Beers to Impress - Bring These Brews to Your Next Party

A post by Scott F

Looking to make an impression at your next party? Bringing great beer can be a perfect conversation starter (particularly if you're looking to converse with beer people, who I consider most worth conversing with). Bring a bag of some of these beauties to your next party and become known as “that guy, you know, the one with that awesome beer.”

Goose Island Matilda Belgian Style Ale

This beer covers a gamete of flavours: spice, sweetness, hoppy bitterness and hints of fruit a floral. All these flavours make it an approachable "big beer" with a very nice presentation.

Saison Dupont

Saisons are a refreshingly flavourful beer with very forward yeast character. Dupont is one of the most widely available and quite genuine to the style. Spice and citrus are predominate here. Best enjoyed in spring and summer.

Mort Subite Kriek Lambic

Lambics are fruit beers fermented with wild yeasts (yeasts not added to the beer but allowed to infiltrate it from the environment - how cool is that). There are not many available but Mort Subite is a good entry-level lambic rich with cherry flavour.

Grand Cuvee Weizenbock

Not many will have tried a dark wheat beer at whatever party you bring this to. Sweet, almost to the point of being overwhelming, but complex in flavour even with hints of maple syrup.

Flying Monkeys The Chocolate Manifesto

Brewed out of beautiful Barrie, Ontario, this is a dark beer that is absolutely accessible to everyone at a party. The chocolate is so pronounced while being especially balanced. This style is particularly easy to mess up so it’s great to see that Flying Monkeys nailed it.

What impressive beer would you add to the list?

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King City Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival Recap

A post by Ed Arsenault

Beer festivals are generally common to those living in a city, but for those that live in smaller communities they don’t happen too often. Starting what will hopefully be a growing trend, the Parks, Recreation and Culture department of King Township hosted a Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival on Saturday June 14, 2014. I had the pleasure of being a guest and joining in on the festivities.

Along for the ride was our resident beer expert, Scott Fry (@SFRealManTravels) and representing Real Girl Travels was Sarah (@sarahe05). The three of us made the rounds sampling as much as we could in our relatively short time frame.

So what is different about this festival from any other?

The number one difference was that it was intended for an entire community. Knowing very well that families were the demographic, the team at King Township made sure the event catered to them. Families could be found lying in the grass on blankets with rock n roll music as the soundtrack of the day. This is the only festival I have ever attended where dogs were permitted onto the grounds. Because of that I found my own dog’s doppelganger and made some new friends (on two legs and four).

While some bigger brewers were missing from the event, the selection of good tasting beer was not. Some notables in attendance included: Flying Monkeys (@FlyingMonkeys), Steam Whistle (@Steamwhistle), Double Trouble Brewery (@HopsandRobbers), Arch Brewing Company (@ArchBrewingCo), , Hockley Valley Brewing Company, Highlander Brew Company (@HighlanderBrew) and King City's own King Brewery (@KingBrewery)

A quick recap of our favourite flavours on the day were: Orange Mungus by Flying Monkeys, an orange infused beer that tasted much more like a mimosa. I’ve declared it would be the perfect starter drink on a weekend cottage trip in lieu of orange juice. Arch Brewery's Dinner Jacket delivered a red India Pale Ale that was softened by infused oats. Highland Brewery stole the show for us with their BlackSmith Smoked Porter. Maybe it was the espresso taste, or the hints of maple and dark chocolate, or perhaps it was simply because it was the end of our drinking day. Either way we had to have more and visited the fine folks of Highlander Brewing multiple times for this drink.

Orange Mungus by Flying Monkeys

Food choices were excellent as well, with the options ranging from Mexican to Italian to Greek to smoked meats. For us the clear winner of tastiest food belonged to Gourmet Gringos and their fish tacos.

Fish Tacos from Gourmet Gringos

I hope that King Township keeps the tradition of the Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival alive and returns next year. I'd be sure to visit again, this time with my dog! Thanks to King City's Parks, Recreation and Culture team (@ParksRecCulture) for the invite out and all their hard work organizing the event.

Did you attend? Let us know below in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook. 

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