Okay, I have found my local beer heaven.
My home town of Kingston, Ontario, has just been blessed with the opening of a new craft brewery: Stone City Ales. And it's doing everything the right way. They have opened right in the centre of town, not too far from the university, but far enough that it won't be overwhelmed with the frat boy types looking for cheap Molson's. They brew on the premises (you can see it all happening), and they have both a bar - definitely not a pub, a bar, with brick walls, clean wood and steel counters - and a take-out counter for off-sales. Now, the latter might not sound revolutionary, but given that almost all alcohol sales in Ontario are controlled by the Provincial Government, it's almost revolutionary for a microbrewery to be doing this. What's more the beer comes in really cool, returnable, brown glass jugs that look like old-fashioned gin bottles. And the sales look to be going very well.
This would all be very well and good if the beer was not up to par. But, it's much, much better than that.
They brew in small batches, some of which will be almost permanently available, some will be occasionals and seasonals, and some one-offs and collaborations. They've spent a long time prior to opening playing with recipes and test brewing and it shows. Most new microbreweries make some mistakes. Some of their beers are disappointing, or even bad. I tried all of the five taps they had one yesterday (as part of a flight of sampling glasses, don't worry), and they were uniformally superb.
Their basic session beer is an American Pale Ale, 12 Star. Just under 5% and very quaffable. Good start.
The seasonal they had on was Windward, creamy, slightly sour Belgian-style wheat beer, also just under 5% and excellent.
Next up: Ships in the Night Oatmeal Stout, 5.5% - chocolatey with a rich wine-like finish, this was more like an export or even an imperial stout than an oatmeal. Now I like oatmeal stout so I was slightly disappointed, but if you ignore the fact that it's supposed to be an oatmeal stout, it's a fantastic beer.
Uncharted IPA - at 7.0% and 70 IBU, this is already at the top end of the range of IPAs before you have to start calling it a double or imperial, but this is just brilliant. It's gof the grapefruit up fron that you'd expect, and a long bitterness but this is balanced with a softness in the mouthfeel and the overall impression is one of real poise and balance. This is as good as Jaipur, if not better.
Watchtower Conspiracy, 9.1% Imperial IPA, a collaboration with Big Spruce Brewery of Nova Scotia - phenomenal! Some high IBU IPAs (and this one is 85 IBUs) just taste like bitter hops. Nothing else. And it's so disappointing. This one, however, has a deep, green nettly kind of richness to it. I don't think I've had a better double or imperial IPA for a long time, and this, apparently, was only the third beer they have made - it's the kind of thing most brewers would crown their career reputation with. Very, very impressive, and unfortunately, almost gone...
If Stone City Ales keep this up, I will be a very happy man.
and they asked how old he was and I told them...they then asked how old his wife was and I replied that I had no idea as I did not know her...they then pointed her out in the crowd and said "there she is, how old is she?"...bizarre.
