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• Reflections Upon the Summer Past
• The 5th Annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival
• Kitchen Table Tasting Goes to the Home of Booker Noe

• Taste of the Month
• Coming Next Month
• Selected Events
• Feedback

• World of Beer Update
• Previous Issues

Two new brewpubs have opened in recent months: Brutopia (1219 Crescent) and L'amère à boire (2049 St. Denis). Deserving of praise from the former was a coffee-ish and pleasingly roasty Porter, served in a very comfortable, pubby setting, while the latter offered an excellent Blond Lager, the recipe for which reportedly came from the collection of Pierre Rajotte, who is fast becoming a Québec brewing legend among the cognoscenti.

Couple these two new developments with impressive beer releases from Cheval Blanc and BrasseMonde and you have even more reasons to visit la ville de la bière de Canada, or Canada's Beer City.

-- In the better late than never department, this past August marked a very successful Great British Beer Festival for several breweries, including the well-respected and established Batemans and the relative up-and-comer, Mordue.

Batemans, a family-owned brewery based in Lincolnshire, led the medal parade with two golds, for their XXXB and Dark Mild, and one silver, for the Dark Mild in the Champion Beer of Britain competition. This has been a good year for Batemans, as they were earlier awarded the title of 1997 Brewer of the Year by the editors of The Good Pub Guide.

The other big winner, Mordue, won a gold for their Workie Ticket in the Best Bitter category and also scored a great coup for a young brewery by winning the title of the Champion Beer of Britain. Impressive results, indeed, for a brewery founded as recently as 1995.

Other multiple medal winners were the Hop Back Brewery, winner of both a bronze and a gold for their Summer Lightening in, respectively, the Strong Beer and Bottle-Conditioned Beer categories, and Hobsons, winner of a Bitter gold and a Champion Beer of Britain bronze for their Best Bitter.

-- One item I neglected to mention in the reports I filed from Madrid this summer was my discovery of a marvellous three-street section of the city -- marvellous from a beverage perspective, that is.

In amongst the jumble of narrow lanes and streets just north of Madrid's main plaza, the Puerta del Sol, lies the close area bounded by Calle de Trujillos, Calle de Veneras, Calle de las Nava de Tolosa and Postingo San Martin. Within this irregularly-shaped block reside four of what I found to be the best drinking destinations in the city: Cerveceria Schnitte, Doña Juana, Casa Parrondo and Casa Erte Cerveceria.

Of this quartet, Doña Juana is perhaps the least interesting, with only a few beers and one vaguely interesting sidra (Spanish cider) on tap. The tapas are good, filling and inexpensive, though, so it is probably worth a stop as you roam from one spot to the next.

Both cervecerias are beer bars in more than name only, with fine selections of domestic and imported brews available on tap and in the bottle. Christine and I particularly enjoyed Schnitte, with its rough-edged but honest decor and admirable attention to beer-related details, such as providing the correct glass to match the brew.

The jewel in this crown, however, has to be the Parrondo, a sidreria with a relatively dry, appetizing and slightly musty house sidra and outstanding tapas. We liked this place so much that we visited, enjoyed, reluctantly departed and returned for more all within the same night. The Parrondo is also where I learned the art of the "sidra pour," where the bottle is poured from above the head onto a glass positioned below the waist!

If you find yourself in Madrid in the future, or you live there and have somehow missed visiting this little district, be sure to pay a visit to Casa Parrondo and the other bars in this area. You won't be sorry.

-- In another Montréal note, the 3rd annual Festibière de Chambly took place at the historic Fort de Chambly from September 4-7 and was a fabulous event as per usual. Some 25,000 people passed through the gates at the Fort this year, with organizers estimating that the weekend's somewhat dreary weather cost the festival some 10,000 attendees. Those who did visit, however, were richly rewarded for their efforts.

One of the big features at this year's Festibière was the Trappist booth featuring beers from all six of the Trappist monasteries of Belgium and the Netherlands. It is thought that this was the first time ever that all of these beers had been assembled at an commercial tasting on North American soil, and beer aficionados at the fest responded enthusiastically. According to Festibière head, Mario D'Eer, the beers had to be rationed so that there would be enough for each of the four days of the festival and most sold through their rations each day. The Westvleteren ales, so rarely seen outside of Belgium and even scarce within, sold out in a matter of two hours each day, says D'Eer.

Other rare beers available at the Festibière included the Cantillon Gueuze and Rose de Gambrinus, the German monastery beer Weltenburger and the ales of the tiny Abbaye des Rocs. As well, most of the breweries in the Quebéc were present with all of their beers, plus an occasional specialty brewed exclusively for the event, such as the tasty apple-flavoured ale called Pompommé which I sampled at the booth of Les Brasseurs du Nord, brewers of the Boréale line of ales.

Organization is already underway for next year's Festibière, to be held at around the same time, with the planned theme being the beer goddess. I suggest that you begin making your plans to be there.

To link to more articles from this month's World of Beer go back to the top of the page.

Coming in November

Via SBWoB webmaster Kevin Fair and others, we'll present a report from this year's Super Bowl of Beer, the Great American Beer Festival.

And with a little luck, we might even have the new SBWoB design worked out!

Plus, as always, more Feedback, the Taste of the Month and a blind Kitchen Table Tasting of Belgian-style white beers.

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