Posted by Greg Clow in beer, beverages on August 12, 2008 at 4:57 pm

Craft brewers are well known for dabbling in a wide array of beer styles. Pilsners, pale ales, porters, stouts, barley wines, Belgian-style ales, dunkels, wheat beers, and so on - any beer style you can name (and even some that haven't been named yet) is being brewed by some adventurous brewer somewhere.

One style that is rarely seen from small breweries, however, is light beer. Oh, plenty of them brew lower alcohol beers, often UK-style ales such as milds or bitters. But when it comes to what drinkers typically think of as light beer - i.e. a pale lager with very little flavour, no aftertaste, and lower alcohol and calories than a typical mainstream beer - the style is dominated by the large macrobreweries.

This makes a fair bit of sense when you consider that light beer first came to popularity in 1975 through the efforts of the large American brewery, Miller, who cared more about gaining market share and hitching up to the health and fitness craze than making a high-quality product. As is typical in the big brewing business, all of their US competitors followed suit, as did their counterparts here in Canada, and light beer has gone on to become the most popular style of beer in North America.

Here in Ontario, where Coors Light is king, there are a number of small breweries that are known for brewing beers aimed a bit closer to the mainstream than most of their peers, and a few of them are trying to grab a small piece of the very large light beer pie. Windsor's Walkerville Brewery went so far as to wrap their Superior Light Lager in silver livery, making it pretty obvious which drinkers they're going after.

That said, there are also a few craft brewers in the province who create light beers that are a bit outside the expected boundaries of the style. Burlington's Better Bitters Brewery recently rebranded their Nickel Brook Light Lager as Nickel Brook Pilsner, a name which fits it much better despite the 4% alcohol level, and weight-watching fans of the excellent Stonehammer Pilsner from Guelph's F&M Brewery will be pleased to know that their Stonehammer Light is just as excellent despite the lower alcohol and calorie count.

The latest Ontario craft brewery to add a light beer to their line-up is Robert Simpson Brewing of Barrie, although unlike the rest of the bunch, their light offering isn't a lager, but an ale - Anti-Gravity Light Ale, to be exact. This might lead some to expect a beverage with more colour, body and flavour than a typical light lager, but my advice would be "don't get your hopes up", as much like Robert Simpson's flagship Confederation Ale, this brew is definitely an ale made for lager drinkers.

To start with, it pours a very pale yellow-gold with a small white head. The aroma is quite faint but not unpleasant, with a hint of toasted malt. The body is very crisp, and the flavour is clean, with subtle malts and a touch of grassy hops. Basically, it's an inoffensive and refreshing lawnmower (or cottage, or patio) beer that'll quench a thirst without giving much of a buzz, and can be served it to your buddies who won't touch any of that weird-tasting microbrew stuff.

Maybe it'll gain a following in the area around the brewery as these fringe brands often do, but realistically, I can't see it doing much damage to the seemingly unstoppable Silver Bullet any time soon. Those looking to judge for themselves can find Anti-Gravity Light Ale at select LCBO outlets (LCBO 90753 - $11.95/6x355 mL), or at the picturesque Robert Simpson brewery located on the shore of Kempenfelt Bay in downtown Barrie.