Over the last few years, there seems to have been very little change in who sits in Canada's top 20 with Dieu du Ciel, Unibroue, Driftwood, and Charlevoix taking up the bulk of the space with the same offerings that put them there in previous years. Granted there is a much larger pool of offerings to pull from, there's plenty more variation in the world's top 20 (which, with the exception of Westy, is all American). Toppling Goliath, Tree House, Maine, Perennial now sit alongside the staples in Founders, Russian River, and 3 Floyds. It's like comparing apples to oranges in terms of sample size, number of breweries, and number of offerings but I'm curious what you think. Does the lack of new breweries and offerings in Canada's top 20 speak to the lack of exceptional and incredibly innovative breweries and beers that have entered the Canadian market? Are we really that far behind the US? Or, does it boil down to the number of reviews needed to place some of the incredible limited edition, one-off Canadian beers into the top 20?
The lists on this site are made up primarily of American beers because the users are primarily American. I think that in very large part makes it hard for a Canadian brewery to get something onto the Top 250. The Canadian beers that are there have US distribution (Unibroue, DDC). Without a huge influx of Canadian users who do ratings, this will likely never change. Not really an answer to your question (a very interesting one I might add), but I have noticed that Canadian beers that are distributed to the US seem to get higher grades from the American users than from Canadians. The best example of this is Flying Monkeys. Most Ontario beer drinkers would rate most of what FM brews as average/decent/middle-of-the-road etc. Smashbomb is on the Top 100 more because of longevity than because anyone really thinks it is a Top 100 beer. When you take a look at the American reviews of some their beers, you see much more positive remarks and higher scores (admittedly this is my unscientific observation...). So my question is (to build on yours): If more Canadian beer was distributed south of the border, would we start to see more entrants into the Top 250? I'm thinking Four Winds, Bellwoods, etc. I have shared things like Headstock and Lone Pine and Hellwoods as extras in IP trades down south, and I almost always get really great feedback on those beers. Better than what is said about them here. Perhaps the novelty of an out of disto beer spikes reactions?
Seems to be a function of population, and in turn, sample size. I'd say Canada has two new breweries (Four Winds and Bellwoods) that are exceptional and incredibly innovative like you said, ones that could likely compete against the Toppling Goliaths and Tree Houses of the beer world. The US probably has about 20 breweries that fall into that sort of category which makes perfect sense given that they're 10 times the size of us. The way the formulas are set up here, number of reviews play a big part in determining these top lists, but each additional review becomes decreasingly important as the number of reviews climb. Being at the low end of the # of reviews scale, every new review is very important for moving up the top lists, but our new Canadian beers have difficulty getting those early reviews and have a hard time climbing for that reason. For example, Nectarous has an rAvg high enough to be #1 on the Canadian list but since it is reviewed so sparingly (a function of limited distro and small population) it sits at number #20. It also has an rAvg high enough to be in the top 50 of the US list even if it only had the sort of ~100 reviews that new beers from Tree House and Trillium have, but it will likely never even crack the top 250 because of its low reviews. Another more extreme example, Edna from Four Winds has gotten extremely high reviews on other sites, equal to some of the hyped-up world class beers that we see fire up the list here on BA. Unfortunately, it only managed to get two 'hads' on here and will never see the light of any list. So yes, I'd say there is an equal proportion of innovation and world class beer coming out of Canada, it just doesn't have the sample size to gain any real traction on BA.
Not to sound like I'm complaining, but the level of participation on the canadian forum is very low, therefore I assume we do the same about rating our own beers. We're on here and just read about the hype of American beers, and belgians, germans etc having a rich history, we seek those out. I honestly feel privileged to be in Quebec where there's so much happening, innovative stuff and think Quebec beers can go toe to toe with lots of the americans. Of course, there are certain styles that have become almost a signature of a specific area, but as someone mentioned above, we seem to take some of our good stuff for granted. I went out of my way to get 8 De Leite Soeurise in Ottawa, which is a young beer by a young brewery, but as far as sours go, I was equally if not more impressed by LTM's Ceci n'est pas un gueuze which was available, albeit in limited quantities, at the corner store down the road. That being said, the system in Canada makes it hard for us to enjoy a wide variety of our own canadian offerings.
Just look at a beer like Four Winds Edna. Crazy lineup for limited pours of 24 bottles at Farmhouse Fest. Limited to '500' bottles at bottle release with a 2pp limit and it sold out in a few hours. Had they run a fast line it would have been gone in 1-2 hrs more likely. Yet only 3 hads on here... Call it the Washington mentality, we just don't hype the **** outta our beers, even if they are indeed world class.
There just isn't the variety to be accessed so nobody gets to try these beers on a regular basis, either through purchasing them somewhere or trading on a regular basis in Canada It's distribution, antiquated laws, and it's a huge spread out country. The vast majority of the users on this site are American, so it's primarily US focused. You can argue the same thing for the top British UK brews on here, which is a list that has small participation like Canada and some Brit/UK fans would call laughable. Many different things. Canada is behind in terms of growth and size and choices for beer compared to the US, but there is good beer to be had but it's harder to get in my opinion. It's gotten better, but it's still got WAY more to grow for accessibility. I don't live in Canada anymore but that's my 2 cents having still travelled back and forth for leisure and family.
A lot of people I know would identify as "beer lovers" but they couldn't be bothered to do a review or join BA for any number of reasons. For a lot of them they just use untapped as basically a pass-fail rating system for their own tasebuds, because that's all they want. All they want is to drink beer that tastes good, they don't want to get invested in the beer world. Right now beer is just so new to most people that it's still a novelty. On BA Nokomis has 3 hads over 2 beers vs 447 unique hads over 21 beers on untappd. I know a lot of people who are keeping Canada down. Undoubtedly, it is not a question of quality. Quantity (in selection/production), sure that plays a role, but I think we just don't have the same number of Real Beer Nerds ® in the population to really make a dent in the established American beer world. This is fine my me, it just means that great beers hang out in coolers and shelves, and I don't have to fight to get them.
My comments: - Distribution is a big part of the problem, but is not entirely to blame. After all, the likes of Tree House & Trillium don't have any distribution and breweries like Toppling Goliath, Three Floyds and Hill Farmstead have very limited distribution. - I do think that we are behind the US in terms of overall quality. Of the breweries that we have that don't get the distro, the only ones that have, in my opinion, brewed beers that are up there from a quality stand point with the top US breweries are Bellwoods and Four Winds. - Canadians seem notoriously bad for reviewing beer. START REVIEWING YOUR LOCAL BEER PEOPLE!
not only bad for reviewing beer, but I've noticed that Canadians tend to under-rate their beer versus overrate it, even those from 4 winds and Bellwoods.
Flying Monkeys Acadian Groove is now #70 on the Canada Top 100. Many of the higher reviews are from American users. To my mind this is not even a Top 100 Ontario beer.
I think we're just a little more critical when it comes to things being THE BEST EVER. I can't help but think that a lot of ratings on here have a built in boost from the rarity/hype behind it from people that want to win e-peen contests, regardless of how excellent it tastes (lets not go down the style and tastebuds rabbit hole). Hype for legit great beer is one thing, but when every release from every brewery is getting hyped and blowing up ISO:FT. Fitting in to what I said earlier; since we'er such a small scene that the rating crowd are the hyper-passionate, wildly knowledgeable, BJCP-level critical, I love beer because beer. Rather than the ticker/trade-winner/bandwagon/whatever.
