I seem to recall a couple years back, many a BA felt that Denison's Weissbier was the only epic Beer of Ontario and was the bright light of the Toronto brewing scene. Now, I never hear about it, I never see it and the LCBO, I do so wonder whatever happened to this beer?
not only that, but i had the weissbier last night and i really enjoyed it. yeast character was amazing. it way maybe a tiny bit too sweet on the finish. was impressed.
I found the sweetness a bit too much, but I felt that way about Denison's. The LCBO had a fresh-ish batch of Weihenstepaner recently, It was brewed at the end of November and I had it in January. I found it more balanced.
Good info - didn't know that either. Any chance of a date stamp on the can? Will have to pick some up as it gets warmer - a good wheat option in the summer for sure; wouldn't mind a case of the Kern Citra from GLB as well.
Karma Citra is really good; there is a bunch on backorder for many of the LCBO's here in Ottawa (bombers though) so we should see it again soon. RoboHop is also on the shelves. Makes me hope that Thrust! will make its way East also.....
Nope. Side Launch is legally a different entity than (any iteration of) Denison's Brewing. There are plenty of recipes that migrate with the brewer when he/she leaves, or a brewery folds, merges, or changes ownership. This happens a lot more in Germany and Belgium when traditional brands names often change hands, but there are some examples in North America. These are, in theory, the same beer made by the same brewer but brewed at different facilities under different ownership: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/612/3110/ http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/14936/54192/ There's a large gray area of what defines the 'same' beer as recipes are constantly tweaked and refined, house yeast evolves, ingredient sourcing changes, breweries upgrade their systems (or move locations), etc. BA opts for a hard stance that if the brewery reboots its image in conjunction with an ownership change it gets a clean slate, for better or worse. Besides, now you can speculate on why Side Launch Wheat is scoring significantly lower than Denison's Weissbier. Changes in terroir? Selection bias? Change in market tastes (palate drift)?
On the one hand I find it difficult to agree with the stance that a rebrand gets you a clean slate when nothing else changes (not saying this is the case here but seems like everything can be the same except ownership and name/brand) since that means if it was a terrible beer it gets to start from scratch. However I do find the difference between Side Launch and Dennison's fascinating if in fact nothing has changed - perhaps shows some rating bias At the end of the day though I am just happy that because of this thread I have another tasty beer I can pick up at the LCBO.
The last one, definitely. Denison's Weissbier has been around a long time, and is/was generally pretty highly regarded. There were a lot of old reviews from nearly a decade ago that were bumping the score up. E.g.: The oldest page of reviews for Denison's Weiss (dating from 2004 to 2009) consists almost entirely of grades of 4.0 or higher, whereas the page that contains the most recent reviews consists of significantly lower grades (only a handful of them are above 4.0, and most are well below that). If you get rid of the outlier reviews that are 5-10 years old, the average ratings for Denison's Weissbier and Side Launch Wheat are considerably closer. I suppose it's possible that they've been gradually cutting corners in the recipe and making the beer worse over time. But I very much doubt it. I tend to believe that the difference simply represents an increase in the level of quality that people expect from craft beer. A well-made German-style hefe used to be a pretty impressive thing to have in your brewery's portfolio, particularly in a beer desert like Ontario circa 2006. But people's expectations/standards of quality have risen a lot since then, which is reflected in the lower grades that previously higher-regarded beers now receive.
Do you still consider it a well made hefeweizen, or are you saying appreciation for this style is dwindling? When I had Denison's a while back, and Side Launch recently, it I thought they didn't hold up to relatively fresh examples of Weihenstepaner or Ayinger.
It has been a few months since I last tried Side Launch Wheat, but from what I recall I would say that it is a well-made, if unremarkable beer. It's not that "appreciation for hefes is dwindling"; in fact I rather doubt that. Rather, it is the fact that the overall competition has become much more stiff in recent years. It takes more than just a 'well-made' beer to keep people coming back these days - not only because peoples' standards have gone up, but also because the number of worthwhile choices available to them has skyrocketed. Ontario craft beer drinkers have been exposed to a lot of new stuff since the mid-2000s, and their tastes have evolved in response. Back then, finding a really good American IPA, or even just an imperial stout was a bit of a challenge, especially outside of the GTA. Nowadays, any decent-sized LCBO will have several of each of those, as well as a handful of Belgian brews, barrel-aged beers, black IPAs, maybe even some barleywines and a sour or two (the sour situation still sucks but it's getting better at a slightly-faster-than-glacial pace). Yes a lot of those bottles will be middling domestic offerings or poorly-handled American imports, but it's still a much better situation than it was even three or four years ago. To sum it up: a brew that was impressive 10 years ago is not necessarily going to be equally impressive nowadays, given the stuff on the shelves around it - which is why grades for old classics are dropping, even though the beers themselves are not actually dropping in quality. Wellington County Dark is another one-time Ontario darling that shows a similarly declining grade pattern over the years. It's not that it's getting worse - it's because it's a brown ale, and the hardcore geeks that rate beers on BA are just generally not that impressed with brown ales (or 'well-made' hefeweizens) anymore. Beers that were previously insulated by the general backwardness of the Ontario beer scene are having that shield removed as the scene gradually becomes, well, less crappy. For what it's worth, I have never had a North American-made hefe that compared favourably to either Ayinger or Weihenstephaner. Those two are not merely 'well-made'; they are world-class, and pretty much the pinnacle of their style, at least IMO. Actually, the fact that high quality imports, like those two, are much easier to find these days than they were 10 years ago, is another relevant factor.
