In honour of Canada Day, I'm devoting this week's column to a couple of beers from Waterloo's Brick Brewery, one of Canada's first craft breweries, as well as one of the largest remaining Canadian-owned brewing companies. (For those who don't know: Labatt is owned by InBev, a Belgian/Brazilian conglomerate; Molson is part of the multinational Molson Coors partnership; and Sleeman was plucked up a while ago by Japan's Sapporo.)
Founded in 1984 by Jim Brickman, Brick started out as a lager brewery, making it a bit of an anomaly in the ale-dominated microbrewing movement that was gaining steam at the time, but also a fitting choice given the German heritage of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. A series of acquisitions and contract-brewing deals led to them having a fairly diverse portfolio by the mid-1990s, ranging from their core lagers to the British-style Conners ales to the acclaimed Belgian-style witbier Celis White.
Into the early 2000s, however, most of the fringe brands were dropped in favour of mainstream lagers like Brick Lager, Brick Amber and Red Baron, plus the revived nostalgia brand Red Cap Ale and their "buck-a-beer" Laker line. With a new wave of more adventurous craft breweries popping up at a rapid pace, many craft beer drinkers wrote Brick off as a macro-wannabe and moved on.
In 2006, Brick dropped a few of their main brands and replaced them with the J.R. Brickman Founder's Series, a trio of beers - Pilsner, Amber, and Honey Red - that were an attempt to re-establish their craft beer credibility. I tried and enjoyed them all at the time, with the Pilsner being a particular favourite for me that summer. My tasting notes from back then refer to "biscuity malt and grassy hops", and describe the beer as "fresh, clean, well-balanced". Good stuff, but being a typically fickle beer geek, I moved on to new things after a couple of sixers.
With the recent launch of the Pilsner in cans (LCBO 87635 - $2.25/473 mL), I thought it would be worth a revisit to see if the quality remained high. Unfortunately, though, I ended up disappointed. Instead of the fresh aroma and crisp flavours I experienced a couple of years ago, I found that the beer now has unpleasant cooked vegetable notes in the aroma and flavour (potentially caused by a shortened boil time, or by unfriendly bacteria infiltrating the yeast strain used in brewing), and where the finish used to have a lovely grassy/floral quality from the hops, it now finishes dead with virtually no aftertaste. Bummer.
In an attempt to find some solace in something familiar, I turned to Red Baron, a beer that Brick has been brewing for almost as long as they've been around. Going to school in Waterloo in the late 80s, Red Baron was one of my regular brews, so while I completely recognize that it's a mainstream lager through and through, I still have a soft spot for it and like to check in from time to time to see how it's doing.
Like the Pilsner, Red Baron is now available in cans (LCBO 89474 - $1.95/473 mL), and has also been given the new slogan "KW's Own!" in celebration of Brick's Kitchener-Waterloo home as the brewery marks its 24th anniversary. I've long argued that cans are ideal containers for many beers - lighter lagers in particular - as they do a better job of blocking out light and air and keeping the beer fresher. In the case of Red Baron, the new packaging seems to be doing a great job, as the one I tried was in great shape, and tasting better than I remember it being for a long while. Unlike the Pilsner, there were no off-flavours, just a simple malt backbone that was fairly sweet and a bit grainy, and a short but pleasant finish with a mild bitterness from the subtle hops. Nothing fancy, just a nice summer quaff.
So, on this July 1st, here's a toast to Jim Brickman and all of the other folks from coast to coast who are keeping the spirit of independent, Canadian-owned brewing alive at breweries large and small. The mega-breweries can play up their Canadian heritage all they like, but given their current ownership structures, if you're shopping for beer and want to buy something purely Canadian, you probably shouldn't buy Canadian.
Cheers, and Happy Canada Day!
