Ninkasa Pilgimage - Second Crusade

Tuesday, March 13

First stop – Cheval Blanc

Second round - Le Saint-Houblon

Third lap - Le Saint-Bock

We started at Montreal's original brew pub Cheval Blanc at 809 Ontario east at St-Hubert <http://lechevalblanc.ca/historique>. It's a classic and they have kept the retro style. 

From their site:

C’est le 15 avril 1987 que Le Cheval Blanc reçoit son permis de production de bière artisanale.  Premier permis de ce genre à être émis à l’ère de notre Québec moderne.
C’est le début d’un temps nouveau pour Jérôme et son fidèle bras droit, Marc Leduc.
Explorer, expérimenter, le brassage de la bière artisanale sous toutes ses facettes!

Then:

Now with us added:

NB: As our society of Ninkasi Pilgrimages evolves so do the rituals and customs. There is now a dress code for pilgrims. Guy set a high standard last time with his beer apron. Please plan accordingly if you chose to join us.

For the senior imbibers, they had a number of nostalgic museum pieces:

For the youngsters from Wikipedia:

Dow Breweries was a brewing company based in the province of Quebec, Canada. The company was founded in Montreal by William Dow (1800–1868).^[1] Its brewery in Quebec City was formed in 1952 in the facilities formerly used by the Boswell Brewery (1843–1952).^[2] It was acquired by Carling O'Keefe and stopped its activities on March 31, 1966.^[3]After the purchase by Carling O'Keefe, the Dow brand came under the ownership of Molson, but disappeared from the Canadian market in the spring of 1997. Brands brewed by Dow included Dow Ale, Kingsbeer Lager and Black Horse Ale.

(ed. note - In the 1980s, the old TP Brasserie on Ste-Croix Blvd kept Dow in quart bottles for a couple of Vanier College regulars, Ron Charbonneau and Bob Adamson, who swore by it. Black Horse is still sold in Newfoundland)

Le Cheval blanc still has very much the feeling of a friendly neighbourhood pub with regulars holding down their favourite stool at the bar or staking their claim to their preferred table.

Their tasters are very reasonably priced so we did our best to try all their flavours. The bar tender was excellent at guiding us through the menu - informed and encouraging.

There were so many names and varieties at our three stops that we gave up trying to remember everything. Here is their menu, hand written on the chalk board:

We have heard from our sources that the owner has sold the Cheval blanc brand to the RJ group, but maintained the rights to use the name for the pub, so the beers we drank were uniquely brewed on site and not available in your local depanneur.

After a round of tasting at Le Cheval blanc, a short walk took us to the Saint-Houblon at 1567 St-Denis near the corner of deMaisonneuve.

(Note for anglos: Houblon is French for hops, so it's Saint Hops.) Check their cool website http://www.sainthoublon.com/microbrasserie/#firstPage/ They are an integrated farm, restaurant, brew pub concept. The place was alive and hopping with a very different feel from the neighbourhood pub. Trendy and simply appointed but very tastefully done. What an amazing selection on a huge six foot video screen:

As an oldster, it was great to see so many youngsters coming out to taste good flavourful beer - and the food was excellent as well.

We did the regular tasters and were clearly growing closer as a group.

Amazingly we still had the legs left and Doug was still awake so the vote was to move on to the trendy Saint-Bock just up Saint-Denis from Le Saint-Houblon http://saintbock.com. (Ed note: Saint-Houblon, Saint-Bock, it is nice to see the new generation of Quebec saints replacing that old out-dated gang like Saint-Louis de HaHa <https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/saint-louis-du-ha-ha-is-in-the-record-books-1.3598109>)

This is another trendy, friendly Saint-Denis bar with tasteful decor and well-informed serving personnel.

The group was coming together in a wonderful warm fashion although the pitcher of water betrays the true purpose of our pilgrimage. With all the association with the saints we were hoping for the classic turning water into beer situation.

A true sign that the evening was winding down came with the traditional end of the evening snooze.

So after a pit stop for good hit of shawarma and other Middle Eastern grub to kill the munchies, we got our chauffeur and Designated Driver to drive us home in our luxury BMW.*

* The Opus pass is known as the BMW (Bus, Metro, Walk) by those of us plebeians who frequent public transit.

Ninkasi Pilgrimage 20Feb18

NINKASI PILGRIMAGE*

The germ of an idea became reality Tuesday 20 February 2018. We've all reached an age where we can appreciate flavours beyond Coors Light. We were tired of complaining about the pitiful quality of the available beer on the strip of Decarie Blvd. in Saint-Laurent we frequent.

A simple web search revealed that Montreal was awash in local brew pubs sprinkled all over but not in Saint-Laurent. 

Check the article at this link:

25 Essential Montreal Microbreweries

We knew the major actors – McAuslin, Brutopia and Trois Brasseurs, but there were many others to explore and slowly we developed a plan. First we had to pick a date, then a place and then how to get there. Liam stepped up to the plate as designated driver and Tom referred us to an east end brewpub run by some old friends of his.

L’Espace Public – Brasseurs de quartier
3632, Ontario Est
Montréal, QC, H1W1R7

contact: info@lespacepublic.ca

http://www.lespacepublic.ca/

This is truly a neighbourhood pub frequented by local folks – very cosy. 

Simon, is the brewmaster. He has been in the business for many years and cut his teeth in the McAuslin operation. 

He and his partner Aryana greeted us as we arrived. He was determined to educate us about sour beers. He laid out a spread of a blond, an IPA, a raspberry and a stout done in the sour style. Absolutely delicious. This was what we were looking for, a challenge to our taste buds.

 Simon followed the tasting with a tour of the brewing operation in the basement, very impressive and informative.

By this time, the pilgrims, who had gathered and tasted, resolved to continue our quest on a regular basis. We developed criteria for including new pilgrims in future quests. “Pilgimage”, “Quest”, “Guild” all sound better than pub crawl, drinking spree, and boozers so we chose names to elevate the tone of this adventure.

We had also become quite hungry and opted to travel westward on Ontario Street, to our next brewpub, Station Ho.st – just check the address as you travel there because we didn't see a sign outside of a rather non-decript exterior. However, step inside and you know you are in another neighbourhood pub.

http://stationhost.ca/microbrasserie/alcools/

Station Ho.st

1494 Ontario Est,

Montréal, Québec H2L 1S3

Coin Ontario/Alexandre-de-Sève.

Info@stationhost.ca

514 564-4678

Another round of tasters and really good pub grub.

*Some of the earliest Sumerian writings contain references to beer; examples include a prayer to the goddess (of beer) Ninkasi, known as "The Hymn to Ninkasi", which served as both a prayer as well as a method of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people, and the ancient advice (Fill your belly. Day and night make merry) to Gilgamesh, recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, by the ale-wife Sidurimay, at least in part, have referred to the consumption of beer. The Ebla tablets, discovered in 1974 in Ebla, Syria, show that beer was produced in the city in 2500 BC.

Ninkasi is also a goddess of healing.

wikipedia