grows warmer -- and roasted and burnt grain flavours. The hops show themselves only in the second half and finish, primarily as drying rather than bittering entities, although with a slightly piney-grassy bitterness on the finish, along with a lingering yeasty tang. Is this a great beer? No, I'm afraid it is not. Is it a great and laudable project? Absolutely, and one which yielded an altogether quaffable ale, to boot. Congratulations to both Ed Koren and those with the foresight to back him in this endeavor! I look forward to your next one-miler. 8 Responses to Perhaps the Most Interesting Beer I've Had a Chance to Sample This Year... What hops did they use? Hard to find one that would be from the pioneer era in that part of Ontario -- other than Cluster from CNY. And their class of pioneer would have been rather reserved. Most beer sold -- which was not lower strength lager -available in the area from all information I see would have been stronger ale. Who made a 3.5% beer then? I'm not going to get into the issue of strength and authenticity, since it's not at all something I'm schooled in. Wouldn't it make sense that some farmer-brewers might have parti-gyled a second running beer of that strength, though? Not in the 1860s. I see no reference to that sort of activity that late. Beer was small scale industrial well before then. Even earlier, it was a fairly benign authoritarian system in early