By Tim Querengesser
Whenever someone visits the North they like to try local things. They might eat some bannock, maybe sample some caribou or moose, or go scouting for cranberries. If they're daring they might take a bite of muktuk or igunak or, as French tourists did recently (with not so great results), blue-rare polar bear. But what they often struggle to get is local Northern beer.
Hold on, you say, what about the Yukon Brewing Company. Well, it's likely a result of that brewery's success -- it's Yukon Red was the 2009 beer of the year at the Canadian Brewing Awards -- that the lack of beers in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are so obvious.
The NWT did have a beer line once, created in part by Up Here's publishers, Marion Lavigne and Ronne Hemming. Its beers were called Arctic Gold, Arctic Diamond and Arctic Red. They were sold for a while in the 1990s, then disappeared.
I'm not going to get into why there are so few Northern beers -- that's a masters thesis. What I will propose are five Northern beers that could be made, and their product descriptions. Feel free to add more in the comments section below.
1) Polar Beer -- The consumer-brand Northern beer -- innocuous, light, hoppy finish. Available in stubby bottles to fit in parka pockets, snowmobile storage compartments, houseboat pantries. Sold at North Mart.
2) Northwest Passage Light -- tastes great, less calories -- and now ice-free! It helps to drink Northwest Passage Light when navigating the real passage, as you need to swerve a lot.
3) Axel Heiberg Ale -- This may sound like it's some Euro-snob microbrew-masterpiece but no, it's a beer made in Nunavut, commemorating Axel Heiberg, financial director of the Norwegian Ringnes brewery, which paid to have Axel Heiberg Island discovered in 1900. Oh, and it, uh, tastes kinda like Ex.
4) Meta Incognita -- (insert movie-guy voice): "Our German nihilist brewmaster cold-filters Meta Incognita in one of the coldest places in the world, leaving a crisp, refreshing beer for the most discriminating beer connoisseur." Or something like that. Five out of five tourists prefer Meta Incognita!
5) NWT Beer -- We don't really know what this beer is like. We don't really know what the NWT is about, either. We just know our bureaucracy named it "NWT Beer." Is my Northern living-allowance cheque in yet?
