Premium Beer Experience 2012

Last night the 2012 Premium Beer Experience took place at the Berkley Church. I cannot rave enough about this venue. Between the charming weather and the casual barn like ambiance, guests were in the perfect mood for a night of beer exploration and bonding with fellow beer nerds. Power Juncture (who coincidently also organizes the Wine&Spirit Festival) did a fab job in managing the flow of the evening. It wasn’t an overcrowded hot mess that most events turn into. Tickets sales were controlled which meant that guests had plenty of room to walk about without bumping into sweaty meatballs and to lounge in comfort without a drunken school girl spilling their drink over anyone. I’m not saying this was a classy event by any means, it was a craft beer event after all. But what it was, was well organized with plenty of clean bathrooms and attentive staff who minimized line ups.  At most we stood for about 2 minutes to get a drink and that only happened thrice and we managed to hit every single brewery featured.

In this post I mentioned the fab line up of beers and luckily quite a few delivered what they promised and I stumbled upon a few new ones as well

Highlights

• A tart and crispy Raspberry Ale from St. Ambroise. A perfect start to a patio night. I love that this Quebec brewery uses fresh raspberries to brew this annual ale.
• An Imperial Chocolate Milk Stout from Wellington Brewery. Imagine a glass of chocolate milk and then picture it being a beer. That’s what this was. I’d love to have it for breakfast after a night out! It’s got quite a punch with it’s 8% ABV and unfortunately they served it a bit on the warmer side. Hopefully these guys continue to brew it and this time around I can chill it and enjoy it at its finest. I also have to hand it to the two guys who were manning the Wellington booth, they get the award for the raddest looking fellas!
• A beer that tastes just like homemade pumpkin pie from Mill Street. Cloves, milk and all spice included! Given that Turkey Day is around the corner I was glad to hear that Mill Street has their Autumn Harvest sample pack at the LCBO and that the Nightmare on Mill Street Pumpkin Ale is in it along with their Oktoberfest. Their Pumpkin Ale is by far my favest of all the pumpkin beers I sampled.
• The orangelicious Wizard of Odd Orange Mongus from Flying Monkeys. If you’re looking for something that tastes like Orangina or Fanta try this! It was very refreshing after all the beers we were having so I guzzled this down quickly. Would be perfect to have a pack on hand for those hot summer days while lounging on the rooftop hot tub.
• The fenugreek Cask from Black Oak Brewing ran out by the time I decided to sample it but luckily for me one of my friends had a sample which she gladly shared with me. The fenugreek notes were hard to miss and I think it would be perfect alongside a nice spicy curry.

There were a couple new breweries I discovered, namely Sawdust City Brewing Company who had the coolest names (a refreshing Princess & Girlpants meets the O.D.B) and Church Key Brewing who were offering another perfect summery grapefruit shandy-style radler.

Overall it was a fab night out with my beer loving peeps. New discoveries and quite a bit of learning. If there’s anything to complain about it would be the fact that I’d love to have seen more one offs (vs. the .. “oh yes it’s at the LCBO” or  “we had this at previous Wychwood Barn beer events”) and there needed to be more food options. The sliders and poutine definitely were not worth the 3 tickets and after we sampled a few we decided that the beer was a better purchase! Luckily for our stomachs there was a Chinese joint down the street and we hopped out for a quick bite.

Toronto Beer lovers if you’re free tonight check out Cést What where 44 brews will be sampled for a mere dollar! Yup. No lie!

Cheers!