ottawa foodies

Looks like the big boys want a pice of the craft beer market. business.financialpost.com

Seems to me that they'll just end up eating into their own brands. The segment they're after is already drinking Rickard's Red, Keith's, and Creemore. Once a consumer has gone craft, they won't go back to macro beer. Not to say they're incapable of producing good beer (Creemore's Keller is great), but this is a marketing campaign not a shift in production philosophy.

I don't think the segment they are after are drinking Rickards and Keiths - those aren't craft beers by any stretch of the imagination.

It will eat into their own mega-brands, but the writing is on the wall and the micros will do that anyway. If they can be one of the micros eating into their mega-brands then I guess it makes smart business sense. Less profitable than the mega-brands, but more profitable than letting someone else do it.

The real challenge for them will be producing real craft beer - not complete shite like Rickards

Beer snob! ;-)

I prefer Rickards Red over 99% of beers I've tried. Admittedly, I don't consider myself a beer drinker but I enjoy a good beer now and then. It's okay to say you don't like something, but calling it shite just makes you sound snobby.

There's no reason that true craft beer should be superior to mass-produced beer. If a mega-brand uses the same techniques as a craft brewer then the end result should be the same. Or is there something that the mega-brands do wrong universally, kind of like the "factory farming" of beer?

Yup, it is true, I'm a beer snob. But I'll drink Corona, Budweiser (the US one), Blue and Canadian before I'll drink Rickards. I can really taste the "gravy browning" they put into it, and get headaches off it.

In fact I even enjoy those other beers. There are very few beers I do not enjoy. But Rickards is one of the few beers that actually makes me want to wretch.

Now you have me wanting to try it again because it has been quite some time.

Now that I have tried several craft beers it is very difficult to drink anythig else. I'm was thinking that maybe the big brewers could do a good job creating some new beers. Not sure if this is the plan or it is just to get more shelf space at LCBO and Beer Stores.

I should clarify that I'm only talking about draught Rickards Red. The bottled version makes me want to retch too!

There are very few bottled beers that I truly enjoy... maybe just Innis & Gunn. I also enjoy a few of the "floating widget/draught-flo" style canned beers.

Always looking for recommendations though! I like my beers sweet and nutty, which I think means malty. :-)

Try Negra Modello, a lovely little mexican beer I discovered a year or so ago.

I personally find that Rickards is quite reasonable. The Rickards Dark is surprisingly deep in a mass-market beer and worth trying.

FF I can recommend Red Leaf Lager for a good bottled beer. Hard to get these days seems LCBO has been out of it for over a month now. If you see it on the shelf grab some it sells out fast.

I guess I am technically biased because I'm a shareholder, but most of Brick's beers are really good, including the ones from the new (erish) Waterloo Brewing that they started up to put Waterloo Dark under the name of a different brewery. Not sure why they did that.

I just wish they'd re-introduce the JR Brickman signature series after turfing the founder a year or so ago. I'm assuming they nuked that series because they got rid of him - those were exceptionally good beers.

BTW, I bought stocks because I wanted to put my money where my mouth was - I liked the beer so much.

Isn't buying a beer stock, based on the fact you like the beer, just like betting on a race horse because you like the name of the horse ?

Wanna make money for you, and your family, based on the food/beverage industry ? Try Cargill and Monsanto .... like I did.

Zym ... Look what we were both saying back in 2008 !

Link --> Forum - The End of Cheap Food

Rickard's Red is actually generally well thought of for a macro in the beer snob world. My point was that drinkers will go from RR and Creemore to Unibroue and Flying Monkeys, but won't go from Unibroue and Flying Monkeys to RR and Creemore. The craft beer market knows what it's after, no amount of slick marketing will convince it to adopt existing premium brands from InBev or Coors. It will, however, push existing Blue and Canadian drinkers to Sleemans and Creemore and it's not a big jump from buying those to buying Beaus or DDC.

Did I say I bought it to make money Captain?

EDIT: as for Monsanto and Cargill - if I'm going to sell my soul to Satan, I'd really rather cut out the middleman.

I think that there is no reason the big brewers should be able to create a decent product. I am a huge beer snob, but if the beer is good, I'd drink it. That said I prefer either dark beers, or very hoppy beers, so the mainstream doesn't normally fit into what I'm looking for anyway. A note on rickard's - its not the malt that makes it red - is the colouring they add. As a youngster I drank it too - and it also gave me big time headaches. Now I just stay away - for better or worse there are a lot of nice beers that would make great alternatives to anything marketed under the Rickard's umbrella.

