Pilsner – Mill St Brewery

Another of the brews that Mill St released this summer (or at least pushed), to try to expand the brand back into the “craft” market.  Looking at the label is interesting.  They’ve created a “vintage” style label, green and gold with a wheat sheaf and red accents.  The typeface is even a “days of yore” kind of choice.  They’re trying to hit that country/old Toronto vibe.  Which, of course, is very “Craft”y and local feeling.  And it occurs to me, that the label on the Betelguese Tripel had a sort of “Quebec” kind of vibe to it.  I can’t remember the Roggenbeir label, and didn’t buy one as I really didn’t dig it at the C’est What spring beerfest.  There is no doubt Mill St is really turning on the marketing machine for their new brews.  And while this does make me a little bit more skeptical of their size/corporateness, there is also no doubt, they still make a variety of products that vary from “okay” to “accessible” to “tasty”.  Let’s see what’s what.

Pilsner - Mill St Brewery

Pilsner - Mill St Brewery

From a 341 ISB with no freshness date I could find, the beer is a very dark amber, nearly brown in the middle.  Clear with a gentle carbonation, and a bit of head that dissipated to a ring and a nice island of film pretty quickly. Aroma is sweet malt, and maybe a hint of corn (could be wrong, it is 10am) and just a touch of earthy hop.  Taste is interesting.  A good bit of mineral hop follows a bit of a strange initial taste.  I don’t want to scare anybody off, but the first taste is very reminiscent of my earliest beer drinking experiences.  Like, all of a sudden I was a (legal age) kid with a bottle of beer I probably shouldn’t have had.  This means that it reminds me of Canadian, Moosehead, and Sleeman Silver Creek Lager (the last in particular).  But I’ve actually had all three of these beers within the past 6 months, and can promise you, this tastes a lot better then the three of those.  And in fact, as it warms up, it’s getting even better (unlike the three I mentioned earlier).  It’s like Silver Creek turned up to eleven.  I should be fair here, thinking in terms of Czech Pilsners, this isn’t really a great representation of the style.  If Pilsner Urquell is a 10, and Blue is a zero, this is probably a 5.   Anyways, I digress, the beer is pretty well balanced with a nice clean grainy start, and a good earthy mineral hop to clean it up.  It’s totally drinkable, with a nice light mouthfeel.  I would love to find myself at a BBQ, expecting Coors and Bud, and discover a cooler full of this.  This is definitely a good gateway beer, assuming they package it in bigger packages then sample packs.

So all-in-all, not a stellar pilsner, but a very drinkable lager, and a great beer to give you friends or parents to try to shift them over to the good guys.  Nicely done, Mill St.

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