I was wondering what Stout Irish Pub might have going on during Toronto Beer Week. About an hour later I opened my email to find that Erin (Stout’s sassy proprietress) had emailed me to tell me and the Toronto Beer Lovers that the Monday night will be a night of beer bromance. A night of cask beer under the stars where each beer is a Great Lakes Brewing brew mixed with another great Ontario brewers beer. What we had was Great Lakes Brewing’s Red Leaf mixed with Kawartha Lakes Brewing’s Raspberry Wheat to make a cask of Raspberry Red. Great Lakes Brewing’s Crazy Canuck with Beaus Night Marzen to make Crazy Beau Beau Great Lakes Orange Peel Ale mixed wit Amsterdam Brewing’s Boneshaker to make my favourite of the Night the Orange Shaker. Great Lakes Brewing’s 666 Devil’s Pale Ale added with Camerons 266 Dark ale to obviously make up the 932 cask. Inside they also had a bonus cask Of Great Lakes Uncle fester Munich Hellis German Style Lager. Everyone at Stout has been really good to us every time we’ve been there and this time was no different. It became a great laid back Toronto beer week event. Fantastic local beer. At a fantastic local pub drinking outside as fall comes up on us.

http://www.stoutirishpub.ca/

http://torontobeerweek.com/

http://www.torontobeerlovers.com/

I was literally wondering if there were going to be OCB Week events at Stout Irish Pub when I opened my email to find a message from Stouts charming proprietress Erin. Great Lakes and Cameron’s breweries are providing seven casks of beer. In other words they provided us with a fantastic way to spend our Monday night.

Cameron’s Roadkill Amarilo 5.1% Beats me what beer type this was but it was super good.

Great Lakes Brewing Silly Pucker Raspberry Rhubarb 5% Sour and delicious. I was missing all the wonderful framboise beers I had in Montreal so this made my withdrawals a bit easier. Also I had been wondering if a raspberry rhubarb pie would work out so it was really funny to find this beer. **I have since had raspberry rhubarb pie it was really good. (You can find it at Bread and Roses just West of Bloor and Runneymede).

Great Lakes Brewing Blood Orange Peel 5.4% I really liked this, I enjoyed it much more than the regular Orange peel ale it has a fuller flavour and an awesome burnt colour.

Cameron’s Sirius Wheat Ale 4.2% Seriously not a huge fan of wheat beers in general but Cameron’s has made a lovely beer with the Sirius Wheat.

Great Lakes Brewing Karma Citra 6.5% Nice, citrusy pale ale. Cameron’s Island Stout 9.8% Lovely island stout and dangerously drinkable at 9.8%

XXX Double Bourbon Barrel Porter Smooth, with lots of influence from the Bourbon Barrel.

Super friendly event. Stout Irish Pub is such a nice departure from some of the lack lustre bar experiences one can find in the city. Great personable service. Good food and an expansive beer list. The enthusiasm really shows and it makes for a very welcoming environment. So much so that the Toronto Beer Lovers are bringing our next Monthly meet there on July Seventh. Where Great Lakes Brewing will be providing two casks one especially for the TBL! Feel free to come join us and definitely make the time to visit Stout Irish Pub.

http://www.stoutirishpub.ca/

http://www.torontobeerlovers.com/

Well played Great Lakes. Taking the experiment on the road and spotlighting porters at the Victory Cafe . The Robust porter 25th anniversary beer was quite good and great example of the delicious beer that has come out of Great Lakes over the last quarter century. While I found the maple and vanilla porters awfully sweet they were well loved by others. Unfortunatley I was late and missed the Nazgul and the Baltic. Nazgul was a great name for a porter. I would suggest a cascade hop double hopped ale and call it Tree Beard to continue with the Tolkien theme.

It was fun to be part of the experiment and to try some good beer with good people around.

http://www.greatlakesbeer.com/

torontobeerlovers.com

Joined my friend for some drinks she brought me to this pleasant little family owned place on Harbord a couple of blocks west of Spadina called Momos. It was a very nice little restaurant with a bit of a European tavern kind of feel. They had local beer on tap and were featuring Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion. Not generally one of my favourites but it fell into a perfect time and place to give it another try. Although I did really enjoy the Hoptical Illusion on a sweltering summer night in Kensington market. It paired delectably well with pecan pie and a healthy scoop of French vanilla ice cream.

