Gearing up for this year’s SESSION Craft Beer Festival, part of Ontario Craft Beer Week, Beau’s collaborated with esteemed Canadian authors, Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson on a delicious NooBroo. I had the pleasure of chatting with Beau’s co-founder, Steve Beauchesne, about how such a collaboration came to be.
After winning the collaboration contest at last year’s festival with The Tom Green Beer, Beau’s had set the bar pretty high. Wanting to work with great Canadian talent, but of a different feather, the idea to work with Margaret Atwood arrived in an email from Jordan St. John, an author and beer columnist out of Toronto.
St. John was reading Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of post-apocalyptic fiction. The trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) weaves together a world devastated by plague, genetic modification, and the destruction of the environment. Found within MaddAddam, the last book of the series, are several different herbs and botanicals. “Wouldn’t it be cool”, Jordan St. John wrote, “to create a beer with Margaret Atwood inspired by some of the ingredients found in her novel?” Well acquainted with Beau’s work with gruit beers, a beer made with herbs and botanicals instead of hops, he thought it would be an awesome collaboration.
Beau’s thought so too. At the same time as an email was sent off to Beau’s, St. John was in touch with Margaret Atwood via Twitter. She agreed that a gruit beer based on her trilogy was a phenomenal plan.
For Margaret and her partner Graeme Gibson, the most important part was that the project do some good. A big supporter of environmental and social causes, Beau’s felt this was important too. Pelee Island Bird Observatory (PIBO) is a cause both Atwood and Gibson are passionate about. As an advisor to, and the Chair of the Board of Directors, respectively, they chose to donate money raised to fund the crucial research that PIBO does.
For Steve and the gang at Beau’s, the authenticity of the project was tremendously important – it had to be a real collaboration. Despite the challenge of coordinating everyone’s busy schedules, they were able to make this a reality.
The project began with a series of phone calls and emails between Beau’s, Margaret Atwood, and Graeme Gibson. Then it was a matter of tracking down some fairly odd ingredients – things like Elderberry, wild cherry bark, and Burdock Root. Locating all the ingredients was one of the biggest challenges of this project, but Jeff McCauley, Beau’s expert ingredient-finder, made it happen.
MaddAddamites NooBroo label.
Once they had their hands on the ingredients, Beau’s made a trip down to Toronto for tea with Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson. Margaret Atwood was extremely accommodating and met with everyone while packing for a trip to England. They made tea from each of the ingredients and tested out some blends that Beau’s had come up with, along with Beau’s Kissmeyer Nordic Pale Ale, for a taste of how rosehips fit within a beer.
It was interesting to taste the difference between the ingredients on their own, versus how they tasted alongside one another, Steve noted. The most interesting ingredient, by far, is Burdock Root, a plant that also has its roots in European brewing, but they were not too sure if it would blend well within a beer. Margaret Atwood was not convinced when she tasted the tea brewed of Burdock Root, remarking that it tasted “a bit like an old running shoe”. Surprisingly though, when mixed with the other ingredients, the Burdock Root no longer tasted like old shoes and, instead, added a complexity to the beer that everyone agreed was great.
There were also ingredients that, upon first thought, seemed like a wonderful idea – such as the wild cherry bark, which Beau’s originally thought they’d use an abundance of – that proved to be less of a hit. The wild cherry bark, in the original quantities, was too tannic, and so they ended up using far less in the final version of MaddAddamites NooBroo.
Once the tasting was complete, Beau’s produced the beer, sending some to Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson to try out the final product. The most exciting part of the project, for Steve Beauchesne, was getting Margaret Atwood to write the tasting notes for the beer.
The beer debuted at the SESSION Craft Beer Festival in Toronto on June 13th and 14th. Bibliophiles were really excited about MaddAddamites NooBroo. Many had never attended a beer festival before who went specifically to taste the literary collaboration. Not surprisingly, the beer won best cover art, thanks to Jordan Bamforth and the creative team at Beau’s. Tom Green was also at the festival, and a big supporter of MaddAddamites NooBroo.
MaddAddamites NooBroo will be available from the brewery, for a limited time, beginning today – Thursday June 19th. If you can’t make it out to Vankleek Hill for a visit to the brewery, you can always have it delivered straight to your home, through Beau’s awesome BYBO program. Beau’s works alongside Operation Come Home to deliver their beer to many parts of the city. The delivery fee goes entirely to Operation Come Home to help fund their programs and services. Additionally, you can check out Beau’s Twitter feed to find out which restaurants and pubs will have MaddAddamites NooBroo on tap.
Beau’s Brewery is located at 10 Terry Fox Drive in Vankleek Hill. Click here for directions.
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