The Brew Master

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I’m writing this from my hotel room in Paso Robles, Calif., as I sip the Mendocino Brewing Company Red Tail Ale — a decent beer not available in Manitoba but pretty widely available in this neck of the woods. I picked up six of ’em at the Target near our hotel yesterday.
   
You wouldn’t believe how badly wine writers and wine tasters crave beer on trips like this (I’m on a wine-writing junket through Paso Robles, Napa and Sonoma). Drinking a cold beer is a great way to cleanse the palate after tasting 40 or 50 wines in a day. Do that for six or seven days in a row and you, too, will understand just how appealing a beer can become.
   
Today, for example, we tasted some really dark, tannic, high-alcohol reds that stain the teeth and numb the palate. Beer gently helps get rid of some of wine’s tannins and grit. Sure, water works, too, but the carbonation in beer really helps to freshen up my purple teeth and tongue.
   
I’m hoping to try some killer California beer while I’m in the area. Once we’re done with Napa and Sonoma, I’ll make my way to San Francisco, so if anyone out there has some hot tips on beer that I should be searching out, I’m all ears.
   
Or, if you’ve been to brewpubs, breweries or the like in the area, please let me know and I’ll do my best to track ’em down.
   
In the meantime, here’s hoping the continuously evolving selection of beers at Manitoba Liquor Marts includes a healthy selection of Californians. From what I’ve tasted so far, they seem to do beer as well as they do wine.

• • •

Mill St. Brewery Tankhouse Ale (Toronto, Ont.; $2.01/341 ml)
   
Medium copper in colour and with a whitish, medium head, the Tankhouse Ale brings warm rye, toffee, roasted nut and caramel aromas and a hint of iron. There’s some weight here, with nice toffee, pine nut and dark chocolate notes. Yet at the same time, this herbaceous note (undoubtedly from the "staggering amount of hops," as the bottle says) keeps things fairly crisp and lean. Alas, it lacks a memorable finish — you swallow it and it’s gone.

Bard’s Gold Original Sorghum Malt Beer (Utica, N.Y.; $2.85/355 ml)
   
Well, guess who bought a gluten-free beer without realizing it? This guy. Medium gold in colour and with very little head, there are distinct rice and mineral aromas, and some lighter nutty and varnish notes. Contains no wheat, barley, rye or oats, nor much flavour: meshed-up rice, light pear skin notes with a hint of sweetness. If you have a gluten sensitivity, I feel for you.

Microbrasserie Charlevoix Dominus Vobiscum 2010 Lupulus (Quebec; $14.51/750 ml)
   
This extra-strong Belgian-style IPA is pale gold and slightly cloudy in colour, with a rich, foamy white head that lasted quite a while. Ripe apples, wheat, lemon rind and clove aromas are enticing on the nose. The effervescence is soft on the palate, allowing mineral, wheat and banana candy flavours to creep into your psyche and stay there. At 10% alcohol, this could creep into your head pretty quickly, too. Nice stuff.
    
   
Like most wine columnists/judges, Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson is also passionate about beer, and has a hybrid beer-and-wine gut to prove it. Follow him on Twitter at @bensigurdson and/or email him at uncorked@mts.net.