As Momos was fixing to close up for the evening we took ourselves out to College and Bathurst. Formerly the home of KOS (which now is in Kensington Market and still one of my favourite breakfast places). The place is now called Nirvana and has a pretty nice barroom, saloon feel to it. Taking full advantage of them having Great Lakes Crazy Cannuck on tap. It was a nice place to spend the rest of the evening . Which was evident when we realized the time and woke to a rather bright and weary morning the next day.

http://momos.ca/

http://www.yelp.ca/biz/nirvana-toronto

greatlakesbeer.com

http://theflyingmonkeys.ca/

Great Leaks Crazy Cannuck

The aroma when I opened the can was wonderful on its own. The promise the floral hoppy aroma brought was well fulfilled in drinking the beer.

But, don’t take my word for it. Drink the Beer!

Baking is thirsty work. While reorganizing my kitchen and making spent grain chocolate chip cookies I carved my way through some of my beer selection.

Black Oak Double Chocolate Cherry Stout, silky and flavourful a deliciously flavoured stout.

Black Oak Pale Ale, perhaps the best straight ahead pale ale you can get. My lovely coffee companion dropped by with an Abbot ale from Greene King out of Suffolk England . It was incredibly good. I don’t know much about them though.

Great Lakes Devil’s Pale Ale, one of a few beers I didn’t like on first go but have warmed up considerably to the Devils Pale. All great accompaniments to rebuilding my kitchen and baking spent grain cookies.

But, don’t take my word for it. Drink the beer!

http://blackoakbeer.com/

http://www.greatlakesbeer.com/

http://www.abbotale.co.uk/home.php

This is the first time I bought Great Lakes Brewings Devil’s Pale Ale for home. I didn’t like it when I first tried it several years ago at the Toronto Beer Festival. So I’ve had an aversion to it. My tastes have moved on and I’ve developed a taste for craft beer and have visited the Brewery monthly for their Project X events. I’ve warmed up to the Devil’s Pale Ale. It’s not the staple in my home like the Great Lakes Crazy Cannuck, but this gorgeous dark hoppy ale has become a treat and and another solid Great Lakes beer I enjoy visiting.

But, don’t take my word for it. Drink the Beer!

http://www.greatlakesbeer.com/

Beer, Hockey and Canadian bacon at Great Lake Brewery. A pretty great edition of Project X. We enjoyed the Toronto Maple leafs playing the Philadelphia Flyers. While drinking some of the experimental beer Great lakes come comes out with for the Project x events. My favourite of the evening being the Pompous Ass casked pale ale. Boasting a really beautiful colour. A dry and citrusy flavour which hits with the first sip. I came back to have more of the Pompous Ass a few times throughout the night.

I unfortunately missed out on the Valentines beer being distracted by the Pompous Ass and the Morning Morning coffee stout. Which smoothly combined the coffee and beer flavours.

It was fun to see all the people in hockey Jerseys and funny to see all of Mike Lackeys many hockey jerseys hanging around the room. Like most other Project X’s it’s been a nice midweek night out.

Grilled Canadian bacon sandwiches, fantastic beer, ice cream with a maple cookie all along with watching the Leafs and Flyers play a fairly good game of hockey. As seems to be my usual habit I finished the night enjoying the Crazy Cannuck pale ale. Which continues to be one of my favourite beers and was a great compliment to having the Citrussy Pompous Ass earlier. 

http://www.greatlakesbeer.com/

While cleaning I found a bottle of Great Lakes Brewing’s Winter Ale from last year. Curious as to how it’s survived the year I popped it open. Generally it tasted much the same as this years. Perhaps a bit more maturity and mildly strong flavours. I probably should have waited and picked up another bottle of his years Winter Ale and compared the old and new. On the other hand I was pleased to find the older one and had a pleasant evening drinking it. Whether you find one in the back of the closet or pick up a few new bottles. It’s a brilliant flavourful spiced beer perfect for sharing over the winter months.

But, don’t take my word for it. Drink the beer!