{"id":2040,"date":"2017-03-15T17:00:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beermonthclub.com\/blog\/?p=2040"},"modified":"2017-03-15T15:34:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T22:34:47","slug":"beyond-bottle-international-encounters-ratebeer-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beermonthclub.com\/blog\/beyond-bottle-international-encounters-ratebeer-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Bottle: International Encounters at RateBeer Best"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There\u2019s a whole lot of cool stuff going on beer-wise in Canada these days. I recently finished up a roundup of grisettes\u2014a wheaty, near-extinct style originating around Belgium\u2019s Hainaut province (the style\u2019s been seeing a whole lot of brewing activity lately)\u2014for my column over at All About Beer<\/em>. I\u2019ll typically reach out to breweries for maybe a dozenish samples to try and get a sense of the substyle\u2019s terrain, and these grisettes tended to be pretty darn tasty overall.<\/p>\n

A key challenge is always sourcing beers from afar. One standout, a delicious take on grisette entitled Ping Pong Wizard\u2014with perfect balance of spice, citrus and honey\u2014was brewed at Brasserie Dunham in Quebec (in collaboration with the fine folks at Cambridge Brewing Co. in Massachusetts). Given the surprisingly diverse number of issues one can have shipping in beer internationally\u2014breakage, unexpected custom fees, leakage, no-explanation returns, any number of tedious middle-man calls to the effect of \u201cIs this yeast samples, or something?\u201d\u2014we\u2019d opted to source that grisette via handoff at the recent RateBeer Best Fest in Santa Rosa.<\/p>\n

Brasserie Dunham (RateBeer Best\u2019s 2016 top Canada brewery) and Bellwoods Brewery (the year\u2019s top Ontario brewery) were both in attendance\u2014pouring delicious sours, strong beers and hop vessels\u2014and I swung by on media passes with our mag\u2019s managing editor Jon Page. My long, complicated, so-not-for-this-column history with RateBeer aside, they did a heck of a job (again!) curating, especially showcasing international creatives: Beavertown, Cloudwater and Buxton from England; De Struise (from Belgium), Kiuchi (from Japan), Omnipollo (via Sweden)\u2014plus some breweries I got to hang with down in Brazil: Dum Cervejaria and Way Beer. As I try to regularly remind myself: there\u2019s so much creative stuff happening elsewhere in the world\u2014even if it isn\u2019t the easiest to track down. Make a point to remind yourself, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a whole lot of cool stuff going on beer-wise in Canada these days. I recently finished up a roundup of grisettes\u2014a wheaty, near-extinct style originating around Belgium\u2019s Hainaut province (the style\u2019s been seeing a whole lot of brewing activity lately)\u2014for my column over at All About Beer. I\u2019ll typically reach out to breweries for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeyond the Bottle: International Encounters at RateBeer Best - Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beermonthclub.com\/blog\/beyond-bottle-international-encounters-ratebeer-best\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beyond the Bottle: International Encounters at RateBeer Best - Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a whole lot of cool stuff going on beer-wise in Canada these days. I recently finished up a roundup of grisettes\u2014a wheaty, near-extinct style originating around Belgium\u2019s Hainaut province (the style\u2019s been seeing a whole lot of brewing activity lately)\u2014for my column over at All About Beer. 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