Fall is the perfect season to shift gears with beers
The leaves are starting to turn and the time has come to shift gears when cooking and drinking. Too many people stick to one beer through the year. Traditionally, the monasteries had a cycle of beer for not just the four seasons but for parts of each season. (Until into the Baroque era, monasteries were usually also breweries.)
Everyone knows about Oktoberfest — a secular holiday built on top of a pagan celebration, via some Christian sanctification — but the various ales that started to be released afterward were carefully constructed to suit the seasons. For example, bock was made to help monks through the fasting of Advent.
September is still late summer (most of the time) so sticking to a lager is not without reason, but most of us start to think about stews and heavier foods once the temperature drops. And the best accompaniment for such foods is usually an ale, a bit stouter than what you wanted in July.
How stout, of course, is open to personal taste. For me, the best of autumn is the red ales. They don’t have the monster calories and alcohol of triple hopped IPA but they are a little more flavourful than the lagers of July.
If you’re a reactionary you can stick close to the traditional Canadian beer with a lighter ale. For example, let me suggest Black Bridge Brewery’s Rye Ale.
Black Bridge is a new brewery out of Swift Current. Their first anniversary happens next month. Obviously they have yet to fully show their chops and range, but they have produced a mainstay beer that is first rate, a rye ale. About a third of the mash is rye and the rest the usual two row barley. It has a pleasantly nutty flavour that works beautifully.
If you’re just dipping your toes into craft beers — don’t, it horrifies women — this is a very good place to begin. None of your Silver Bullet friends will scorn the glass and the flavours are interesting enough to intrigue your beer snob buddies.
Prairie Sun is a growleronly brewery in Saskatoon and they too have an autumn beer, their Campfire lager. Although a lager sounds like your heading back into Molson territory, they’ve flavoured it with some wood chips. It’s a dark reddish hued beer. This is a really great beer that combines drinkability with complexity, and I recommend it without hesitation to all beer drinkers.
Paddockwood has been doing a great job of offering beer in Saskatoon for decades now. Their Ruby Mild ale is available on tap at the brewery, and is pretty close to what I think of as a perfect fall ale. I can imagine making any number of stews and slow cook recipes with this ale. It’s a delight to drink by itself but works really well as an accompaniment to any number of savoury dinners using the final herbs of summer. Subtle, tasty, this is the real deal.
Bushwakker is always reliable with well-made beers and a constantly changing lineup. Butcher’s Daughter is a newcomer to the lineup. An award winning ale, this is a beer for hopheads. It tastes rather like Portland IPA to me, it’s a pretty large framed beer and most likely to please those seeking hops, hops and more hops in their brews. Beer of the Week Black Bridge Brewery Rye. Ale 2013. $14 Prairie Sun Campfire Lager.
$11/L
Paddockwood Ruby Mild.
$6/L Bushwakker Butcher’s Daughter. $10/650 ml