Canadian Macro Lagers

According to the Moosehead Brewing Co. website they are indeed independent.

“MOOSEHEAD BREWERIES LIMITED IS THE LAST MAJOR BREWERY IN CANADA STILL OWNED BY CANADIANS.

Six generations ago, the Oland family – led by matriarch Susannah Oland – began brewing and selling October brown ale on the family farm, located on the Dartmouth shore of the Halifax Harbour. What started as a small one-woman craft brewery, grew with grit throughout time as the commitment to brewing quality beer passed on from generation to generation. Today we are Moosehead Breweries Limited. Led by Susannah’s great-great-great grandson, Andrew Oland.”

https://moosehead.ca/about

Permit me to share a couple of Moosehead stories. Last summer my wife and I attended HomebrewCon 2019 in Providence, RI and thereafter we went to Canada for some vacationing. We first went to Nova Scotia with most of our time spent on Cape Breton. It just so happened while we were there they had a music festival throughout Cape Breton called KitchenFest. In small venues in many different locations they had concerts of local performers playing Gaelic music; in Gaelic they would call these events a Ceilidh (pronounced like Kay-lee, I think)”

“Ceilidh: a social event at which there is Scottish or Irish folk music and singing, traditional dancing, and storytelling.”

One of the Ceilidhs occurred at a Royal Canadian Legion in Baddeck, NS. They had Moosehead on tap and it was available in a fancy glass so I ordered one (it had been over a decade+ since I had one). I enjoyed drinking that glass of Moosehead.



Later in the vacation we visited St. Johns, New Brunswick to see the reversing waterfalls at the Bay of Fundy and nearby we could see the Moosehead Brewery.

Cheers!

 

Molson took over/merged with Carling-O'Keefe in 1989. Old Vienna is listed as a current product on MC's US and Canadian websites.


O'Keefe was a C-O'K ale brand, besides OV their other big lager was Carling Black Label. Carling Lager is also still brewed and sold in Canada.
(The Ontario Beer Store website is helpful on this topic, although obviously doesn't cover the entire country.)

Yes, in Canada (Interbrew bought Labatt in the mid-1990s). But FIFCO USA owns the rights to the Labatt brand in the US and the Labatt Blue sold here is brewed by another company, as required by the DoJ agreement which allowed InBev to take over AB. The company FIFCO chose was....
Molson Coors, since they wanted to maintain the brand's "Brewed in Canada" image.

 

Growing up in Pennsylvania, about 25 miles from Canada, I was raised on this category of beer.. quite literally. Early in hike school, my dads kegerator was filled with Labatt Blue... which we obviously drank a bit of wink emoji. Once I got to college, he switched to Molson Canadian for some reason and I really enjoyed that one a lot more.





Been eyeing up the Labatt Blue Citra I’ve been seeing occasionally and I really, deep down know it’ll be awful... but I love the old school slash new school things the name invokes in me lol

Anyone try it?!

 

Like many of the other "Labatt" branded beers (as well as FMB's and seltzers) that FIFCO markets in the US, Labatt Blue Citra is brewed in the US at the Genesee brewery in Rochester, NY:

Only the "original" brands, Labatt Blue and Labatt Blue Light, as well as some (but not all) Labatt Ice are brewed in Canada by Molson. The labels are well marked.

 

I banged through a 12-pack of Moosehead last fall. Decent no nonsense everyday lager. It didn't taste like an AAL. Is it?

 

In the recent past - 2015 or so - a "Blog" entry (on what was then called Moosehead Beer Academy- no longer online) stated:

And a few years back, their Facebook page, a reply from the official brewery account, that specifically mentions their Lager:

 

JK,

On the Moosehead website they state (with emphasis in bold by me):

“Brewed with 100% Canadian two-row pale malt and Moosehead’s own lager yeast, Moosehead Lager is cool-fermented and cold-aged to impart its award-winning flavour.”

https://moosehead.ca/brands/moosehead-lager

It sure reads like an all malt beer.

Cheers!

 

I bought a 12 pack. I thought it was pretty solid for what it was and I’d drink/purchase it again.

 

I agree it is confusing (if not downright deceptive), but my two quotes are also from official Moosehead sources.
https://www.facebook.com/moosehead/posts/690338877648239
http://www.mooseheadbeeracademy.com/truth-adjuncts/ (< Link no longer works but is easily found at the Wayback Machine site).

I've wondered if by "100% Canadian two-row pale malt" they mean the two row malt they use (in addition to maltose/corn syrup) is "100% Canadian".
That's what this quoted section seems to imply:

There are also secondary sources quoting Moosehead replies that mention adjuncts, corn and corn syrup at
http://www.barnivore.com/beer/42/Moosehead-Brewery

 

The wording of that sounds kinda fishy though. "100% Canadian two-row pale malt" could just mean that the two-row being used is 100% Canadian and everything else (like the high maltose corn syrup) is not.


EDIT: didn't realize this was addressed to @jesskidden ...apologies for butting-in

 

I suppose that is possible but the other 'challenge' is that breweries tweak recipes all the time. Maybe in 2020 it is all malt but in the recent past adjuncts were used?

We can all speculate here. Needless to say but the folks at Moosehead know what's up here but their communications are confusing.

Cheers!

 

Since we’re taking about Moosehead, have you tired Moosehead Ale before? I haven’t seen it in a while, I bought a 4 pack (16oz cans) last year or so and it was pretty good.

 

Not to be too pedantic, but in production of high maltose corn syrup its pretty common to use barley or wheat, so the claim might technically be true on both fronts. 'Corn syrup' is a trade term, and not necissarily produced from maize. That said, I would trust this claim about as far as I can throw it, which given its digital format is not very far.

 

I find these comments so interesting (and I say that with all sincerity) about the perceptions of Canadian mass market macro lager from US consumers (primarily).

As a young(er) man beer swilling my way in Canada, it was really a perception of where your brewery was. It was really down to only 3, Molson, Labatt, or ahem... OV.

Moosehead there was some pride with them in the 80s cause they were "independent" for whatever that means, and then with the rumor mill... they were suddenly no longer "cool" as they "supposedly" got bought out... by.. an... wait for it... "American" company. gasp!

There was honestly no way of taking any of this seriously in those pre Internet days either.

It also blew my mind how there were maybe a small group (and I mean count on one hand) of mass brewers, but you couldn't even get their full product line if you lived in a certain Geo graphic area of the country...

man have times changed... There are truly independent people making beer in Canada now..

 

The only I thing I know on the topic is that the countless Molson Canadians I enjoyed in our college pub in Quebec were instrumental to my affection for Canada and Poutine. I dated a girl whose mother worked at Moosehead in NB. I got some cases as a fringe benefit of my relationship, but I was never a fan of the beer. Canadian women on the other hand.....

 

Resisting the urge to rush out and get reacquainted with an old standard like Moosehead but it sure puts me in the mood to see the movie Strange Brew again.

 

I tried it about a year ago, it really wasn't awful at all. Have no idea how fresh the can I had was, but I would like to try it again at some point if I knew it was fresh. I've had a lot worse beers!

 

I remember one of my earliest drinking memories was in high school (south shore of Massachusetts, circa 2004), splitting a case of Molson Golden with 2 friends and drinking the whole damn thing down on the beach by a jetty one night. Good times.

My only regret is that I never got to try Molson Export. Last I heard it’s still available in Canada but that may have changed.

 

I enjoyed my share of Molson Canadian. It was a darned good taster back in the day.