ottawa foodies

Looks from Ron Eades latest that Heritage has a contract brewer renting their new digs.

communities.canada.com

BTW Ron, they could not have possibly mashed for 60 minutes at 40F below boiling. I think you got your notes mixed up. That would be 172F which is firmly in the "mash out" range - used for denaturing enzymes. Mash range is typically 149F to 160F. Lower end for lower body, higher fermentability, and higher alcohol. Higher end for higher body, lower fermentability, and lower alcohol.

Well, I guess they COULD have. I know a guy who did that on his first batch by mistake, and it still made something reasonably beer-like even though it was only about half fermentable. I just find it exceptionally difficult to believe that a brewer would do that on purpose. Of course, Heritage's old brewmaster used to aerate his wort when it was boiling hot - which causes cardboardy flavours in the final product (google "Hot side aeration"). Vs aerating it cold, which is what you are supposed to do. Doing it cold makes more sense too since cold holds more Oxygen.

cheers!

EDIT: OK, you said "roughly". But there are no "rough" temperatures in brewing :-) I find it most likely that they would mash in the 152/3F range - for this lager in particular. Probably even a bit lower. Which would be roughly 60F below boiling, not 40

More local breweries = excellent news! I wish Ottawa was a bit more like the Kitchener/Waterloo/Guelph/etc region of Ontario, craft brewers everywhere!

One of the articles on Brasseurs du Temps Inc.'s site (that Downtown Diner links here www.ottawafoodies.com ), mentions that Hull Island had at least two breweries and three bottling plants and was known as Beer Town during the early 1900s. Too cool.

That location that Brasseurs du Temps Inc. is moving into on Montcalm (best wishes BdT) was originally a brewery owned by Philemon Wright.

Ron Eade brought up a good point in his Blog about "empties" being returned to the Brewery via the Ontario Bottle Recycling Program run in conjunction with the LCBO and administered by The Beer Store.

Here are my thoughts (total conjecture on my part)....

Now that almost all of Canada's Beer is in the standard brown bottle... The Beer Store probably doesn't sort out the bottles by label, but rather by the amount of beer they sell for any supplier.

So if Hertitage only sells a small percentage at The Beer Store, then that is the percentage of the bottles that are returned to them... there is no accounting for the bottles sold thru the LCBO.

The Powers that Be, at The Beer Store obviously are far more interested in taking care of the BIG GUYS (who lets face it own The Beer Store) than the little guy... and quite obviously they aren't interested in anyone who is "different"... which is why Beau's had to find a private solution to their problem of bottle returns as their "specialized" bottles were not being returned to them, but rather being "processed" (another word for smashed). Plus Beau's wasn't available at The Beer Store so in any case their percentage would have worked out to ZERO.

I say it is time to get rid of The Beer Store as they are well past their "Best Buy Date" (pun intended).

Food&Think: I'm with you on this one, I've already discussed this matter with my M.P.P., unfortunately I think he dismissed me since he and I are on familiar terms... I'll be seeing him in a few weeks and will have to bring the matter up again.

There is already an organisation trying to do something about the beer store situation - and yes, politicians just brush us off! A buddy of mine sent a letter to McGuinty and got the big brush off.

It is ludicrous that the government sanctioned monopoly of the Beer Store is owned by foreign interests now! Coors owns Molson - US. Interbev (or whatever they are called these days) owns Labatt (Belgian). Sapporo owns Sleeman - Japanese.

And I find it funny that they consider Beau's bottles to be "non-standard", but not Sleaman. And furthermore, when another brewer introduces a bottle similar to Sleaman, they sue! Wow, double-standards everywhere! And very clear conflicts of interest - all scantioned by your government!

I just read the wikipedia link that someone else had posted, and I'll give it a C-. It is mostly accurate, though misleading in some places. First and foremost, the heading is termed "Varieties of Beer". Aaaa! "Styles" of beer is the proper nomenclature, and is so widespread that I'm acutally quite surprised here. They also leave the impression that Lagers are only light in colour, and this is of course wrong. Munich Dunkels, Bock, Doppelbock, Schwartzbier and more are lagers that range in colour from copper to pitch black (though I did not list them in order from light to dark). They say in the lagers section that most beers serves are light lagers. While true, this is misleading. And in the Ales section they say that ales are further divided into things like Pale Ale, Stout and so on. But in the lagers section they do not make any mention of being "further divided", but of course they should

See the BJCP site I posted above. In the top right you'll see the "Style Guidelines" link, and from there you can get it in PDF or HTML. This is your best guide for beer, and how it is judged. It is the equivalent of the Sommelier (sp?) program for wine.

Zym: Can you remind me of your organisation? It's been a while since I've thought of it, but I seethe with rage against The Beer Store on a weekly basis and would love to get involved. Or at least better inform myself on the topic.

Oh, it's not my organisation - sorry if that was misleading. I didn't give a link because I couldn't even recall the name and didn't feel like googling for it :-)

The obvious question to ask with all these breweries popping up in the neighbourhood is: Where can I buy a keg fridge? :-)

The owner of Free Our Beer is blogging about his experience dealing with the Ontario government as he becomes an agent for Garrison.
freeourbeer.org/

Yeah, I'd considered importing beer at one point, but gave up after looking into it. It's a completely ass-backwards process.

You can buy new keg fridges at Costco. But you can make your own a lot cheaper - I'd be happy to show you how. My 4 tap fridge ( ) was free to get the fridge, and cost me about $200 for the taps and shanks. But that is using the expensive Perlick forward-sealing taps at $40 each. You can get regular taps for $10 each or thereabouts. Though you'd need more stuff than that since I had the CO2 and lines and stuff on hand already.