Every dish at Brothers Beer Bistro features either beer or an ingredient of beer ? hops, or malt, or derivatives of either. Bistro owners are, from left, Patrick Asselin and Nick Ringuette. They?re shown with chef Darren Flowers. Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Ottawa is fast becoming a symbolic capital of Beer Nation and it?s happening one small, jerry-rigged brewery at a time. We visit a few; one shared food-with-beer recipes
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By Ron Eade
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By any measure, Broadhead Brewing Co. is a nano-operation, shoehorned, as it was until a month ago, into a nondescript industrial park not far from the Ottawa airport. There you?d find 25-kilo sacks of barley malt stacked inside the front door, buckets and bags of hops and yeast jammed in a cooler, and spare machine parts strewn like flotsam across the office.
Launched a year ago, the brewery recently shuffled to larger digs a few doors down in the same complex on Auriga Drive, but even with double the space ? it?s now 2,200 square feet ? making beer in 20-gallon (80-litre) batches is still microscopic. Imagine lengths of coiled copper tubing, refrigeration condensers reclaimed from scrapped units, a homemade plywood cooler, made using three old 5,000-BTU window air conditioners, and you get the idea. Thank goodness for duct tape.
Yet, as teensy as it is, Broadhead is one very cool place, in a very cool and growing local craft beer industry. You can taste the care they produce and sell each day, by the growler and the keg.
?Ours is the smallest brewery in Eastern ?Ontario as far as I know,? says Josh Larocque, 32, head brewmaster and one of three remaining original partners.
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Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Others, also age 32, are Shane Matte, communications writer at Atomic Energy of Canada, and Jamie White, a Transport Canada highway accident investigator.
Theirs is clearly a business that grew from a home beer-making hobby that went a bit nuts.
And that?s pretty symptomatic of the passion and unbridled devil-be-damned enthusiasm that prevails among young craft beer aficionados in the nation?s capital, a city too often dismissed as a government haven not known for taking chances or thinking outside the box.
In short, the fellows from Broadhead are not alone. Across the Greenbelt in suburban Barrhaven, Jean Paul (J.P.) Fournier?s basement, kitchen and backyard patio are littered with home brewing supplies and equipment. For a professional disc jockey who confides he hated the stuff only two years ago, he?s done very well. His new-found passion has won awards in amateur beer-making competitions as far afield as Toronto.
Beyond that, Fournier, 42, has founded his own Ottawa Beer TAP Society (as in, Tasting, Appreciation and Pairing, get it?) that in two short years has grown from 25 to 200 thirsty members. About 40 meet in a restaurant every six weeks to taste home brews paired with a customized dinner menu. They take beer drinking seriously, it would seem.
Fournier is also the brains behind National Capital Craft Beer Week, held for the first time in August to celebrate more than 150 different ales and lagers from Ontario?s micro-brewers, an industry that?s taken off since Jim Brickman defied the odds in 1984 by launching Brick Brewery in Waterloo.
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And, in the heart of Ottawa?s ByWard Market, at the new Brothers Beer Bistro on Dalhousie Street, every dish created by 32-year-old chef Darren Flowers contains either beer or an ingredient of beer ? hops, or malt, or derivatives of either. Proud bistro owners are Patrick Asselin, 30, and Nick Ringuette, 33, with impressive pedigrees in the Ottawa restaurant scene.
If you noticed most of these beer-preneurs seem to be in their early 30s, you?d be correct.
?What?s so cool in Ottawa,? Fournier says, ?is you have a growing group of chefs who enjoy working with beer. You have home brewers and craft brewers who are passionate about what they do, and they?re running with it.
?The average age of those starting a brewery is pretty young, and they?re all driven by passion. As much as these guys are in competition to sell their product, they still work together in a spirit of camaraderie to share their experience with others.?
Among their mentoring predecessors is Beau?s All Natural Brewing Co. in Vankleek Hill, launched in 2006 by Steve Beauchesne and his father, Tim, both widely applauded for giving newcomers a helping hand in the business. In fact, Broadhead borrowed 288 growler bottles from Beau?s when they ran out after their first week.
?Steve Beauchesne actually delivered them,? recalls Larocque.
