Cranky Reviews

This lager is smoked and I am stoked for some Canadian football. Roughriders, Alouettes. 3 downs instead of 4, larger field, more men, smaller payroll, fewer fans.* A great quarterback passing school to get into the NFL if you survive the every down blitz.**

Just call me Big Joe.

It seems the CFL has also been playing the name game too. It’s now the Edmonton Elks after concerns over the racially charged name “Eskimo”. Ottawa got into a trademark battle with Saskatchewan and had to drop the Rough Rider moniker for their new name, the Ottawa Redblacks. Ottawa even had to change the name of their mascot from Big Joe Mufferaw to just Big Joe, because the anglicized version of Big Joe’s real name (Montferrand) was offensive to our francophone community.***

Do you know what a Montreal Alouette is? An alouette is a sky lark, a little bird. Remember the nursery rhyme “Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai,”. Enter the COMDB translation department who tell me that this translation is child’s play. “Little skylark, lovely little skylark, Little skylark, I’ll pluck your feathers off.”  So, a football team named after a little defenseless bird with it’s feathers all plucked off. Where are all the protests from the ornithophile community about this one?

What’s in a name, you say. Old Willie Shakespeare must be rolling in his grave.

How about the name of this beer of the month club brew, Flavour Country. Kudos to Prince Eddy’s for ignoring the Americanized spell check and keeping the “our” in our words. The real question is whether this is a flavour we will savour and favour, or will it rile up rancour.

A pale pour by any standards, even our own. The smoky saison on the nose is not on my top ten aroma list. The taste of smoked salmon malt body with a bit of zip and no fire got me thinking I should have had that 10% stout tonight instead.  Perseverance is the order of the day. A little less smoke would be a little more appreciated. I am not sure what country this flavour is from, but that country must be dealing with some rampant wildfire issues. Super smoky. Big swigs smooth the smoke a smidgen, but the embers still smoulder.

There is a tasty lager in there somewhere, but it’s been smoked out. My first thought was that smoky suds are not my favourite style but upon looking back I have had a few super suds smoked porters in my day. Subtly smoky was the secret to their success. The smoke in this lager is about as subtle as a National Enquirer reporter.

And the rough tough Roughriders got smoked by the little plucked skylarks last night as Montreal handed Saskatchewan their lunch in a paper bag. I guess it takes more than the right name to win the game, as is the case with this brew. I think the Canadian spelling of flavour saved this brew from a poor pour rating.