Canadian and American Beers

The category of Canadian and American beers can be pretty controversial, to say the least. Personally, I don't subscribe to the school of taking every style under the sun, bastardizing it beyond recognition, then putting the label "American-Style Whatever" onto the thing. If it's a Brown Ale, then it's a Brown Ale. A Pale Ale is a Pale Ale. Call a spade a spade. I'm probably in the minority here, but on these pages you'll find those recipes in the same category with the parent beers from whence they were derived, and not on this page which is dedicated to Canadian and American beers.

So what does that leave us with? Well, that's a good question. Afterall, even the beers that I put into this category were once derived from another style. Primarily, they come from Pilsener Urquell, the original light lager. So why am I so willing to call these American and Canadian, and not some of the others? To a large extent the answer is simply that they've been around a lot longer, and have had a chance to evolve into something clearly distinct. Another large part of the answer is that I think we in North America have for so long been faced with such little selection in beer, and have come to associate the word "beer" with only light stuff like Bud and Molson's, that when micro-breweries finally started producing a variety, they were forced to tone-down some of these exotic styles because our palate on this continent had become so bland. So my refusal to recognize those "styles" is a sign of my reluctance to let the mega-brewers dictate absolutely everything we drink on this continent. Let's see a British Style Pale Ale produced en-masse over here. To hell with mass marketing and focus groups. Fortunately, this is beginning to happen.

In the meantime, what we're calling Canadian and American beers is simply light lagers and ales, similar to Bud, Molson, Moosehead and that ilk. They are usually brewed with a good portion of corn or rice in the grain bill, and are hopped with distinctly North-American hop varieties such as Cascade and some of its hybrid offspring. I suppose I'd allow Cream Ale into this category, too.

One thing which seems to puzzle an awful lot of new brewers is why we would want to brew these things in the first place. Afterall, didn't I just go on a big rant about the lack of variety in North America? Isn't it these very beers which have led to this dismal situation? This is very true. However, just because a mega-brewer has reduced our selection to virtually nothing, doesn't mean that what we're left with is bad. It just means there's no selection. Personally, I enjoy the odd Bud. And as I once discovered at Pizza Hut, Molson's Golden is extremely enjoyable for such a delicate beer, and it goes exceptionally well with pizza. Every beer has its place; even these ones. More importantly, however, a lot people don't realize that these beers are so incredibly delicate that they are comparatively very difficult to brew. If you can succeed in brewing a crisp, clean, delicate clone of Bud or Molson, then you have certainly tuned your brewing skills quite considerably. These guys are so light and so delicate that even the slightest mishap in the brewing process or most insignificant variable not held in check will without question show itself in the final product. It isn't too difficult to argue that if you can brew one of these, you can brew just about anything.

As with all of these recipes pages, please remember that these are my own categories, and won't likely get you very far in most brewing circles. This section in particular is steeped very deeply in some very strong opinions (as if you hadn't figured that out already). I'm just trying to make it clear that I don't want this to sound in any way authoritative. Sure, I'd be pleased if there were people out there who agreed with me, but do keep in mind that they are just my opinions. If you want something more authoritative, please see our styles page.

As with a lot of our brewing, when we find a recipe that works exceptionally well, we continue to tweak it to see what outcome each individual change has on the final product. With a little luck and some experience, it isn't too difficult to learn to make your recipes even better, and to tune them to exactly suite your own tastes. For example, all of our all-grain beers in this category derive themselves from a basic grainbill of 6 lbs Canada Malting 2 Row, 1 lb Malted Wheat, 1 lb Munich Malt, and 1 lb of some adjunct like rice, corn, or even potato. Tweak the grain bill just a bit this time around, change the hops next time, and you can do a considerable amount with the basic recipe. In fact, if you leave out the adjunct, and use a good noble German hop, you get an exceptionally good Kölsch-Style beer out of this basic recipe.

The core recipe that we've developed is always brewed in honour of Alan's deceased uncle Johnny Davidson. When brewed as an Ale, we call it simply Johnny Davidson Ale. When brewed as a Lager we call it Lochiel Lager, using the name of the lake on which Johnny had a cottage. There are many, many fond summertime memories there. A fine man and a proud Canadian, Johnny was also homebrew pioneer in his own right. As long as most people can remember, he and his wife my Aunt Mary had a batch bubbling away behind the kitchen stove.

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