The Clocktower brew pub, now with four locations, is a local iconic success story, more recently joined by Mill Street Brew Pub and the Big Rig Brewery brew pub. More are rumoured. Small micro-breweries have popped up in Ashton, Casselman, and another is planned in Pembroke. They?ll be joining larger local craft breweries such as Kichesippi and HogsBack (which is actually brewed in Toronto ? for now).
Small breweries are beginning to pop up in established urban neighbourhoods, just as they once thrived in working class areas such as Hintonburg and LeBreton Flats before the majors bought them in advance of the Second World War. The newcomer today is Beyond the Pale Brewing Co., nestled in just 1,000 square feet of former storage-locker space near the Parkdale Market. Here again the batches are relatively small ? each about 100 gallons (380 litres).
?Ottawa is a great hub for brewing,? says Shane Clark, 33, realtor-turned-brewmaster at Beyond the Pale, which will soon start selling four different brews from its tiny store-front operation on Hamilton Avenue, then take it from there.
His partners are life-long friend Rob McIsaac, 32, with a business background in online sales and startups, and his dad, Al Clark, 64, who plans to take over front-of-the-house operations dealing with customers when he retires as a senior policy adviser at Natural Resources Canada.
?What makes us a little unique is we?re located in the heart of a neighbourhood,? McIsaac says.
?We all grew up right here, we can all walk to work, and while you?re seeing this kind of neighbourhood brewery popping up in major cities like Vancouver and Toronto, it really hasn?t happened yet in Ottawa ? until now.
?Being a walk-by neighbourhood destination is pretty neat. At least, we think so.?
Across town at Broadhead, Jamie White loves the MacGyver nature of his business. He and his team actually cobbled together a malt grinder using a roller attachment fitted to a hand power drill.
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From left, Jamie White and Josh Larocque of Broadhead Brewing Co. at their old, cramped location. Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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?Josh and I are both very hands-on, so literally everything at the brewery we try to build ourselves,? White says. ?From the design to building to maintenance, it?s all ours, so we control the whole thing. In a lot of cases we?ve recycled things using dairy equipment for our mash kettle, things like that. We made our own walk-in cooler with plywood fitted with window air conditioners, and that makes it fun for us.?
The joy doesn?t stop there.
At Brothers Beer Bistro, chef Flowers has busied himself by incorporating beer and its ingredients throughout his popular menu. (His recipes for hopped butter, beer barbecue sauce and beer mustard appear on page 108.)
?All of our cooking uses beer, or components of beer,? Flowers says.
?We?re taking beer and making it more accessible. My background is in fine dining, so we?re taking those techniques and putting them into more approachable food that?s all really straightforward. While we have tuna crudo and pretty plates, for the most part, it?s burgers and steak.?
Ringuette figures Brothers Beer Bistro offers a most varied selection of beers ?representing the entire spectrum.?
?We wanted to stay away from the usual pub bric-a-brac,? Asselin adds. ?We?re trying to show that beer has a place at the dinner table as much as wine. We want people to take beer seriously, so we avoided the monogrammed mirrors, the stuffed heads and the Guinness paraphernalia.?
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Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Says White, at Broadhead: ?Our stuff is all hands-on, our beer is delicious, and people who come through the door often remark at how unusual it is to meet and talk with the owners.
?That?s pretty cool. When you work really hard and see how people appreciate your product, that?s all the gratification we need.?
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RECIPES
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Brothers Beer Bistro Pork Chops or Chicken
Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Chef Darren Flowers
Makes enough to brine 1 chicken, whole or in pieces, ?or 4 to 6 pork chops
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For the brine:
8 cups (2 L) water
up (125 mL) sugar
up (50 mL) salt
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For the barbecue sauce:
2 tbsp (25 mL) canola oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 tsp (5 mL) chili flakes
1 tsp (5 mL) ground cinnamon
1 tbsp (15 mL) cracked black pepper
apple, cored and sliced thin
up (125 mL) brown sugar
1 can (14 oz/398 mL) crushed pineapple
1 bottle (355 mL) Spearhead Hawaiian Style Pale Ale ?(at some LCBO stores, or substitute Kichesippi Natural Blonde)
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To grill:
up (125 mL) melted butter, brushed on to baste
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1. ??????? For the brine, in a large saucepan combine brine ingredients and heat just enough to ?dissolve sugar and salt. Transfer saucepan to a sink partially filled with cold water to chill completely.
