When quality surprises

Beer geeks like us are usually highly attuned to the next big thing. We know who the highly hyped breweries are and we know about their products long before they even hit the shelf. Often these breweries live up to the hype, but often they don’t. So what do we make of a brewery that we really don’t know anything about, but that puts out quality craft beer in a wide variety of styles? Recently I found out when Defiant Brewing Company was featured during a brewer night at Barcade.

Now, I’ll admit it up front — I wasn’t expecting anything from these guys. I had heard some rumours about some of their product being infected as well as a few exploding bottles on store shelves — not exactly the sorts of things that we associate with quality. Having said that, from the first taste when I arrived I was impressed.

I arrived in a bad mood after a series of very long days at work and I ordered two of the hoppiest things on the menu (why do hops always make me happier?), their Extra Hoppy Pale Ale and IPA were both different representations of all the goodness that Humulus lupulus has to give, with the Pale Ale being fairly juicy and fruity, while the IPA leaned more in the direction of pine and spice.  Both showed a restrained biscuity maltiness and a nice lean dryness.  Another hoppy ale, their English pale ale, showed  a bit of resin as well as the herbal/orange marmalade character that typifies so many UK Pale Ales.

All this talk of pale ale might make you think that these guys are one-trick ponies, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  One of the marks of a good craft brewer is their ability to showcase all of the different ingredients of a given beer, whether that is hops, malt or yeast.  The good brewers at Defiant sent out several different lagers in several different styles and all of these were excellent.  Their Prohibition Lager is a fantastic interpretation of a low gravity, highly hopped pilsner with abundant crackery malts, fresh noble hops and a clean, well-lagered finish.  A similar story was also being told for their Maibock, a fairly hoppy, pale, higher gravity beer, that still managed to have a crisp maltiness and none of the sugary sweetness that seems to characterize this style in many North American examples.  It was also nice to see a steam beer on offer – it’s a style that is actually quite tasty, but not done by very many breweries and, once again, these guys did it well.

I suppose all of this is to say that even those of us who think that we know the beer scene in a given city, state, or country inside and out, should always keep in mind that even when you’ve been at this for awhile brewers can still sometimes surprise you, and it’s those surprises that keep you on the lookout for the next one.