The beer reviewer's job, as I see it, is to share with readers news of interesting and well-made beers, give some context about the style or how the beer was made, and steer everyone in the direction of the brightest stars. When making these (at least somewhat) subjective judgments it can be tough to set personal preferences aside. One blind spot I'll cop to is a habitual bias for dry or off-dry cherry beers, especially by local breweries.
Naturally, I was pleased to hear that Toronto's Mill Street Brewery has created a cherry beer, and then equally disappointed to hear that it will probably never be made again. The problem with getting cherry flavour into beer is that you need a lot of the source material — in this case, cherry juice — to make that happen. On a per litre basis, the ingredients for this beer are more expensive than any other one they've made.
Belgian breweries put cherries into some of their beer and they do make a distinctive style of pale ales, but the two don't usually meet, so this is a sort of mashup or interpretation of an idea.
This beer pours a bright reddish amber, and its fruit and spice notes (from Belgian yeast) balance well with the citrus zest aromas of English Fuggles hops. The flavour goes from tart cherry, through grapefruit and pine needle hops, and finishes with a chocolate-like note (even though there is no dark malt in the recipe), which completes the black forest cake impression.
The Belgian Cherry IPA is part of this year's summer mix pack from Mill Street. The sixer also includes mainstays Mill St. Organic and Tankhouse, their award-winning Wit, the newish 100th Meridian (a Vienna lager made with all western Canadian ingredients), and the underwhelming chipotle-lime Palomar Ale. Mill Street's Beer Hall in the Distillery District also has the Belgian Cherry IPA on tap.
Mill Street Brewery's Belgian Cherry IPA, $13.65 for 6 X 348 ml bottles in the Summer Sampler, LCBO #384362
In addition to covering beer, new restaurants and food trucks for Post City, David Ort writes about food and drink for several Toronto publications including his own site, Food With Legs. He is the author of The Canadian Craft Beer Cookbook; now in stores and available for ordering online. For more of his thoughts on food, beer and life in general, follow him on Twitter or get in touch at info@foodwithlegs.com.
