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| - Last summer the Minhas' siblings opened this micro brewery to focus on craft brews in Canada. There was some controversy at first because of a tax subsidy and they've had some setbacks getting going, but everything seems to be almsot fully up and running now.
For $10 + tax, you can get a tour of the brewery. The tour begins in their tasing room, and extension of their restaurant, with a slide show about the basics of beer, the process, and some trivia. The slide show was good. They covered the basics and gave a few historical examples. If you've done a brewery tour before then this information may not be new to you. Beer is a pretty simple process afterall.
Next, the giude takes you into the back where you go upstairs to the gift shop which overlooks the brewing area. After an explanation of what the various vats and equipment is you have a few minutes to browse through the gift shop and ask the tour guide any questions.
Following this, you go back to the tasting room to sample the beers. During the tasting process you get about one pint total. The samples that were offered on my tour were Boxer Lager, Swiss Amber, Imperial Jack IPA, and Chocolate Bunny Chocolate Stout.
At the very end of the tour the guide gives everyone a gift pack. The pack includes two bottles of Blumer's sodas, a bottle of Gluten Free Lazy Mutt beer, and the glass that you were using to sample the brews with, which they will rinse out for you.
In general I find Minhas beers to be boring. Their flavours don't really wow me and fall flat. They seem very simple and don't provide me with anything unique. Boxer Lager is what it is and I probably wouldn't be able to taste the difference between it and any of the "big" lager brands. Swiss Amber was the best of the samples but still nothing really impressive for me. The Imperial Jack is the one that really let me down. I love IPA's and this one just didn't have the hoppy-ness that I like in a good IPA. Finally, the Chocolate Bunny was good, but it was a very mild stout. It didn't really stand on its own like I would expect and I just felt like I was muddling through the sample.
Overall I'd give this place a 3-star rating for the beer but everything else was pretty great which bumps it up to 4-stars.
Great job by our tour guide.
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