Across The Nation La Grande Rivière
Central City Brewers + Distillers

 

 

355 mL can from the LCBO, included in their Across the Nation collaboration (Back East) mixed pack; dated Mar 26 2018 and served slightly chilled.

Pours a fogged golden-amber hue, with nearly a finger of loose, bubbly white head that lasts nary more than sixty seconds. A sickly thin collar remains, but the surface is otherwise bare - not even a speck of lace, which for a purportedly Belgian style beer should be considered an atrocity. It smells of tart cranberry juice, orange zest and grapefruit, with minor hints of pineapple, berries, melon and powdery, lightly spicy yeast.

The cranberry juice is front and center throughout the sip, with the hops and malts forced into playing secondary and tertiary flavour roles, respectively. It does have a nice, wheaty, bready background sweetness, as well as notes of apricot, orange and grapefruit - but the cranberry comes to dominate towards the back end, with its trademark astringent quality serving to partially dry out the palate into the aftertaste. Medium-full in body, with relatively lively carbonation levels that prickle and prod the tongue, imparting some much-needed bite to this beer's otherwise slick, smooth mouthfeel.

Final Grade: 3.69, a passable B grade. BDT's La Grande Rivière is best described as a fruit beer with elements of a Belgian ale and an American IPA - very much a chimera, and maybe not one that has everything hopheads are looking for in the precisely correct ratios. On the flip side, it's actually one of the better cranberry-themed beers I can recall trying over the years (not that I've had all that many of them), and I can't really say I didn't enjoy my glass, because I did. A bit of a mixed bag, which I suppose is to be expected with these hybrid one-off collaborative efforts - and far be it from me to discourage experimentation.

Can: Poured a murky yellow/reddish color ale with a medium size foamy head with light retention and minimal lacing. Aroma of light citrusy hops with cranberry notes is OK. Taste is a mix of lightly bitter cranberry notes with some mild citrusy hops notes. Body is about average with OK carbonation. Not sure the mix of cranberry and hops really works well.

 

 

Collaboration Brasseurs du Temps, canned: Hazy and cloudy light amber color with no activity. Weak half a finger head, average legs and decent swirl reaction. Flavors of pineapples, cranberries, orange, wheat, caramel, sweet barley, wild yeast, and herbal hops. Slick and moderately oily medium body with fluffy extra sharp carbonation. Strong strength finish, sour while piney, tropical while buttery. Quite spicy (clove) and yeasty (straw). Cross sour wild ale and IPA, very well balanced, unique interpretation I haven't tasted yet. The texture is a bit dull but the bubbles greatly augments the freshness which is pretty decent for the intensity. Overall very good quality craft.

Hazy orange with a nice head & lacing. Sour cranberry and citrusy nose. Yeasty Belgian body with some sour fruitiness with a dry finish. Very nice.

 

 

 

 

355ml can, part of the 2018 Across the Nation collaboration pack with 12 different Canadian breweries, one from each province and territory. This one involves Quebec's Les Brasseurs du Temps, and is a Cranberry Belgian IPA.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, medium copper amber colour, with three chubby fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and mildly creamy off-white head, which leaves some decent random sudsy cloud form lace around the glass as it lazily subsides.

It smells of gritty and crackery pale malt, some estery Belgian yeastiness, a bit of muddled domestic citrus rind, and understated leafy, grassy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is semi-sweet, bready and grainy cereal malt, some mixed generic pome and citrus fruitiness, fading Low Countries yeasty notes, faint red berries, and more earthy, musty, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-satiating frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a proper good time here. It finishes off-dry, the malt and blended fruity essences showing us a bit of extra leg.

Overall - this comes across as a fairly respectable version of the style, even if the purported cranberry character is ephemeral at best. Simple, and easy to drink, especially with no real sign of the extra point and a half of the ol' boozy-booze.