Hopping Along Ontario's Ale Trail: Day Two
Our second day's sampling began at Sleeman Brewing & Malting Company (551 Clair Road West, Guelph; 1-800-BOTTLES). Founded in 1851, this is the oldest brewery on the Ale Trail. Even though it is the Trail's largest, Sleeman still brews in batches small enough to keep its beers in the "microbrewed" category. Inside the upstairs tasting room, a tourguide acquainted us with the rich, trivia-filled history of the Sleemans and the family brewing business. Now I know what those numbers and words underneath the bottlecaps stand for. Unfortunately, the brewery doesn't offer prizes for collecting the complete set, and bottlecap questions are rarely asked on quiz shows.
The original Sleeman product is Cream Ale, a style popular in Canada but seldom found in the States. It's a perfect beverage for long summer evenings. Silver Creek Lager, a pilsener named for the original source of the brewery's water, is another good summertime choice. Sleeman also brews a number of year-round favorites. They include Brown Ale, made in the tradition of 19th-century cottage breweries (it's now Sleeman's largest-selling beer); Original Dark, which is really ruby-red in color; and Steam Ale, Canada's only beer brewed in the "California common" style, slowly cooled and aged in open vessels.
Sleeman, too, has been acquiring breweries. It now owns the Upper Canada Brewing Company, which had, for years, produced fine ales and lagers at its Toronto facility. Fortunately, Sleeman continues to brew and distribute the Upper Canada line, which includes deceptively powerful Rebellion Ale, ultra-smooth Dark Ale, and distinctive Maple Porter.
F&M Brewery (355 Elmira Road North, Guelph; 1-877-316-BEER) was worth the extra effort spent finding it. It's in a small industrial park-like complex northwest of downtown--not a place where you'd expect to find a brewery. F&M brews all-natural beers which, for reasons I can't fathom, are hard to find on tap. In our years of visiting Ontario pubs, we'd had only one F&M product, MacLeans Pale Ale, which earned thumbs up from both of us.
Inside F&M's noisy hospitality room (a bus tour had just arrived), we sampled Special Draft, with a distinctive buttery taste; flavorful StoneHammer Pilsener; and a fresh Premium Dark Ale, which was lighter in color than most ales of this style. All of the breweries on the Ale Trail operate retail stores, but F&M is the only one to offer beer to go in a "Keggy," a 12.5-liter container with its own supply of carbon dioxide and a tap handle. It's designed to keep beer fresh for days inside your refrigerator. A Keggy costs a few dollars more than a 24-pack of bottles, but contains about 50 percent more beer.
Our final stop was Wellington County Brewery (950 Woodlawn Road, Guelph; 519-837-2337). Inside the Iron Duke House, military music played in the background while the Ale Trail's savvy staff poured samples of beer served the way you'd find it in a British pub. Two of Wellington Brewing's beers have been among my favorites for years. Arkell Best Bitter more resembles a mild ale, a style not often found in North America. It's brewed in the best traditions of a "session ale," the kind customers sip all evening in English country pubs. Great in bottles, it's even better drawn straight out of the brewery's casks. Wellington County Ale, stronger and more full-bodied, is another beer worth asking for the next time you're in an establishment offering "real ale."
The Ale Trail's breweries open their doors to visitors during the warmer months, a time of year that doesn't always do justice to their fine darker beers. Nevertheless, Iron Duke Porter made quite an impression with us. Guests sampling it were offered small pieces of chocolate, which brought out the flavor of the chocolate malt used to brew it. Wellington County Brewery also produces Iron Duke Strong Ale and Iron Duke Imperial Stout, the latter weighing in at 8% alcohol by volume.
Wellington County Brewery's top attraction is founder Phil Gosling: beer geek, historian, and raconteur. Sure enough, we spotted him holding court with the Ale Trail regulars. Gosling also owns the Trail's best sense of humor. Stunned by negative reaction to his campaign to modernize Arkell Best Bitter's image, he distributed handbills apologizing to customers, claiming he'd spent the last six months in the witness protection program hiding from them.
The weekend's sampling gave us an idea. Why not bring home a trunkful of Ale Trail products and hold a leisurely, summer-long sampling in our backyard? Then we remembered U.S. Customs. A returning resident can bring back, duty free, only one liter of alcohol--that's a little more than three bottles of beer. So instead of ales and lagers, we put our sampling plans on ice. But we did manage to bring home our tasting notes, and pleasant Ale Trail memories.