Suds in the City: Black Creek Brewing

The craft beer scene is growing by leaps and bounds in Ontario, and brewers are springing up in some of Toronto's more interesting and fashionable neighbourhoods. We are going to sample some of these local brews right here folks  cuz drinking a beer from your own home town is the right thing to do...rep  your hood! The first beer we're gonna get to is from Black Creek Brewery. Why? Because its brewed in Black Creek Pioneer Village.It takes us right back to our roots when beer was brewed and consumed locally. It seems this is a re-emerging trend, and that can't be a bad thing for diversity and quality!

I picked up a 500ml bottle of their Hand Crafted Porter for starters. It pours a VERY dark brown.....not quite black like a stout, but not far off either. The head was about 2cm thick but disappeared quickly. Smells. This thing smells DELICIOUS. Coffee, caramel, malt.....for starters. Another whiff and I got some toffee and chocolate cake. I wanted to take a bite out of this beer. Of course, you want to know what it tastes like of course right? Well, it tastes....exactly as it smells LOL. It really coated my mouth with rich flavours. If you are new to stout or find Guiness too strong, and are willing to give the genre another try, you might want to try one of these porters. Stout is really just a very dry porter,and  this one has alot of flavours smells and mouthfeel to keep you interested. Yeah I like this one!

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Bavarian Suds - Dunkler Hirsch

I'm new to blogging. Hi! I've decided to blog about beer...nice huh? Todays post is all about a lovely Bavarian gem I found. The brewery is Der Hirshbrau of Sonthofen Germany. I mean this is real German beer peeps, these beers have minimal english on them. In fact, they seem to have added some English over the past year i've been drinking their beers. Ok enough of that, what am I having today? Dunkler Hirsch, a dark wheat beer 5.2 ABV. Poured into a traditional Hefeweizen glass, its a dark copper with some rust colour in there too. The head was a decent two fingers thick. Cool. I had a good sniff, got some sweet malty scents  with a little spice thrown in, but nothing remarkable. So what does this taste like? First mouthful.....is surprising for its lack of heaviness. Its kinda tangy, and I can taste banana bread right off the bat. I also got a bit of bitterness and a toasty, caramely aftertaste. Ok. so this is a decent beer, well crafted and with enough stuff going on to keep me interested. Not my favourite brew from these guys, but not bad at all. This beer came in a 4 bottle gift pack, so I will sample all of them and give you my verdict. Till next time peeps, keep the glasses full!