Summer beer! What a great topic for September, a chance to look back and remember the summer which barely was, at least here in Southern Ontario. My thanks to Peter Estanial from A Better Beer Blog for hosting this months Sessions blog fest.

As for beer it wasn't a bad summer at all, especially if you ignore releases like "Bud Lite Lime" and "Cracked Canoe Premium Light Lager". I tried them both and I have no trouble ignoring them.

Fortunately I came across 2 really good brews from 2 different Craft brewers in the area. One is a re-release of what is becoming the breweries standard summer "seasonal release", and the other is a brand spanking new beer which finally made it onto the shelves late in the summer.

The re-release is "Bumbleberry Wheat" from "Grand River Brewing" in Cambridge Ontario. We stopped in at the brewery to see what they might have in the cooler and in the hope that we might get to chat with Rob Creighton, the brewmaster for Grand River. Rob was in the middle of a filter run and we sure didn't want to interfere with making good beer. I'd hate to be responsible for a bad batch.

They did have a couple of new (to me) beers in the cooler and I picked up a batch of both. I had a family BBQ coming up and wanted something a little different to take along.

The Bumbleberry Wheat beer was a success with the beer drinkers in the family. It's a lightly flavoured wheat beer, tastes of berries and honey. The berries are mostly blueberry and raspberry and their presence is quite subtle and not nearly as overwhelming as some flavoured brews I have tried. There is a very crisp and dry hop presence with enough citrus to balance out the berries. It's a great brew on a sunny summer day with a BBQ meal.

They also had some of their "Russian Gun" Imperial stout. An excellent version of an Imperial Stout and one I enjoyed greatly. There is a review (or two) of it somewhere on the site, do a search if you'd like to hear more about it.

The Brand New beer is "Hoptical Illusion" from "Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery" in Barrie Ontario. Flying Monkeys is the new name for the "Robert Simpson Craft Brewery".

Robert Simpson made a couple of very traditional ales. Beers with a lot more character than most but still very conservative beers.

With the change in name the brewery has decided to just have some fun making a different style of beer. After chatting with Peter Chiodo and Koratta Campese it was obvious that they are enjoying themselves. Peter is "Chief Executive Shitstirrer, Overtitled Debt-Owner, High Inquisitor & The Boss of You" while Koratta is "V.P. of B.S. (Beer Sales), Spiritual Capitalist & Disciple of Beer". I know this because it says so on their business cards. You can turn in the cards for "A free Sample of Cold Beer" but I'm not giving up my card, it's worth more than one sample, a keg at the very least.

Their Hoptical Illusion is their first foray into this new model and it is a great start.

It's a Canadianized version of an American version of and English style. Go Figure.

It's a slightly toned down and mellow version of an American India Pale Ale. Very full of hop flavours but not as overpowering as many American craft brewers are fond of. The hops in use (Amarillo) seem to have a slightly more mellow and spicy taste than those favoured for IPA's in the States. This gives the beer a very citrus hop flavour but without overpowering the malts. In short there is more to this one than just hops and I found it much more to my tastes than some. It's still a very refreshing beer, especially on a hot summer day, and I could drink more than just one or two without burning out my tastebuds.

Hoptical Illusion barely made it into the L.C.B.O and Beer Stores for the end of this summer. A complete redesign of their packaging was required by the L.C.B.O before it could be released and this delayed the release for quite a while.

When we were at the Brewery it hadn't been released yet although they had some available for on-site sale and we naturally picked up a few to take home. While Peter was showing us around and chatting about the beer we shared a part of a pitcher pulled directly from the fermenting tank just to get an idea of the tastes. It's one of those little memories that stick with you, standing around in the middle of their brewhouse passing around a cloudy pitcher of fresh beer, and the taste was wonderful. The yeast was still working and the cloudy pitcher was sampled as fresh as it could possibly be. I'm glad to say that the bottled version didn't suffer much from the process. It's still as full of flavour as the working brew.

All in all it was a pretty good summer for beer and I've forgotten all about the abominations I mentioned above.