Special International Edition!
This was a gift from some very special guests and now very good friends who stayed recently at our Bed & Breakfast in our inaugural summer season.
They – being Canadian – felt they needed to bring gifts to express gratitude for letting them stay (and yet still pay?) at our accommodation. We felt this was unnecessary but never the less – accepted and thus a lifelong friendship has been born (sorry about the Bolts missing the playoffs at the expense of the Leafs Bob – ouch).
Side Launch – after reading up on them – are a craft brewing outfit based out of Collingwood, Ontario. They are named as such because ships were once built and subsequently launched – sideways; and as proclaimed on the can, the whole town turned up to celebrate. Similarly; the brews in the present day are launched in similar fashion only with the town showing up to stay longer and end up a bit more sideways.
This Dark Lager is beyond tasty – I would put it on a par with the best that Garage Project or Townshends has to put up in the Dark Lager department. Which makes me both proud of my native home in terms of keeping up with the Jones’s but also quietly stoked that my adoptive nation of Canada is making head-waves in the craft brewing industry also.
The malts are smooth and the hops unoffensive – an easy drink and unlike an NHL coach fired after a sub-par season, there is barely any bitterness.
This would go well with practically anything but given its Canadian origins I am hearkening back to all the cuisines that I dearly miss; Poutine, Perogies, my host mums most excellent greek salad and hell even bannock bread (native American fried bread).
So sit back, and sip this back in the winter, watching some hockey while Don Cheery in some over the top colorful getup says something horrendously xenophobic buts its ok because it’s Grapes and ah this beer is good. That’s how good this beer is. Grapes can’t rile you while you are drinking it.
So thank you to Side Launch and thank you so very very much to Bob and Lynne for bringing that all the way with you for me to try (and I still have one other one to try still!)