A Craft Beer Getaway

Summer. When the weather is off or on any day if local craft brewed beer is your thing, drop by one of the small breweries in cottage country. Tours and tastings are free and you can buy a case or two of British-style ale or a great lager to enjoy back at your cottage or resort. It's a good way to meet the locals and get some tips on what to see and do in your neighborhood. You'll also pick up the basics of brewing you might try out at home.

For a long time the old regional breweries were being bought up by the big labels to churn out more industrial lagers while eliminating the competition. Since the 1980's there's been a renewed interest in what was almost a lost tradition. New craft breweries have sprung up all over southern Ontario and the Great Lakes.

If you'd like the easy tour all in one place, go to Bracebridge August 29, 2009 for the First Annual Muskoka Beer Festival. Hosted by The Griffin Gastro Pub downtown, about 24 craft breweries from Ontario will be participating at nearby Annie Williams Park with non-stop beer and bands. Check out The Griffin anytime for a memorable pint, a good chat with friendly locals and the great food. It's a bit of old Bracebridge down Chancery Lane, cozy, intimate and casual. Live music Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. The outdoor deck out back has a touch of grunge, but you can smoke at least.

For a map to most of Ontario's cottage brewers and some essential beer lore see OntarioCraftBrewers. If you're driving out from Toronto, try stopping by one en route. Once in Muskoka, the nearest craft brewery is Lakes of Muskoka Cottage Brewery in Bracebridge, with tours and tastings on select Saturdays all summer through September 15th. Their Muskoka Honey Brown is no more expensive and way better than the big commercial lagers. In Ontario some of The Beer Store(s) carry it and their full line including their excellent Muskoka Cream Ale.

My beer adventure started recently while out west on a trip to Grey County near Durham. Charlie MacLean of MacLean's Ales in Normanby showed me around his new micro brewery you can visit at his hobby farm. Built last year and only open since January, The Battleaxe Brewery is producing a half-dozen traditional British beers. Local demand is so strong just on word of mouth that Charlie's already planning to expand. It's a testimonial to his many years as a brewmaster, not beginner's luck in case you'd like to try your hand at commercial brewing. He got his start in craft brewing in England back in 1979 with the Real Ale Movement. Brits even in Britain were grumbling over their beer, most of it mass produced not only off the shelf in bottles and cans, but even the keg beers at the pubs. An insipid pint of bitter had invaded the colourful local pubs as more and more and more of them were bought up by the big brewers as well as their smaller suppliers. The industry wanted economies of scale and big profits, more bland lager everywhere for the younger less discriminating crowd of Euro imbibers.

The subtle satisfying flavour of bitter from an unrefrigerated keg, pumped up by hand from the cool cellar below, with its modest but sticky head, was transformed into a lifeless flat and warm poor thing in a glass better suited for washing the mud off your boots. Or gassed to death with carbon dioxide for a pump and miles of foam like some ne'er do well Guinness bastard. Dreadful to see grown men weeping. But progress and profits did spawn a generation of Punks, Punk Rock and Wine Bars.

Back in Canada Charlie continued brewing. British-style pubs were making a comeback, now imported lock, stock and barrel with pressed tin ceilings, Pig and Whistles and all, into big Canadian towns. New breweries for British beers were starting to make inroads. Charlie wrote a beginner's guide to home brewing he couldn't get published. Publishers/Agents apply to charles.maclean(at)sympatico(dot)ca

Perseverance paid off, and after 12 years as Brewmaster of the F&M Brewery in Guelph, another craft brewery you can visit, Charlie started his own MacLean's Ales in Grey County. Talking to Charlie it all sounds simple enough. For ale you cook your local select barley and 90% of your hops in a copper kettle, then cool that down and filter, before you transfer it to the stainless steel fermenter and add brewer's yeast and the rest of your hops for more flavour. Keeping the temperature rather warm at 22 C you watch the fermenting for 3 or 4 days and then filter again before cold conditioning and then the bottling. About 2 weeks work for a batch. The result: about the best beer you can remember. Try MacLean's Farmhouse Ale for a country smile. If you want a lager, it's a slower cool fermentation that makes it happen, but not at MacLean's Ales.

