Posted by Greg Clow in beer, beverages on August 26, 2008 at 3:49 pm

As a student at the University of Waterloo in 1987, I was lucky enough to hit the legal drinking age right in the heart of Ontario's burgeoning craft beer movement. The Brick Brewery, located just a few blocks from my dorm, had been open for a couple of years, Wellington was a fairly new arrival down the road in Guelph, and during my second year, a guy named John Sleeman came out with something called a Cream Ale. So while I drank my fair share of Black Label and Molson Golden, I also started dabbling in some of the province's earliest microbrews.

Imported beers, however, were relatively foreign to me (no pun intended), mainly because there weren't that many around. I recall that a few big names like Heineken and Guinness were fairly common, and a couple of American lagers were starting to become popular (albeit in versions brewed here in Canada). So whether I was drinking beer from a big brewery or a small one, it was always a Canadian one.

That probably explains why I can still clearly remember the night in the early 90s when I was in a bar in New York City and had my first Bass Pale Ale. I ordered it without knowing anything about it, just excited to try a beer from England, and half-expecting something resembling the Keith's India Pale Ale that I'd tried while visiting my family in PEI. I was a bit shocked to receive a glass of beer that was dark reddish-amber ("Well, that's not very pale, is it?"), and my palate, weaned on lager and light ales, wasn't prepared for the flavour that started sweet and caramelly before turning rather bitter in the finish. But by the end of the pint, I'd decided that I liked it, and one more stone was laid in the road that led me to the life of beer geekdom that I live today.

It was quite a few years before I learned about the history of Bass and the importance it played in the history of brewing and business in the UK, and by extension, the world. Started in 1777 by William Bass, the Bass & Co. Brewery was one of the first to be established in Burton upon Trent, a town in Staffordshire, England where the gypsum content of the water made it ideal for the brewing of pale ales. Bass became one of the most popular breweries of the time, and perhaps more notably, was one of the first businesses in the world to become synonymous with their logo, the Bass Red Triangle. This logo was also the first registered trademark in England, as a Bass employee waited overnight outside the registrar's office on New Year's Eve 1875 to register the logo on January 1, 1876 when the country's Trademarks Registration Act went into effect.

Throughout the 20th century, the brand and beer thrived, as did the company, with a series of acquisitions making them one of only two large breweries left in the town. But things changed in 2000 when Bass was bought by InBev, the multinational company that also owns Labatt and many other breweries. Due to competition issues, InBev was forced to sell the Bass brewery to Coors, although they kept the brand and contracted Coors to brew it until 2005, when production moved elsewhere. Currently, the keg version is still being brewed in Burton at the Marston's brewery, while bottles and cans have come from a couple of different breweries over the last few years.

Still, these modern-day mergers and manipulations don't take away all of the mystique of this icon, even if the beer isn't exactly what it once was. A decade and a half later, this can of Bass (LCBO 84244, $2.40/500 mL) that I just finished drinking doesn't seem to be quite as good as what I remember of that pint I enjoyed in NYC. But how much of that can be chalked up to my changing tastes, and how much to changes in the beer itself? Either way, it's still a pleasant quaff, and one that will always remind me of why I became interested in better beer in the first place.