Mad Tom IPA

My wife and I, and especially my wife, have been on a search for an IPA in Quebec that has some of the characteristics of the West Coast interpretation of this style. A brew with hops flavours so potently aromatic that they make your palate pucker up and the back of your throat gasp for air; a beer that is truly pale, rather than the typical Quebec interpretation, with its copper malt colour and dark grain flavours, which I have already mentioned on a previous occasion. Having lived in Vancouver and being a frequent visitor to Vancouver Island, I have had ample opportunity to sample the brews out in Western Canada, from Hophead IPA by Tree Brewing in Kelowna or Hop Circle by Phillips Brewery in Victoria. The Immortal IPA by Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle also still lingers in my head as an example of the super-hopped-up style. Keys for those beers in my opinion are (1) using lighter malts than those used for Quebec IPA, (2) brewing some of the hops for a short duration (i.e., less than 15 minutes) to give the beer a delicious flowery hops nose, aroma and flavour, and (3) dry hopping, which means leaving fresh hops immersed in the beer during fermentation to produce even more of those flowery hop aromas.

We finally found a beer that comes close to those West Coast IPAs, the Mad Tom IPA from the Muskoka Brewery in Bracebridge, Ontario. Sadly, it is only available in Midget Extinguisher format, but the content satisfies thoroughly. It makes me a little bit mad that Tom is not available in Quebec yet truly madly content that getting some of this stuff is a good excuse for a short motorbike ride on the weekend to the Puritan province where the Anglos live.

Now the taste of this beer is of the finest order - heavenly even - and therefore worthy of a shot in front of a Catholic church. When you stick your nose in this beer (should be a narrow glass, as seen below) you will get the wonderful hops aroma of flowers in full blossom. The colour is an orange-gold mix and the dominant character on the palate is grapefruit. The is not much grain and certainly no bread flavours but enough pale malt sweetness to mix with the citrus hops aromas to create the grapefruit taste.A lingering bitterness accompanies the tangy mouthfeel to a dry finish.

I also find the imagery on the packaging quite noteworthy, especially the images of our pal Mad Tom on the neck of the bottle and the cardboard of the six-pack. On the bottle, there is poor Tom, his canoe has sunk, but at least he still has a barrel of the old IPA to hold on to. Better drink it fast!

The six-pack carton: Tom's eyes look truly mad here - unlike the forlorn look of resignation above.