Peter McAuslan, president of McAuslan Brewing believes in beers with distinctive flavours. This focus on brews for discerning drinkers, has won the ten year old Quebec company praise and awards, including most popular beer in its category at the recent Montreal Beer Festival for its Apricot Wheat Ale. McAuslan is one of about 30 micro-brewers in Canada making their mark against the Labatt and Molson by targeting the connoisseur niche market.
McAuslan has called the flavour profile of mainstream brews akin to Wonderbread. “They’re consistently made, everywhere and quite bland,” he said, noting that because they have to appeal to the maximum number of people, they can’t go for a flavour profile that off-puts any segment. “We take the polar position of creating a beer with distinctive style and characteristics….They’re too flavour pronounced for a large portion of the populace,” he added.
Of course he’s as outspoken as his beers, which are made under the supervision of his brewmaster wife, Ellen Bounsall. As a joking tribute to his pokes at the industry, he was presented with a loaf of Wonderbread and a bottle of Molson’s Rickard’s Red at a recent meeting of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Brewers Association. However while ten years ago they laughed at him, he said that now the big brewers have to respond. “They missed the whole concept and greatly under-estimated North American interest in specialty brews.” Recent research from the Toronto Beer Buying Monitor by Ascot Marketing shows beer drinkers are more interested in experimenting with beers and less likely to be tied to any one brand.
While the micro-brew share of total sales is only estimated at 2 to 4%, they take a bigger chunk of the margin pool. By getting more profit per bottle, McAuslan figures the micro-brews capture about 6% of the value of the beer business. His own volume is around 4 to 5 million bottles, with a dollar value he puts vaguely in the $5 to $10 million range. He estimates that about a third of the micro-breweries focus on specialty craft brews with high flavour profiles.
The simplest formula for beer as defined by the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, is malted barley, yeast, hops and water. From even such a seemingly straightforward recipe, it can get complicated. The type of yeast makes a huge difference on the flavours. A certain German yeast for example, commonly used in making European wheat beer, gives a clove and banana taste to the brew. The noble, classic Czech hops called, Saaz, add floral, spicy and herby aromas. Barley can be toasted to different degrees of darkness, changing colour, body and tastes in the resultant brew. Even the water, depending on its trace mineral content, can add flavours. Beer, once made, can be refermented in the bottle or aged in barrels. Some breweries go even further and add fruit, spices, honey or herbs to a batch.
Micro breweries can experiment with different styles and flavours on a small scale. Those that don’t carve out a niche following can be dropped to make way for others. It costs big money to launch a new brand beyond the experimental stage into broad availability. One industry spokesperson estimated the price on label design, packaging and promotion to be a minimum of $70,000 each new brand. Further, no brewery wants to cannibalize its own established brands with marginal sellers. There’s only so much shelf space to go around. Thus many add variety to their line by bringing out seasonal brands. McAuslan’s summer Raspberry Ale makes way for the Pumpkin in the Fall and so forth. But then Apricot was such a hot seller this spring, it’s continuing into summer and may stick around even longer.
Niagara Falls Brewing Company is one of the breweries with such a focus. Formed in 1988 by two brothers from Addis Ababa, Mario and Bruno Criveller, they make a full bodied, darkish ale called Gritstone which is a consistent seller. Stronger in character than most Ontarian ales, it’s styled after British beers. But they also make a unique seasonal beer, Eisbock, which is concentrated by freezing and extracting water in the brewing process. Eisbock, now in its tenth year of production, was the first of its style in North America when they launched. Their fruit and maple flavoured beers, introduced a few years a go were the first of their type in Ontario. While they’ve abandoned the cherry and maple syrup brews which didn’t sell in sufficient volume, the Apple Ale made from a concentrate of granny smith apples, is a winner. Originally only a summer offering, it’s so popular that they’ve decided to go year round with it.
Granville Island Brewing, the first micro brewer in British Columbia, did a $2 million revamp in 1997 to focus on bringing handcrafted small batch beer closer to the public. (A formerly public company, which went private last year, the majority of their production is now done in the Okanagan Valley at Calona Winery.) They renovated their high profile site under the Granville Street Bridge so that the brewing equipment is viewable behind a see-through partition and put in a room for on-site tasting adjoining their retail outlet. Brewmaster Mark Simpson makes limited quantities of prototype beers on an ongoing basis. The program, at present called ProtoTap (though the name will change as Simpson says the consumers don’t get the play on words), is a way to introduce beers at a lower risk. Cypress Honey Lager, a ProtoTap program beer which gets its special flavours from Saaz hops, honey and orange peel, was such a success it’s now a main brand and their second best seller. Hefeweizen, a step away from the classic blond beer, is made using English Ale yeast, wheat and coloured malt. It’s popularity is such that its going to break into system wide availability. However his lovely Apricot Altbier, which I tried last year, is alas no longer. “I found that when you say it’s a fruit beer, it puts a lot of people off,” said Simpson. Maybe McAuslan knows something he doesn’t. Or more likely, tastes are different across the country.
