new friends from the French-language Radio Canada, I went for the India Pale Ale. It was certainly a faithful, if slightly dull, representation of an IPA – brewed in steel vats behind us. L’amère à boire, which is a piece of French wordplay, was a very fine start to the evening; feeling less like an English pub and more like a south of France bar.
Another walk, and another piece of French wordplay. I’ve no real idea what the wordplay is withinDieu du Ciel, but clearly it was very funny, and extended to the large beer list (above), which was written on the blackboard; the unavailable number 15 demonstrating the continuous turnaround of some of these beers.
I started with the Fumisterie, an amber beer brewed with hemp. It had an odd “signature”, to use the words of my Québec-born companion; an unfamiliar taste of herbs as part of the overall, sweet, bouquet. Certainly one for trying, though whether I would try it again, I’m not so sure.
Then I moved on to the Corne du Diable, a strong and wonderfully hoppy American pale ale. This was deliciously bitter: so much so, it almost made my mouth pucker on first tasting it. Astoundingly good. Most fine.
In both places – and the additional microbrewery I tried the following night – I was struck by the wide choice of styles available. The French or Belgians wouldn’t, typically, also offer you a Scottish Ale, a Kölsch, and a stout; yet the microbreweries in Montréal offered all of these and rather rarer styles, and impressively they get them right, too.
I must find an excuse to visit the city again: there are many delightful reasons to return, especially the people.
I managed to snag myself a ticket to the recent London Twestival – spurred on not just by the desire to meet people who follow me (and who I follow) like @jemimah_knight, but also because there was beer on offer.
And not just any beer.
The lovely people at Brewdog had donated rather a lot of what is fast becoming my favourite beer, Punk IPA. And it was this fact that pushed me into getting a ticket from a secret, twice-the-price, stash that had been left back just for disorganised people like me who knew who to twitter.
Realistically, “Pale Ale” can be anything from a pint of bitter (or ‘heavy’ in Scotland), to very different varieties. In order to stay fresh all the way to India, IPA (India Pale Ale) was made much hoppier, with the hops acting as preservative. A good IPA (Greene King IPA being the one you’ll find in pubs most often) is hoppy and bitter, but a session beer nonetheless.
“American Pale Ale” is very different. Far hoppier still – very bitter, very tasty. Sierra Nevada – increasingly available in British pubs from the tap – is a prime example. Light in colour (that’ll be the ‘pale’ bit), the similarity to a lager disappears quickly when you taste it – bitter enough to make your face pucker if you’re not expecting the taste.
I think Brewdog’s “Punk IPA” is, whether they like it or not, really an American Pale Ale – though this 6% ale probably uses English hops rather than their American counterparts. I say ‘probably’ – the label and the website appear to be fairly coy about the type of hops they use. It’s a slightly smoother taste than Sierra Nevada, but still blisteringly bitter and tremendously refreshing.
Brewdog hasn’t been going for long. They only started in April 2007 – in Aberdeenshire, of all places, not somewhere I’d have thought of as a beer mecca. They’ve managed to get their beer in many places – not just in Utobeer, the nicely stocked beer shop in London’s Borough Market, but also into – of all places – Tesco. And it was here that I first discovered it: as they discontinued Sierra Nevada, Punk IPA cannily came to take its place. I’d much rather buy British than buy American, after all – even if US craft beers are closer to my taste these days – and this is a worthy substitute.
And not only has Brewdog got their distribution sorted, they’ve also got their copywriting sorted. The copywriting on the bottle – some of which you can see at the top of the page – is brilliantly done. When James May and Oz Clarke met the Brewdog team as part of their Oz and James Drink to Britain series, the Brewdog team were waiting for them in a park – passing over their bottles in paper bags, deliberately rebelling against drinking laws. As the label says, Brewdog is all about breaking the rules.
I would recommend it, and should the splendid people at Brewdog wish to send me their other beers to “test”, I’d be delighted, though the chances of that are less than zero, naturally.
See Brewdog Pale IPA at beeradvocate.com
