EDMONTON BREWERY, CAFÉ JOIN TO MAKE CRONUT-FLAVOURED BEER
`We gave it a shot and honestly, it was just some magical alchemy,' brewer says
Combining a vat full of 10 different malts with boxes full of cronuts seems like the sort of idea that can only happen after a few drinks.
“Well, they're all kind of drunken ideas when it comes down to it,” admits Jay Sparrow, co-founder of Sea Change Brewing and proud papa to the company's latest offering, Turbo Stout.
A collaboration between Sea Change and Farrow Sandwiches, the stout is as rich and yummy as you'd expect from dumping 120 of the croissant-doughnut hybrids into the mix. It's also a natural partnership between two businesses just down the road from each other.
“We love their sandwiches,” Sparrow explains, “and we already did a beer and doughnut pairing with them a while back. As far as we could tell nobody had ever thought of a cronut stout before, though there have been a number of pastry stouts with cake mixes in them. We gave it a shot and honestly, it was just some magical alchemy. We haven't released a lot of dark beers either, so there's that kind of energy about it as well.”
Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Unfortunately the Turbo Stout sold out in four days after being released in early December.
The good news is that everyone loved it so much the company is planning to break its usual rule of “one and done” and bring it back for another go around sometime in mid-january. Just don't ask for an exact date.
“One of the hazards of the job is that we find that we don't like to say when a beer will be available,” admits Sparrow, who says that Sea Change will also be collaborating with another popular Alberta brewery in January, as well as partnering with Alberta Music in the summer.
“Sometimes we'll have a date set, and then we'll try it and decide that it needs another three weeks or a month because it just keeps tasting better. It's ready when it's ready, and that's that.”
LOCAL DISTILLERY'S PRAIRIE DREAM
The people at Strathcona Spirits may have an award-winning distillery, but they're still punks at heart. How else to explain the brazen middle finger they've given to the three-years-in-the-barrel rule controlling the branding of Canadian whisky with their latest offering, Dreamland Prairie Whisky?
“It's absolutely the most useless law and we didn't want to honour it,” Strathcona Spirits founder and master distiller Adam Smith scoffs, pointing out that the shelves are full of international whiskies that are bottled at a much younger age.
“It doesn't serve anyone. Rather than releasing it at 36 months we decided to wait a bit longer and put it out at 44 months, and we're really happy that we did.”
Aged first in Virgin American Oak, then finished with a splash of rye in Cognac and Armagnac casks from the south of France, Dreamland is a far different drink than the distillery's earlier “baby whiskies,” like Grain Wetsky.
Inspired in part by Japanese production methods, with tasting notes of butterscotch, leather, and vanilla, it's a 100-per-cent wheat whisky that harkens back to the frontier tipples of yore. Smith is especially proud of the striking sunbeam artwork on the bottle, part of Strathcona Spirits' attention to all elements of their products.
“I feel like this really represents who we are,” Smith says of the whisky, which is flying off the shelf almost as fast as the company's recently released absinthe. “You can't mass-produce this kind of thing, and there's going to be a seasonality to it, where the label will stay the same but the taste is slightly different for each batch, because there really aren't a lot of Armagnac casks going around. It's always going to be unique.”