Walking and Talking with Crooked Mile Brewing

Walking and Talking with Crooked Mile Brewing - theHumm December 2016

By John Scime

Welcome to “A Brew in Review”, the column dedicated to the true pursuit of happiness: enjoying a great pint of beer! For the past number of months, the beer-geeks in my little town of Almonte have been giddy with hoppy anticipation waiting for the opening of Almonte’s own Crooked Mile Brewing Company. After many months (nay, years) of hard work, dreaming, and scheming, the folks at Crooked Mile opened their doors to the public on October 24, 2016, an event that that was covered by my brother-in-beer, Rob Riendeau, on p.26 of the November Humm. Well, I’m more than a little bit embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t on hand for the glorious grand opening. So in order to make up for my own personal poor decision-making, I stopped by Crooked Mile recently to sample their offerings and to sit down with brewmaster Nick Pruiksma and partner Dylan Bouleau (the partnership is completed by Vicki Pruiksma) to talk all things beer and brewing. This is what I found out.

As many brewing geeks would understand, the craft-brewing “bug” hit Nick Pruiksma years ago, all because he was unable to source in Ottawa a favourite beer he had discovered while travelling in Britain. This lead Nick down the long and slippery path of home-brewing, where one can often recreate one’s favourite beers through hard work, trial and error. First, he cut his teeth brewing beers made from canned malt extract and a few specialty malts; soon enough he was buying sacks of malted barley, building brewing equipment such as grain-crushers, brew pots, wort chillers, mash tuns, etc., and producing high-quality all-grain craft beer in his garage. About a year or so into this journey, Nick purchased a commercially-made, sophisticated and infinitely controllable home-brewing system. This bit of kit allowed Nick to replicate many aspects of the commercial brewing process by experimenting with procedures that are not easily achieved by the typical home-brewer, including step-mashing (steeping the malts at two different temperatures to achieve different taste/body characteristics), and using precise temperature controls that enable a more precise replication of recipes from batch to batch. Soon enough the home-brewing passion turned into a commitment to make brewing his livelihood.

Fast-forward several years later, when the beers of Crooked Mile are inspired by the classic British brewing tradition. Not surprisingly, their products carry evocative names such as “Druid’s Dusk” Irish Red Ale, “Standing Stone” British IPA, and “Highland Hillwalker” Scottish Export Ale. Recipe development for each of these beers started years ago on home-brewing systems, and has been painstakingly adapted to Crooked Mile’s 8-hectolitre (800-litre) brewing system. According to Nick, while it has been great fun “playing with the big-boy toys”, it has been quite a challenge to adapt both the recipes and the brewing processes they employed on small home-brew systems to commercial scale while achieving the desired outcome. Luckily for Nick, Dylan is apparently quite the jack-of-all-trades handyman and electronics whiz — skills that have been indispensable in making this process easier.

The beers speak for themselves. Of the three I sampled while at the brewery (unfortunately, they were out of the Crow’s Castle when I was there), all were fresh, clear, tasty, well-brewed and well-fermented ales. Crooked Mile uses really fresh products to brew their recipes, ordering their grain bills a couple of days before using them in the mash tun. All of their beers are based on a blend of high-quality British Maris Otter malt, augmented with fresh, clean Canadian 2-row malts, various specialty malts and “noble” British hops varieties such as East Kent Goldings, Fuggles and Challenger. Mash temperatures range from 152°F to 154°F, and are painstakingly met and maintained using a clever heat-exchange system within the mash tun and hot liquor tank, high-tech software and attention to detail. Recently, Crooked Mile experimented with a yeast strain known as US-05, which is renowned for producing crisp and clean fermentation that enables the recipe ingredients to shine through without adding flavours during the fermentation stage. Nick says this new yeast really complemented the recipes they had designed years ago, so they decided to use it for all the beers they brew. Crooked Mile beers are also crystal clear without being filtered, likely resulting from the use of glycol-jacketed fermenters that enable very precise, consistent temperature control over the fermenting beer. The end results are very well-brewed beers that are true-to-style in the British tradition, brewed in a manner that allows the imbiber to enjoy a gentle balance between malts and hops. I was very impressed and think you will be too.

Currently, Crooked Mile beers are available at the brewery located at 453 Ottawa Street, in Almonte. Because they aren’t shipped, they are super fresh and delicious and available in 900ml squealers and 2-litre growlers. If you like them, and I’m sure you will, start asking for Crooked Mile beers at your local pub. Bottoms up!

Happy Local Holidays! - theHumm December 2016

By Kris and Rob Riendeau

Here at theHumm we’re big on local economies. The retail and service businesses in the small towns that we cover play a huge role in the cultural life of those towns. Each store, restaurant, or sma......

Walking and Talking with Crooked Mile Brewing - theHumm December 2016