Others like Brick Brewing Company of Waterloo, Ontario have gone public on the stock exchange, plunging into more commercial tastes without sacrificing their craft beers. Started in 1984 by Jim Brickman, it had the first new brewers license granted in Eastern Canada in 37 years. The first beer they made was Brick Premium, based on a German style lager. Now the company offers 21 different brands which span the taste spectrum. They brew to exact recipes to produce international brands (Henninger, Celis White and Andechs), create unique brands such as Waterloo Dark and purchase labels by swallowing up Connors, Algonquin and the “popular price” Laker. Last year Brick sold over a million cases, with the capacity to expand to three million annually.
“Individuals are experimenting with all kinds of beers,” said Jim Brickman. “I myself like a range of taste experiences…We’re always tweaking different recipes. It’s the fun part of the business. You can’t be a one trick pony.”
While European brews are on the upswing in North America, but some brews never in the past made it to our shores because of concerns over keeping the freshness intact. Andechs, brewed by the Benedictine Monks of Kloster Andechs Monastery in the Bavarian Alps since 1455, was one such beer. After much negotiation, Brick was entrusted with the recipe and two years ago introduced the first Andechs Spezial Hell Lager made outside of Germany.
Brick is certainly a brewery to watch with respect. Lately wheat beer has become one of the fastest growing specialty brews on this continent. Celis White, a Belgian styled wheat beer flavoured with coriander and orange peel, is a brand produced by The Celis Brewery of Austin Texas. Last spring Brick made a deal with them to brew in Canada under license.
The founder of Celis Brewery coincidentally helped Unibroue of Quebec create it’s first wildly successful brand. When former hardware magnate André Dion searched for a white beer recipe for his winery in 1991, he chanced upon Pierre Celis, exiting the famous Belgian white beer company Hoegaarden, en route to set up a brewery in Texas. Celis worked with Unibroue on the recipe for Blanche de Chambly, a bottle fermented coriander, clove and citrus tasting beer with enduring popularity. Unibroue subsequently expanded into other flavourful Belgian style beers with devilish names such as Maudite and La Fin du Monde and a few years ago went public. However Dion, singer Robert Charlebois and others (but not Celis) from the early days are still involved. And the beers are as wonderfully tasty as ever.
Beer creation appears to be even more addictive than beer drinking. Over at Granville, Simpson is already working on his beer for the millennium. He tells me it will be aged in cognac barrels to add character, colour and an extra punch of spirit.
Flavourful Beers
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Unibroue Maudite: A strong beer kept on the lees. Slightly murky auburn/bronze colour. Full body, highly spiced with cloves, allspice and more. Aromatic, deep and mellow with strong alcohol. (8%) ($11./6x341mL)
Unibroue La Fin du Monde: Triple fermented with special yeasts and left on them. Golden hue, robust, tangy fruit, allspice and clove that’s complex and refined. Strong, a Champagne of beers. (9%) ($5.50/750mL)
McAuslan St-Ambroise Pale Ale: Consistent quality and innovation from this micro-brewery. This an brownish old gold colour with a good malty fruit taste. Textured and layered flavourful mouthful with a nice refreshingly bitter finish. (5%) ($10./6x341mL)
McAuslan Apricot Wheat Ale: Pronounced aromatic apricot bouquet. Dry, quite full, mellow and smooth taste with mere hints of apricot in the taste. Pretty orange/rust colour. (5%) ($7./3x341mL)
McAuslan Spiced Pumpkin: Spiced with cinnamon, allspice, clove, a small amount of pumpkin. Smells like a pumpkin pie and tastes spicy, creamy smooth and harmoniously full. (5%) ($7./3x341mL)
Niagara Falls Brewing Special Edition Eisbock: Made bock style by freezing the beer then removing the ice. Concentrated and strong, dark auburn tinted, with an intense spicy, malty flavour and molasses-like finish. (8%) ($6.50/750mL)
Niagara Falls Brewing Gritstone Premium Ale: Amber-russet, assertive and fairly full bodied with both bitterness and sweetness. Rich toasted malty tastes from its roasted malts. (5.5%) ($3./630mL)
Niagara Falls Brewing Apple Ale: Straw coloured, flavours of apples like the pear-perfumed delicious and the crisp granny smith. Dry finish. (6.5%) ($4./630mL)
Andechs Spezial Hell Lager (Brick): All barley, three different special hops, following a recipe created in 1455. Pale golden colour. Perfumed, gently hopped aromas become like boiled cereal/dried herbs as exposed to air (hence the understandable concern for freshness). Both light yet substantial and layered, rounded in the mouth. Finishes refreshing with a tweak of bitterness. (5.5%) ($9.50/6x341mL)
Celis White (Brick): Cloudy white/faded yellow when chilled. Very aromatic nose with spice and citrus peel. Nice undercurrent of spice and fruit in the taste, like nutty banana bread. Tangy with a smooth, rounded mouth-feel. (5%) ($9.85/6x341mL)
Granville Island Hefeweizen: Made using English Ale hops to avoid the clove and banana character that the more correctly traditional German yeast gives. Lemony crisp and refreshing style. (5%) ($4.85/650mL)
Granville Island Christmas Ale: Hearty Belgian style combination of fruit, spices (allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, anise etc.) and imported malts. Deep amber, rich with higher alcohol warmth. (7.2%) ($4.85/650mL)
Note: All prices are approximate. They vary among the provinces as well as within them when private stores are part of the retail system.