Everyone knows what respect I have for the Montreal beer scene. Some fabulous brewpubs and some first rate breweries, including the famous Dieu Du Ciel. I think Montreal has developed a global reputation for its craft beer (which may have overgrown the actual beer). So I can see why someone would want to associate themselves with it in some way.

Which brings me to my topic du jour: MTL Lager. Haven’t heard of it? You are not alone. It is an odd product that showed up on Alberta liquor store shelves about a year ago. It seemed unappealing to me so I passed it over when it first arrived, but over the past months it has found a way to creep over and over again into my field of vision. A couple pubs in town offer it, and it looms consistently in the lager section at Sherbrooke.

Figuring out the beer’s story isn’t easy, but what I found out is that it is the brainchild of a former Montreal resident and now Calgarian and it is contract brewed by Brasseurs de Montreal in Montreal. It can only be found in Alberta and Montreal – nowhere else.Its marketing plays up the Montreal angle but it doesn’t promise to be anything but a premium lager, which is vague enough to be meaningless. The clear glass bottles are not confidence inspiring.

I finally picked up a six pack recently, and wrote up a review for Vue Weekly, which is now available here. As you can read if you click on the link, I am not a fan of this beer. It had a reasonably ordinary macro-lager feel to it until the linger, which had metal, bandaid and medicine notes. And to be clear – those are not good things to taste in beer. They are indications of something going wrong. Knowing that can be a single-bottle issue, I opened a second one. Same problem. To be fair this could still be a problem with a single batch, but I am not going to pick up another second six pack to find out.

I don’t know enough of the story to make any firm conclusions about the company and its intentions, so I will refrain from casting judgment too harshly. But give me a Dieu Du Ciel anyday. Now THAT tastes like Montreal to me.