In case you think stainless steel is cheating, fermenting in wood barrels was a tricky thing to do, often marring flavours and adding nasty bacteria. Even in the old days brewers used pitch to line their barrels, says Charlie. Did it taste pitchy? No says Charlie, the barrels left to cure a bit before use. So a modern craft beer is near to what your English ancestors were drinking if you have any, though their beer was cloudy with all the yeast still in the beer. Charlie does brew some keg conditioned beer without filtering, if you like your beer cloudy. No one thought of filtering beer in England until cheaper industrial glass replaced ceramic mugs, he told me. Seeing how cloudy it was in a clear glass changed our habits. Now we admire its translucent beauty, though the stouts are as dark as ever.

Today you need to insure your craft beer is not only good, but free of contaminants, meeting government standards during brewing and lab tests. Craft brewing means first class sterile equipment and bottling, and a lot of care, not what you can get away with in home brewing. That way too unlike the commercial beers, you avoid Pasteurization and wrecking a lively beer. To make it work you need some passion for the art as well as methodical patience. Of course the real secrets are the ingredients and the formulas, how to tweak them to get the kind of beer you want. Charlie has the experience and is very particular about his ingredients, preferring local barley and even growing some of his own hops.

But it's also fun and satisfying to be your own brewmaster. Having a perfect pint is a close second. If you're thinking this could be your new hobby, it's easy enough to start with all the brew your own beer stores that supply the equipment, their premises, and the know-how.

Going for your own brewery as Charlie found out, is a bigger deal than you might think, even if you're a brewmaster. Before starting to build make sure you can build. It's not only zoning laws that could stop you, it's also the quirks of old laws on the books that can make it illegal to build a brewery near a school or church. In Grey County your brewery has to be at least 2 kilometers away from either. If you're stuck with a church close by you might be able to get their permission to go ahead. Other permissions might apply too. If you have commercial zoning, are you sure that includes retail so you can sell your beer on site? Behind every pint there's a story.

If you're in the Durham area, Charlie MacLean will be glad to show you around or sell you some of his brews by appointment via his email above, or in a pinch if you're nearby you can call him at 519-369-5061. He still does consulting for F&M in Guelph and the new Highlander Brew Co in South River, Ontario, so you could sample some of his beers that way too.

If you're not close enough to get in on the Ontario brewing action, try Quebec or around the Great Lakes in this free guide by Great Lakes Brewing News.

Still too far away? Brewing News regional guides cover most of the beer frontier in the U.S. and Canada.

Cheers!

Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary

Spring for a change, from a visit today to the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, near Rosseau, with Audrey Tournay. You don't necessarily plan on these things. Life happens when you're thinking of other things, an echo from John Lennon. Audrey was a schoolteacher in St Catherines when in the mid '60's someone gave her two orphaned skunks. "They're almost as nice as beavers, and funny too." Now it's 400 skunks later, and only skunked 8 times. It took a few more years and buying an abandoned farm to set her on her way. A vet from Parry Sound kept dropping over with various adorable wild animals he'd doctored, but not yet strong enough or old enough to get back to the wild. No one, Audrey found, not the government nor any other agency would care for them. So she wound up doing the job herself on her 800 acre farm. All sorts of animals, mostly local, some exotic like a lion she has now from BC, that grew too big for a pet. Animals with hard luck stories, the majority not injured like you might expect, but young and orphaned, parents killed by cars, but mostly by hunters. Bears for instance, about 90 today in a woodland pen, black and brown, really the same species, even born together in the same litter, are common guests. At about 18 months they go back to the wild. Documentary film crews have showed up for the emotional moment. Deer, wolves still, though with so few now, they're mating with coyotes who've moved north, even with dogs. Audrey's is part coyote, as it happens. Like her other friends, from around 200 in the spring to a thousand by fall, her dog found her too. And just about any other wild animal in these parts, from raccoons, to deer and owls. Audrey never turns a wild animal away.

Beavers are Audrey's favorites. Any current resident would make himself at home in your lap, and do in hers when pint-sized, feeding and nuzzling. Since they're to return to the wild, close human contact is kept to a minimum. They're as wonderful as Grey Owl says they are, the one who used to be a trapper and lived around Parry Sound. His cabin was loaded with them, very sociable and unstoppable. Can't sit still for a minute unless they're sleeping in your bed. If you're a cottager, they could wind up gnawing your furniture. See the Aspen Valley website on how to deal with furry and feathered visitors, in a kindly way. There's a downloadable pdf, Living with Wildlife. Animals should be respected and protected. With a little understanding, they'll mind their own business, even bears.

