Filtered beerCreemore Springs Brewery
A visit to Creemore Springs Brewery on Thursday incorporated a tour of the brewery, and a lovely beer inspired lunch in the boardroom catered by Eigensinn's Farms and featuring farm raised suckling pig.
Brew master, Gordon Fuller, is proud of the beer they are producing and it is evident that Molson's influence has been an enhancement to the operation and not a detractor to the product it was feared to be by Creemore fans. The beer remains unpasturized with no additives or preservatives; just barley, malt, yeast and water, as it was intended to be. Creemore removes its beer from store shelves at 8 weeks for optimum freshness.
Gordon was extolling the virtues of unfiltered beer believing some complexity is lost the more processes the beer goes through. Unfiltered beer is a hard sell to North American audiences who want clear and sparkling beer. Beer tasting brought us to a refrigerated room of frosty tanks with conical spigots at the bottom where spent yeast is re-collected and drawn off to be used again for the next brew. The tanks were so close together, looking up it was as if we were in a stainless steel beer grove in a magical beer forest.
Things became even more magical when Gordon gave us a taste of the unfiltered UrBock straight from the tanks. Gordon makes a good point, the beer is, light and effervescent on the tongue from the live yeast. All the beer we tasted that day were excellent but this beer was truly the high pint.
Filtering for aesthetics - as our beer is done - inevitably means losing some of the good stuff as well. I have always felt over-processing is a detractor when it comes to food and now I have one more piece of ammunition for my arsenal of factoids. How many great flavours do we compromise for the sake of a pristine aesthetic? Gordon Fuller has a hope to educate the public to enjoy the cloudy genre of unfiltered beer – I am doing my little part to help. I would love to be able to buy what I tasted coming out of that tap in the Creemore forest.
Seelbach CocktailHere is the recipe for the Seelbach Cocktail I had Thursday night. I decided to share so you can have it as your holiday cocktail as well but if it becomes a hit trend of the season I'm taking credit!
Seelbach Cocktail
1 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. Cointreau
7 dashes of Angostura bitters
7 dashes of Peychaud's bitters
5 oz. chilled Champagne
Combine the bourbon, Cointreau, and bitters in a shaker filled with ice. Stir and pour into champagne flutes. Top with chilled Champagne. Garnish with an orange twist if you like.
The cocktail is named for a hotel in Kentucky. The Peychaud's bitters is the bitters predominately used in the Southern US, Angostura is more usual here but you can find both.
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