Beer: the final frontier. These are the voyages of your intrepid liquor reporter. His continuing mission: to explore strange new beers, to seek out new dive bars, and new buxom barmaids, to boldly drink what no man has drunk before.
The small town of Vulcan, just an hour south of Chestermere by car (or much quicker at warp 9), has brought many things to Alberta. Endless rows of grain elevators, Canada’s only Star Trek museum, and a merry band of city councilors that have been known to wear pointy ears at town meetings.
There is even a bronze bust of Mr. Spock, complete with authentic Leonard Nimoy handprints from a visit a few years back, before his tragic death, from what one can only assume was a bad case of Ponn Farr. Your humble narrator has always been a fan of big busts, and this bronze statue is no exception.
Vulcan has also given us something especially dear to the heart of your intrepid liquor reporter, and that is Vulcan Ale, first brewed for the town centennial back in 2013.
Vulcan Ale was the first of many Star Trek-themed beers from the awesomely named Federation of Beer. Made in the style of an Irish Red, Vulcan Ale has plenty of nutty and caramel malt on the tongue. Hoppiness is mild, but well balanced with the sturdy malt structure. It would be illogical for you not to try one.
Your humble narrator spent the summer of 2013 scouring the pubs and booze merchants of Calgary, looking for the tallboy cans that held the delicious Vulcan Ale, which were hard to find that first year, as they sold out almost immediately! Luckily, the early production wrinkles have been ironed out, and Vulcan Ale is now readily available at well-stocked booze merchants in Alberta.
Irish Reds are one of my long-time favourite beer styles, which goes way back to the days of my squandered youth, when I sampled a limited release of the Lanigan’s Irish Red, an old family recipe from the founders of the Brewsters chain of brew pubs. That fateful day was back when mullets roamed the earth with impunity, and I have been a fan of Irish Red ales ever since, so was tickled pink to discover Vulcan Ale.
About a year after releasing Vulcan Ale, the Federation of Beer ventured further into the beta quadrant to come up with a new brew, in the form of Klingon Warnog, first brewed by Garrison Brewing in Halifax for a local sci-fi convention.
Made in the style that combines the Roggen (rye) and Dunkel (dark) styles from Germany, Klingon Warnog has a tantalizing clove aroma from the German wheat yeasts, with a spicy backbone provided by the rye malt, balanced by sweet Munich malts for a nicely proportioned beer.
While rye beers were very common in Germany in the middle ages, the Bavarian Beer Purity Law of 1516 decreed that barley was the only permissible grain malt for brewing beer, so rye beers all but disappeared for nearly half a millennium, only making a resurgence in the past few decades.
We still don’t see 100% rye beers today, but by blending barley and rye malts together, spicy undertones with hints of pumpernickel bread are imparted to the brew, making for a more complex flavour profile than plain old barley.
If today is a good day to die, then today is a good day to drink Klingon Warnog. Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam!
The most recent addition to the stable of brews at the Federation of Beer is the Orion Seductress Sindicate Lager, featuring a label of the iconic green-skinned Orion dancing girls who enslaved naive earthmen like James T. Kirk with their potent phermones.
The Orion Seductress is made in the style of a Czech Pilsner, and uses the famous Saaz hops to produce a lightly malted lager with a full-bodied taste that is nearly as voluptuous as the green-skinned girl on the label.
All three of these beers are readily available at well-stocked booze merchants in Alberta, but I did have to drive into Calgary before I could find them on the shelves. Embrace your inner Star Trek nerd and pick up a Vulcan Ale, Klingon Warnog, or Orion Sindicate Lager today!