Deer are still a delightful sight, prancing across roads and highways, so always be prepared to stop in cottage country. At Aspen Valley, unlike many zoos, they're happy here. For one thing, they're in the country, and penned in very large woodland enclosures, and that only for a time, so they can go back into the wild when they're big and strong enough. The Sanctuary is open to the public from Victoria Day through Canadian Thanksgiving, admission by donation. It's a great outing for kids and not a commercial venture. Bring a picnic lunch and roam around. Visit some animal friends. It's amazing to be able to get close to them. Over the years, as more wild animals have descended, still with no other place to go, Audrey's had to expand. Fortunately through donations and sponsors, but still no money from the government, she's been able to hire a small staff and enlist some volunteers. They're an enthusiastic lot, usually a half-dozen students from Germany, Switzerland and England, some returning year after year. It's the enchantment of the wild and wide open spaces and of course the animals. If you're a cottager, staying for the summer, check out the Sanctuary's nature study courses for your kids. Drop in and see Audrey, a great and gracious lady. She's an artist and storyteller too, inspired by her bears and beavers.

Kids And Boats And Steamships

Summer. Lake Rosseau. Could be the old days, except for the boat and clothes, when there were more families. In back, an original boat works of which there were a lot. Muskoka was famous for canoes and launches. You should check out an exceptional boating museum in Gravenhurst, Grace and Speed, the Muskoka Boat & Heritage Centre, down at the newly redeveloped wharf, a pretty classy affair. Loads of perfectly preserved boats and canoes, some in water, a 6 million dollar jaw dropping experience. Also commemorates the old steamships and grand hotels in Muskoka. While in Gravenhurst, a bustling metropolis in comparison to most other Muskoka towns, like they say on game shows, you've just won a fabulous boat trip on a real STEAMSHIP! Check out the RMS Segwun from 1887. Sail to delightful Port Carling and Millionaires Row. And you can, for real.

The Heart Of Muskoka On Peninsula Road 7

Summer. Port Sandfield on Lake Rosseau. If there's anyplace that has more well-heeled charm in Muskoka it must be some island pleasure dome like the Whistling Pines Beach and Boat Club Resort that hasn't been built yet. But this winding isthmus, oddly on Peninsula Road 7, between Lakes Joseph and Rosseau was breathtaking even before the money came, old and new. You should go. For a day trip, start in Parry Sound and take the scenic and smooth Hwy 141 East. Stop for coffee or breakfast at Bent River's only Minature Golf-Gas Station-General Store-Restaurant. If you can extricate the kids, keep going to the undiscovered Village of Rosseau at the north shore of the lake for antique shops, and lunch at The Crossroads, an excellent upscale cottagers' hangout. For a fine light lunch instead, try Coffeeville. Then head south on the pristine blacktop 2 lane road through the hills and lakes to Minett, Port Sandfield and cool and trendy Port Carling for dinner. If you've still got time, take Hwy 169 South to Bala, where Muskoka begins. Try biking it or on a motorcycle, but be careful. Bikers wipe out even when it's bone dry.

All Aboard For The UN

Summer. 30,000 Islands and getting there. The Island Queen V based in Parry Sound. It's like a General Assembly at the UN aboard. For tourists on the go who want to see everything from their car or bus window this is the Ultra Georgian Bay Experience. Mind you just about every one else has a great time, even me.

Fying In And Around

Summer. 30,000 Islands and getting there. Georgian Bay Airways based in Parry Sound will fly you around the Islands. If you're in a hurry to get out of Toronto, they'll fly you here. Their charter rates are reasonable and it's a first class outfit. Central Helicopters on the edge of town also do deluxe tours and charters.

A Cruise Through The Islands

Summer. 30,000 Islands and getting there. The skipper and first mate aboard the Chippewa III, based at Parry Sound. A great way to spend a few leisurely hours, as mellow as your favorite daydream. Because she's built to hug a shore, she can dock for lunch at some of the Islands. If you've wondered who the faces are behind the mansions dotting the Islands, you'll see some of them on this cruise, at the marina bars and restaurants, their float planes and yachts parked out front. Before you get too green with envy, remember every stick of furniture and every bag of frozen vegetables has to be boated over. To build a dock or boathouse you'll need a barge. Still green? You're right. It doesn't bother them. Somebody else has to sweat it while the bored of the manor are having their cocktails on the beach.