Eatdrink #78 July/August 2019

eatdrink: The Local Food & Drink Magazine
Beer
Season of Fruitfulness
Summer Beers with a Little Extra Flavour
by GEORGE MACKE
July/August 2019 | 37
In a sauce over ice cream, in muffins,
or in a pie. These are all noble ways to
use rhubarb, but can anything compare
with putting it in beer? Two London
breweries think not.
Forked River Brewing has, for most if not
all of its six years in business, used rhubarb to
brew Flashback. It’s a wheat beer with rhubarb
added to give it a refreshing tartness and at
4.5 per cent alcohol, it’s okay to say, “I’ll have
another.” Flashback has grown beyond the
brewery bottle shop and is now sold at LCBO
stores in London and beyond.
Not to be outdone, London Brewing
has its own celebration of spring with
Neighbourhood Tart, flavoured with donated
rhubarb from the backyards of Londoners.
The 2019 batch of this anticipated seasonal is
ready at the brewery shop.
Rhubarb is not the only fruit helping to
flavour beer at London Brewing. Arguably the
best on the board is Resolution, which uses
the lesser-known kumquat. Kumquats are
Bad Apple on Highway 21 between St. Joseph
and Bayfield brews a strawberry cyser-weisen,
adding strawberries and apples to a base of
wheat beer. There is
also a strawberryrhubarb
version.
Bad Apple is
also brewing
Penny’s Radler in
collaboration with
Culture Shock
Kombucha of Grand
Bend. Penny’s Radler
will have a cherry flavour, along with vanilla.
The juice and beer blends of radlers are a
welcome addition to a summer’s day, whether
you’re at a Huron County beach or in the city.
This summer, Upper Thames in Woodstock
will be dabbling in the fruit and beer space
about the size of grape tomatoes and, when
used in Resolution, add a zippiness to the sour
beer to create a warm weather thirst quencher
decidedly different from Bud Light.
Here are some other beers with fruit
themes from around the region to impress
your friends with this summer.
again with Making Waves. It will be a sour
beer, but exactly what fruit will be used is
being kept close
to the vest. Upper
Thames also has
brewed Waves - Black
Currant, magenta
in colour and so, so
very sour. A beer
with passion fruit,
which is a popular
choice for brewers,
is called Making Waves. Both Waves — Black
Currant and Making Waves — are on tap at
the brewery.
Savouring and saving just got easier, thanks
to Half Hours on Earth in Seaforth. The
brewery has released a raw ale (which means
the wort hasn’t been boiled) called Centigrade.