It’s time to stock up—we’ve officially found the perfect cottage beer!
Midland’s Best Maple Butter Tart Ale combines two of our biggest summer indulgences—butter tarts and beer—and is now available in LCBOs from Barrie to North Bay.
It was named after Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival, which takes place in Midland each June.
Midland’s mayor, Gord McKay, was among the group who gathered in the community’s Town Hall last week for a tasting in honour of the beer’s official launch.
“It’s a fabulous beer,” he told the Midland Mirror. “You can really tell the flavour of butter tart in it, but it doesn’t overwhelm you. It’s got the warmth of a good butter tart, but also the refreshing qualities of an excellent ale.”
Brewed by Sawdust City Brewing Co. in Gravenhurst, Ontario, the beer is infused with caramel, maple, and butter rum flavours. Brewmaster Sam Corbeil based the beer on the brewery’s Ol’Woody Alt, which is a traditional German lagered ale at 5% alcohol.
“We took that beer and gave it a little bit more caramel base and a little bit more bready crustiness,” he told the Mirror. “And then we added the flavours that you find reminiscent of butter tarts.”
But can a beer really taste like a butter tart? According to Barb Rowlandson, director of Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival, it stands up.
“It really smells like a butter tart,” Rowlandson said. “And when you taste it, it has the flavour of a butter tart, but not that sweetness.”
And that’s exactly what Corbeil was going for: “It’s not overly cloying and sweet. We wanted people to enjoy it and not feel like they’ve just coated their teeth in sugar.”
Cheers to that!
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