Pity to read the entire column without a single reference to Canadian beer...
With our 5-7% alcohol content, ours tstes quite different from USA brands, even if Bud and Coors (locally known as "Girl's Light", or worse, "Queer's Light", but I digress) have been licensed over to Labatts and Molsons, the two brewing giants of the North...
The third largest makes about the best, in my own opinion, that being Sleemans Brewery of Guelph, using the local natural spring water in the process...
Most North American brews are aimed at "Joe Six Pack", who will consume any number, and whose first taste determines brand loyalty for life...and "tastes less filling" is a subconcious twist that you should drink more than just one...or two...you get the point...
Sleemans runs counter to this, their various ales and excellent lagers make you feel relatively "full"...
They make a honey brown lager and a dark beer besides...
The Sleeman family logo was "borrowed" by the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) back in the 1800's, and remains in use, amicably, by both to this day...
You can get this easily in Ontario and British Columbia, less easily in other provinces, but if any of you manage to travel to the Great White North, it'd be worth your while to give it a try!
There's only so much water in those springs, so I must doubt it will ever go broad band in marketing, and we Canucks are a little fussy on sending the "good" water south of the line, so you'll have to come up here to try it out...
On that note we also have a Vodka that is, obviously, pure grain alcohol mixed with glacial water from icebergs, which the millenia has leached the salts from (a curious thing, the Inuit have about 50 words to describe the various qualities of ice; the salt free stuff is sort of a blue colour)(and is water formed hundreds of thousands of years ago)...
