Underdog's All or Nothing shows off on beer festival circuit

It was a long time coming in giving the Underdog its day.

Musketeer Don had tipped me off about Underdog Brewhouse in Oshawa months ago, and I soon paid a visit to their offices in an industrial park in the Motor City’s southwest corner. That’s when I met Jeff Doman, one-half of the brother team-up determined to bring the Better Beer Revolution to Oshawa.

The offices were beer-free, unfortunately, as the beer is brewed under contract at Railway City Brewery in St. Thomas. Something about a severe lack of tank space in Ontario, Jeff said. He also told me that he and his brother Eric were going to concentrate on just one style for the foreseeable future – the All or Nothing Hopfenweisse – and they were scouting out locations for their own brewery, with downtown Oshawa and 2015 as the target location and desired date.

Now it was just a question of finding the damn beer.

But, like with most good things, I had to wait and there were a few misses along the way before I got my hands on one of their beers, piquing my desire to drink it even more.

The first miss was on Underdog’s part, as the boys weren’t quite ready to bottle when Oshawa’s own Durham Craft Beer Festival came to town July 12. The next two misses were on me, as Underdog's hit the festival tour immediately after, debuting their beer at the Burlington Beer Festival and following that up with an appearance at the mammoth Toronto Festival of Beer on the last weekend of July.

Sadly I was not to able to attend either of those two events, being otherwise engaged with more mundane tasks like work. But my pal Don - damn his oily hide – was at both festivals and he brought Musketeer Cat to the Burlington party as well.

And I quickly got the word on Oshawa’s newest beer. “Outstanding,” Don said, followed by “a dynamite beer that Cat and I went back for twice” (“three times,” Cat later corrected him), and, “count the pair of us as fans.”

(The following weekend in Toronto Don made Underdog his first stop, where he was greeted by name by Eric Doman. “They remembered,” said Don, with a slight catch in his throat.)

In the meantime, I learned that Underdog’s had sold their first keg to an upscale pub in Brooklin called 1847 Wine and Beer Bistro. So I headed there the Saturday Don and Cat were in Burlington, hoping to beat them to the punch.

Which brings me to the third miss, that which I blame on the Bistro. They hadn’t tapped the keg yet. “We’re waiting for a line to come open,” said the bartender, seeing the look of disappointment on my face.

So I had to wait. Later that week I called the pub. “Not yet,” I was told. The following week I tried again. Same answer.

Every dog has its day. Especially an Underdog

Finally, on August 9 I heard through Underdog’s Facebook site that the beer was flowing in Brooklin, so off I went once again. With Jake staying in the car (hey – I offered to buy him ice cream!), I ordered a half pint of  All or Nothing from the same bartender, who remembered me and noted they opened the keg the week before and were already on their second round. “It’s been pretty popular,” he said.

Now if you’re reading this you know I love India Pale Ales – the ‘IPA Tales’ at the top of the blog should have given that away – but I’ve been developing a soft spot for wheat beers this summer. None of them wowed me, but many were good.

All or Nothing, however, made me sit up and take notice. The beer smells of spices and bubblegum – especially the spices. Coriander I think, which is interesting because I’m one of the few people who hate coriander (also known as cilantro) in cooking. It poured a hazy amber and I could pick up a touch of citrus bitterness on the finish.

A very nice brew and an excellent wheat beer.

All those spices made it seem very much like a Belgian Wit instead of the German Weisse that it is, and the American hops added to give it a bit of a kick (25 IBUs) really balance out this beer.

All or Nothing is really a Belgian, wearing German clothes and speaking with an American accent. And made right here in Ontario.

Count me as a fan as well.

*

My first visit to 1847 Wine and Beer Bistro was not totally in vain, as I sampled a beer from another newcomer to the Durham Region beer scene, Old Flame Brewery of Port Perry. Their Blonde (a Helles style traditional Munich lager) was crisp on the palate and quite smooth with a hint of some spices.

No kick to speak of, but still, a nice summer beer.

And speaking of wheat beers, I gave Side Launch a go last week. This Bavarian-style wheat from newcomer Side Launch Brewing was tangy with spices (cloves) that were muted at first before coming on strong at the finish. A strong banana taste as well.

Rate Beer scores it 98 (with a perfect 100 for style) and I’m not going to disagree much. A really good patio beer.

Rich, dark and complex - and tasty

Another new beer I tried recently is one that Don had raved incessantly about: Wellington Brewery’s Imperial Russian Stout. I am not a stout lover – not yet, anyway – but this beer may have me going over to the dark side.

