Sein Desprit by Broadway Shawinigan

How sad it is to conclude that such a passion as writing about beer has to play second fiddle to the grind of daily work and the immediate demands one one's employer - I suppose all this could change if one works for a brewery, but few people are so lucky. This is just to say that my entries in the months to come will be less frequent and less elaborate, although I do think that once the winter months arrive, which I normally dread like the plague, new opportunities will arise to take interesting photos of beers.

Today I tried a Dunkelweizen from a brewery in Shawinigan called Broadway Pub. I have previously tried a few beers of this brewery at the Festival Bières et Saveurs and what I had there was quite pleasing to the palate. This beer intrigued me because it is ostensibly brewed in the Bavarian tradition of Schneider Weisse and others. Those of you who have seen the term Dunkel in beer names should know that this is a German word simply meaning "dark" and a specific style of beer in Germany, not surprisingly, designating a dark lager. But a Weizen is wheat beer, which are ales, and so this style is a dark wheat beer and yet another variation that makes the world of beer so intriguing. The name of the beer entirely befuddles me. Sein mean breast or womb in French, and the only thing I can make of Desprit is that it is a concatenation of d'esprit, and so the name of the beer would translate as mind breast??!!! Or it could be a play on words for the French expression saine d'esprit, meaning sound of mind, but then I do not get what the play is supposed to symbolize. There is a brewpub in Montreal called L'Amère à boire, which literally could be translated as "drinkable bitterness" or "drinking the bitter stuff" and which is a play on the French expression "ce n'est pas la mer à boire - literally "you don't have to drink the sea" and figuratively "it's not a big deal". Clearly, that one works well for a brewery. But the sein desprit is the kind of name that escapes me entirely and I fear that if you are not born and raised in Quebec, you're not going to get it.

The beer itself is not bad, but nothing special. The elaborate description of flavours on the label - which include fried banana, vanilla, and clove - seems over the top to me. I could not discern any of those notes in the beer, and my first impression was that it tasted like one of those fine homebrews I used to make some 15 years ago as a graduate student. There are plenty acidic yeast flavours, mixed in with toast, toffee, and dark malt acidity. A mouthfeel that clearly invokes the richness of malted wheat makes this a beer that will go down with a fair dose of satisfaction on a hot day. The beer is also well balanced overall, with some subtle hops notes that complement the acidic grain and yeast flavours. But still, at the end, I would say that if you buy me another one, I will gratefully drink it, but don't ask me to pay for it myself!


A nice head on this beer, a slightly cloudy appearance, and plenty of dark - dunkel - malts! The label is disappointing though, especially for Quebec standards.

A lovely double-bubble came out of this bottle.