Welcome back to a very special episode of Broskies on Brewskies, the newly ringed edition. Tristan and I finally made it to that classic rite of passage, the Iron Ring Ceremony, and received our cold iron. Immediately after tossing on our new bling we hit the LCBO to find some new beers to review. This week we’re bringing you four beers from the Wellington Brewery in Guelph. I was introduced to the Wellington brewery by a friend and have enjoyed them ever since.
The first beer up was the Wellington Special Pale Ale. This beer is very reminiscent of the classic craft beer pale ale, but just a little better. It favours malts over hops which cuts down a lot on the bitterness. It’s also a very smooth drink with a good light feel to it. It’s a fairly popular beer; if you find a Wellington beer on tap at a local bar, this is probably the one. Overall we liked this beer well enough and would drink it again, but it’s not something that we’d seek out. We gave it 3/5 stars.
Next up was the Up Side IPA. This returns to the classic IPA bitterness, with both malty and hoppy flavours. It favours citrus heavily, and is fairly acidic which we weren’t super happy about. This acidity ruined the feel of the beer. It’s also definitely a summer patio beer, which wasn’t reflected in this week’s weather. Overall we weren’t super happy with this super hoppy beer. We gave it 2.5/5 stars.
The third beer we sampled was the Kickin’ Back Session IPA. This was the best Wellington beer thus far, and has a nice dry and hoppy taste. It’s also very clearly a summer beer, with more tones of citrus present. They nail the citrusy undertones in this beer, which don’t overpower anything and provide nice summery hints. While it was the best beer we’ve had so far it still isn’t really anything to write home about, and we settled on a score of 3.5/5 stars.
Our last beer was the Russian Stout, which was a large departure after three pale ales. As usual we were a little split when it came to the stout. I like stouts far more than Tristan does, and it’s one of the key differences in our palettes. This stout was very well put together though. Undertones of chocolate and coffee come through in varying levels with each sip, and it feels very nice and rich. There’s a fine line to toe with stouts, and this beer is an excellent pass at one. We ended up settling on 3.5/5 stars but I’m hopefully awaiting their next batch.
That’s the end of another review. Even though we were fairly hard on the Wellington Brewery I still think they’ve got a lot of good things going and am excited to try their new batches when they roll out. Next time on a very special episode of Broskies on Brewskies we’re going to be bringing you reviews of four beers from the Lake of Bays brewing company, which Tristan and I are both very excited about. Until then, please taste responsibly!
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