I asked Don, who loves him some stout, if he could guarantee I would love this beer. His response? “I ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY GUARANTEE IT (Disclaimer: This is not a guarantee). So I guess I was on my own.

It was dark and scary looking with a thick creamy and mysterious-looking head, and I got the usual coffee and chocolate on the nose, as well as something else. Dark fruits, maybe plum, as well as some nuttiness and toasted malts on the tongue.

A real nice bitter finish as well. I may be a convert.

Cheers!

Blondes, Fat Tugs, girl pants and a pot-bellied pig in a park

“But it’s a blonde,” I protest to the heavily-tatted and extremely adorable off-duty waitress at Buster Rhino’s.

“But it’s nine per cent and it’s really good,” she replied. “Try it.”

So I did. After all, it was a holiday Monday and I had just one bomber in the fridge at home.  A trip down to the local was definitely in order. “I’ll have the Princess Wears Girl Pants please,” I said to the waitress actually working, who was, in fact, a blonde. “The brunette here recommends it.”

I had heard about this Sawdust City Brewery offering before, most recently when it made the final ten for Most Creative Name at the recent U.S. Open Beer Championships. That’s an honour its Sawdust City stable mate, Long Dark Voyage to Uranus Imperial Stout, enjoyed the previous year, so it’s clear the Sawdust boys have a talent for imaginative names for their beers.

There is plenty of creativity inside the keg as well. My hesitation is trying it sprung from the ‘blonde ale’ descriptive written on the chalkboard but it sure didn’t taste like any blonde I’ve ever had. It poured a hazy yellow and tasted of dark fruits, a little citrus and some spice, with something I couldn’t nail down. Cream soda? Maybe.

Then, on the aftertaste, BAM! The boozy backbone (it’s actually 8.5 per cent) kicks in.

To add to the confusion, Rate Beer calls it an Imperial IPA, while the commercial description bills it as a Belgian IPA. Which probably explains why the beer scored an 88, yet just 45 for style.

In any case, I scored it higher. A really adventurous beer.

I followed that up with another Sawdust City beer, their delicious signature Lone Pine IPA, before heading home to crack open my last bottle, a special B.C beer I’ve been saving since I lucked into it at my parent's house in Toronto the day before: the legendary Fat Tug, from Driftwood Brewery in Victoria. A 99 on Rate Beer and 100 in my heart.

I was shocked to see it, sitting there all comfortable-like on my folk’s bed. The happy kind of shock, not the stick-your-finger-in-the-wall-socket or Spider-Man meets Electro for the first time kind of shock. My brother had bought me some B.C beer on a recent business trip out west (Bodacious Beer Blog) and Fat Tug was the clear winner of the bunch, in my mind.

Did brother Brian go back to B.C? I didn’t think so. “You’ve been holding out on me,” I complained. “Who says they were all for you?” was his response. Huh.  “You guys couldn’t handle all those hops anyway,” said I, the ever ungrateful brother. Indeed, the beer went home with me.

It was just rewards for my efforts that day.  My mom loves her garden but at 81 and with chronic arthritis she doesn’t get out to tend to it much and I spent the day clear-cutting two and-a-half of the half dozen or so jungles found on the property.

Lions and Tigers and Bear Oh My kinda jungle? Not quite, but you could have hidden a mating pair of each species in this bush, which I attacked by wielding a gas-powered trimmer like it was a battlefield broadsword.

Hard work but satisfying toil too. I think I earned that Fat Tug, as well as that confused yet adventurous blonde, The Princess Wears Girl Pants.

On this holiday Monday, they made quite the adorable couple.

*

It’s not every day I see a pig in a park, never mind a 200-pound pot-bellied porker I spotted on Oshawa’s south side.

The park is actually a strip of grass sandwiched between a townhouse complex and a GM parking lot and the pig looked like a regular barnyard fellow, albeit one with cartoonishly high shoulders. So I leaned over the fence and struck up a conversation with the pig’s owner.

“That’s a pig,” I say, as a way of pointing out how quickly I had grasped the situation. “She’s a Pot-Bellied pig,” the women replied, adding (after she saw my cartoonishly raised eyebrows) “they told me she would weigh 60 to 80 pounds. She’s, like, 200.”

What are you looking at? You never seen a pig i n a park?

“And you live there?” I say, nodding to the townhouses behind me.  “Yes,” she replied, “but the sad part is she can’t climb stairs so she’s stuck on the main floor. So we come here a lot.”

For the record, the pig looked quite content munching on the grass, a supplement to her usual diet of fruits and vegetables and pig chow.

Not cartoonishly content (her shoulders notwithstanding), but happy as a pig in a park. At least.