2. ??????? For the sauce, in a frypan heat canola oil and saut? onion and garlic until translucent, but not browned. Add spices and apple and cook on low heat for 30 seconds. Add remaining ingredients and simmer gently until volume is reduced by half. Cool and pur?e in a blender; it should have the consistency of regular barbecue sauce.
3. ??????? To brine, transfer cooled brine solution to a food-grade plastic or stainless steel container, immerse whole chicken or pieces, or chops (weighted down if necessary using a water-filled clean Mason jar with lid), and refrigerate 6 to 8 hours. Remove meat and pat dry with paper towels. Discard brine.
4. ??????? To cook whole chicken: Use gas barbecue as you would an oven at 325?F (160?C), baking chicken over indirect heat on low setting with the lid down, turning every 30 minutes to ensure even cooking.
5. ??????? To regulate ?oven? temperature, prop open barbecue lid slightly with a stick as necessary. Baste occasionally with melted butter for crispy skin, and, in last 45 minutes, baste with barbecue sauce every 15 minutes. Whole chicken will take about 2 hours, or until instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the thickest portion of thigh and breast (not touching a bone) registers 170?F (77?C) and juices run clear.
6. ??????? When done, transfer whole bird to a serving platter, tent with foil and let rest 15 minutes to redistribute juices before carving.
7. ??????? For chicken pieces: Cook on gas barbecue on lowest heat, placing pieces on top bun rack; regulate temperature to 325?F (160?C) as for whole chicken, above, flipping pieces and basting occasionally with vegetable oil for crispy skin and barbecue sauce toward the end. Pieces will take about 60 minutes; check for doneness using a meat thermometer, as per temperature above.
8. ??????? For pork chops, grill directly on the barbecue to desired doneness. Remember, it?s OK for pork chops to be just slightly pink in the ?centre.
9. ??????? Serve leftover barbecue sauce for dipping.
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Brothers Beer Bistro Potato Salad
Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Chef Darren Flowers
Serves 4 to 6
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For? beer mustard:
3 tbsp (50 mL) each, brown and yellow mustard seeds
1 cup (250 mL) Muskoka Dark Ale (at LCBO)
2 tbsp (25 mL) molasses
2 tbsp (25 mL) white vinegar
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For the salad:
3 lbs (1.4 kg) baby new potatoes
up (50 mL) beer mustard (see above)
up (125 mL) mayonnaise
1 green onion, sliced thinly
3 slices double-smoked bacon, cut to ?inch (6-mm) pieces and fried to crisp
oyal Gala apple, peeled and cubed small
talk celery, chopped to small cubes
Zest, 1 lemon
Salt, pepper to taste
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1. ??????? For the mustard, toast mustard seeds in a small saucepan on medium heat until fragrant, then add beer and molasses. Bring to simmer, remove from heat, add vinegar and steep about an hour, or until seeds swell to double in size. Thin if necessary to mustard consistency by adding a little more beer; set aside in a sealed container, refrigerated, overnight to develop flavours.
2. ??????? For the salad, boil potatoes until just tender but not mushy; drain. Cut potatoes in half, then cool in colander. In a bowl, combine all remaining salad ingredients and toss with potatoes in a large bowl. Serve immediately at room temperature, or chill completely.
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Grilled Corn with Cascade Hop Butter
Photograph by Ashley Fraser
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Chef Darren Flowers, Brothers Beer Bistro
Serves 4
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4 ears corn
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For the infused butter and seasoning:
up (125 mL/1 stick) butter, room temperature
sp (2 mL) ground Cascade hops pellets *
Salt, pepper to taste
* Hops pellets available at home brewing stores such as DeFalco?s Beer and Wine Making Supplies in Ottawa.
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1. ??????? In a mixing bowl, whip softened butter and combine well with ground hops; cover and refrigerate overnight to infuse flavour, then bring to room temperature before serving.
2. ??????? Either grill corn in the husk until done, or ?remove husk and boil or steam until tender.
3. ??????? Serve with hop butter and season to taste with salt and pepper.
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Source: http://www.ottawacitizenstyle.com/category/food-and-drink/city-of-suds/
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