(Sample Brewery
Review)
Pub (Sample
Brewpub Review)
McAuslan Brewing (Sample Brewery Review)
Brasserie McAuslan Brewing Inc.:
- Location: 4850 St. Ambroise, Bureau 100, Montréal, Québec, H4C 3N8
- Phone: 514-939-3060, (fax) 514-939-6136
- Owners: Peter McAuslan, Ellen Bounsall, Fred Harris & a 40-member holding company
- President: Peter McAuslan Brewer: Ellen Bounsall
- Consulting Brewer: Alan Pugsley
- Brewing Capacity: 20,000 hl
- Tours: Wednesday evenings by appointment; out-of-town guests can be accommodated by advance arrangement.
- Brands: St. Ambroise Pale Ale, St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout, Griffon Brown Ale, Griffon Extra Pale Ale
Brewery president and owner Peter McAuslan says that he has long been fascinated by breweries, both for their products and their role in the sociological and cultural make-up of a community. As such, his decision to enter the micro-brewing industry was, he says, motivated as much by the finances of the opportunity as by the strength of the brewing history of Québec.
McAuslan spent his teenage years in the Montréal suburb of Lachine and he fondly recalls some of the more characterful Québec ales he drank in those days. He also remembers being drawn to home brewing in Lachine, an affair that lasted off and on for over twenty years before he got himself involved with the commercial side of the business.
Even back then, McAuslan says that he was fascinated by commercial breweries and the impact they had on the culture that surrounded him. In fact, he was so interested in the breweries of the day that he began to collect bits and pieces of brewery artifacts and lore in the hopes of somehow sharing in that culture. Little did he how involved he would eventually become.
When micro-brewing began to rise in popularity in Canada in the mid-1980's, McAuslan found that his slight obsession with the industry became a more major one and he began to ponder the opportunity to, as he puts it, plug into both the past and the future through craft brewing. In 1987, that dalliance took him to a micro-brewing conference in Boston where he met Alan Pugsley.
Pugsley, now so much a feature name in the eastern North America micro market, was just establishing himself on this side of the Atlantic at the time and was consulting at the D.L. Geary Brewing Company in Portland, Maine. As fate would have it, Geary Brewing had been chosen to brew a special ale for the conference that year and, upon tasting it, McAuslan decided that he wanted to know more about the man who was responsible for it.
Following his initial contact with Pugsley, McAuslan threw his dream into high gear. While formulating his business plan, he managed a trip to England in order to view the ale scene in general and the Pugsley-influenced breweries in particular and came back convinced that he should indeed be brewing ales in his home province and that Pugsley was the man to help him. With completed business plan in hand, McAuslan then went searching for financing in February 1988, a chore which, he says, did not take long to complete.
With his capital funding in place, McAuslan, Ellen Bounsall and Pugsley set about to construct a brewery in the fall and winter of 1988 and 1989. While the project was coming together, Pugsley formulated the recipes for the future ales (with input from McAuslan and Bounsall) and instructed Bounsall on the intricacies of brewing. By the time February of 1989 came around, the new brewery was ready to brew some ale.
The style of ale McAuslan and Bounsall chose is one that can be called, without fear of exaggeration, extremely hoppy. The reason for that particular taste, says McAuslan, goes back once again to his sense of history. With Québec's tradition of hoppy ales, McAuslan felt that enough people would respond to the tastes of the past to make his brewery successful.
Hitting the draught and bottled beer market at the same time, McAuslan's first ale was the St. Ambroise Pale Ale which, says McAuslan, was named after the street on which the brewery is located in order to endow a local character to the brew. The pale ale was followed a year later by the Croco Pale Ale for the Crocodile chain of clubs, bars and restaurants (now defunct) and the Oatmeal Stout just less than a year after that.
The stout, says McAuslan, was a special surprise because it was intended to be only a seasonal specialty. The response proved to be so great, however, that they could not discontinue its production. The newly matched pair of St. Ambroises were then joined by the Griffons scant months after the stout's introduction.
In the spring of 1993, McAuslan was still floating on the success of his five litre mini-kegs of the pale ale introduced the Christmas before, and was investigating ways of improving the package to make it reusable. For the former teenage home brewer from Lachine, it was just another way of bringing more beer history to Québec in the 1990's.
Scoreboard
- Griffon Brown Ale (5% vol.):
- Chocolate brown with a touch of red in the colour and a roasted nose with notes of coffee, cigar and berry. The body begins with a berry sweetness before leading to an oaky hoppiness laid over a smoky malt base with cherry and chocolate notes. The bitter-sweet chocolatey finish carries a receding hop character. **1/2
- Griffon Extra Pale Ale (5% vol.):
- Light to medium gold in colour with a sweet aroma blending caramel malt with floral hopping and soft orange brandy notes. A sweet and somewhat sugary start leads to a hop body with a bitter, woody taste offset by a light, sweet and fruity (apricot, plum) malt. The finish begins with a slight candied taste but holds a lingering, woody bitterness. **
- St Ambroise Oatmeal Stout (5.5% vol.):
- Black in colour with a coffee aroma holding strong black licorice notes and just a hint of brown sugar. A very faintly sweet and sugary start leads to a dry body of coffee with notes of bitter chocolate, anise and traces of porridge and plum. Notes of alcohol rise in the bitter espresso finish. ***1/2
- St. Ambroise Pale Ale (5% vol.):
- Orange-rust colour with a white head and a nose mixing nutshell hop with butterscotch malt and a touch of peach. The body starts soft with a distinct nuttiness joined by some lightly orange malt. The body is very full and tremendously hoppy with dominant flavours of slightly smoky wood and filberts on a mandarin orange malt. The finish is bitter and distinctly earthy. ***
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