I think one of the taste differences I see with big vs small breweries is in the ingredients; various places I've looked online state that many big beers are made with rice and/or corn added to the barley, especially in pilsners and light lagers. With the volume needed, obviously the brewers would want something not too expensive. All-barley and darker beers can only taste really different, and it's personal palate as to which is better. But cheap ingredients can only produce a cheap taste. I don't know if you can do a stout with lower-quality ingredients that won't taste icky. (Off-Ireland Guinness may or may not be a case in point.)

Mind you, there are some big beers done with good ingredients that are light and fine for a summer afternoon, especially since it would be cheap. Myself, I don't tend to drink beer often, so I'll gladly pay a bit more for a bolder taste; I also seem to affection the darker styles, as was evident in my post about tasting 17 stouts and porters. :) So personal palate come in quite a bit, same as any other food.

This said, Rickard's Dark is somewhat different than their Red or White.

Big Beer brew their beer differently than Craft Beer. Craft beer is usually made the time honored way, with all natural ingredients, no corn, no rice, no additives, which is why they call it Craft Beer. Big beer usually use High Gravity Brewing, where they brew it to a higher alcohol content, then water it down for bottling. This can yield up to 40% more beer at the expense of taste and quality. A lot of craft brewers being bought up by inBev and Coors et al are finding that they are being forced into brewing this way by their new owners to increase profit margins. I vaguely recall the people from Steam Whistle saying something along the lines of that's how Labatt's killed Upper Canada Brewing's quality which eventually sank the brand.

I recommend watching Beer Wars, you'll never drink an inBev or Coors product again. www.imdb.com/title/tt1326194/

Support your local brewers, I try to only drink Beau's, Kichesippi, Hog's Back, and Clocktower. Otherwise I try to drink truly Canadian, Steam Whistle, Propeller etc.

My two cents... Rickard's tends to taste like flavored Labatt's Blue.

You can even make great beer with corn, barley and rice (collectively called "adjuncts") as long as you use quality ingredients and methods. Some 15 or so years ago there was a revival amongst homebrewers of classic early North American beer styles that include 20% to 30% corn, and if you do those beers right, they can be absolutely fantastic and the corn flavour is very positive. They are called "Classic American Pils" or "CAP" for short, and "Classic American Cream Ale" or "CACA" (yes) for short. Although the original Sleeman may have been one of the original brewers of CACA so it might be Canada's only indigenous style.

Most stouts are brewed with 10% to 30% adjunct. Almost always roasted barley, and sometimes unroasted barley, and of course rolled oats in your oatmeal stouts.

Unmalted oats, barley and other grains can make very good beers, if used in relatively small amounts up to 1/3 the grain bill. I make one with the Swedish "Good For You" Muesli in it, so I can call it "Good For You Beer" :-)

Oh, and yeah, the colouring in the Rickard's is what a lot of homebrewers call the "gravy browning" ...

All this talk of beer I had to stock up for the weekend with some Beau's and Hogsback. Does anyone have info on how long a growler of Kichesippi will last in the fridge if un opened? Or how long if opened?

The big brewers want to make money any way they can. I came across one kinda sneaky way they do that this week after talking to my daughter in England. She said they had enjoyed a Blue Moon wit beer on tap, made in Toronto, while at a pub in Leeds, and suggested that I have a look for it and give it a go. Well, neither the lcbo nor the beerstore sell it so I looked elsewhere and found some interesting info at chowhound.chow.com - Molson seems to be making it for export only, to the US perhaps (where Blue Moon is available) and certainly to England, but they don't sell it in Canada, though they call it a Canadian beer (but - Rickard's White is very similar [see link] - I've tried the RW after someone here at OF recommended it and found it simply OK, neither particularly good nor particularly bad so I won't be buying it regularly, if at all.
My tastes match quite nicely with sourdough's and many others who want a beer made with more (and distinctive) flavours than the mcbeers widely available. I want to mention 2 examples, new to me, that I recently enjoyed in Halifax, and recommend them as tasty craft beer treats worthy of sampling if you are so lucky - both from Garrison's Brewery; a beer called Tilford's Nit-Wit, a Belgian-style wheat beer based on the winner of the 2010 Homebrew Challenge, and a seasonal dark maple beer called Sugar Moon Maple, an all natural strong ale (I still have a bottle and am waiting to smoke some pork flavoured with some maple to match the smokey maple beer). These are the kind of beers that my Coors Light swillin' buddy wouldn't thank you for but I heap praise on brewers putting out such marvellous man-made mountains of flavours for us to climb.

I agree with zym on this one; I have no use for Rickards Red, White, Blue, Purple or anything else they concoct, be it bottled, draft, can, or any other format.