Craft Beer Reviews Canada

I recently travelled to Toronto for a company event and had to make sure that I visited Bar Volo , one of my favourite spots in the city. Bar Volo brews a pretty diverse selection of beer styles and their numerous taps include their beer, guest beer—and a small number of beer engines for cask ale. On this visit, I made sure to try Volo Piccola, an English dark mild conditioned and served from the cask. Appearance: Piccola is served in a glass mug and appears a murky chocolate brown in the dim light of Bar Volo. It comes with a perfectly dense head of foam that lasts from your first sip to your last—in fact, when you're done the beer, the head is still there at the bottom of your glass. There is absolutely no lacing. Aroma: It smells very faintly of smoke and roast, like coffee or chocolate. Flavour: Piccola's flavour profile can best be described as a combination of watered down coffee with chocolate malt—and believe it or not, I mean that in a good way. This is an absolutely d...

Is The Establishment Alberta's best brewer of hazy IPAs? It's an entirely valid question that has no definite answer as of yet. But I'll start this review by stating that this beer makes a strong case for yes . In my experience, hazy or New England-style IPAs tend to fall between 6 and 7% ABV. Anything higher than 7.5% is frequently classified as a double or imperial IPA. Alive in the Superunknown comes in at 8.3% and The Establishment has purposefully labeled it an Imperial Hazy IPA. The thing about hazy IPAs is that they don't always fare well with the additional grain bill required to hit a higher alcohol content.  The West Coast-style IPAs of the 2000s and early 2010s handled a higher ABV quite well by offsetting the additional body and alcohol burn with blistering pine and citrus hop flavours thanks to old school varieties like Cascade, Centennial, Columbus and others. But hazy IPAs are more delicate in some ways. Extra body and alcohol burn are not characteristics...

Super Saturation by Cabin is a benchmark of sorts for Alberta hazy IPAs. In the hazy history of New England-style IPAs in this province that likely exists only in my head, I think of Super Saturation as the beer that dethroned Blindman Brewing's New England Pale Ale, an early (and unimaginatively named) entry to the style in this province. Blindman was the first brewery here that I can think of that added a hazy to their core release program. Since the origins of Super Saturation, Cabin has released a number of variations on that beer—or at least leaned into the name with releases like Saturation, Super Duper Saturation, Summer Saturation, and Total Saturation. And now comes Hyper Saturation, which I picked up on a recent visit to Sip Liquor Market , a local bottle shop not far from my home. Is this new Hyper Saturation release worth of the Saturation name and history? In a word, no. At least not the particular can that I tried on a lazy Sunday winter afternoon. Appearance: I had ...

A quick and easy review of Cactus Head , a beer from Blood Brothers Brewing that caught my eye while I was looking through the new IPAs at Sip Liquor Market . Appearance: Nice can with a cool design. Blood Brothers tends to vary the look and feel of their packaging. Not very consistent from a branding perspective but it always looks good. This beer pours hazy yellow. Nice fluffy head with very fine bubbles that faded to a frothy film that stuck around. Medium lacing. Aroma: Smells like white wine with a vegetal or grassy note. Taste: Strong grapefruit and gooseberry flavours with a slightly vinous, acidic aftertaste. Mouthfeel: Really nice, fluffy body with slightly lower carbonation. Overall: Tasty! Blood Brothers nailed the mouthfeel for this beer which leaves me eager to try more of their hazy IPAs. For me, a soft, pillowy body is what really defines this style of beer and is the quickest way to differentiate a brewery that gets it versus one that doesn't. Rating: 3.5 out ...