Who is the Devil in this drawing?

My Vue Weekly column this week offers up a review of Shawinigan Handshake from Quebec brewer, Le Trou du Diable. Handshake is an interesting weizenbock, but the real story is the name and label. It harkens back to an incident in 1996 when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien choked a protester. Not a pretty moment for Monsieur Chretien.

Now, those of you with good memories or quick on your search engine fingers will know that I reviewed this beer in a post about 18 months ago, when I picked up a bottle in Halifax. I made the conscious decision to not refer back to that post when doing up the review, which means we have a nice example of being to measure how the beer has morphed and moved over the past year or two. Of course, this is hardly scientific – one bottle was purchased in Halifax, the other Edmonton, and I made no attempt to control for age of the batch, etc. However, it is interesting nonetheless.

For those of you wishing to play along,  you can find the Vue article here and the original onbeer post here.

Back in Halifax, I found the yeast notes of the beer a bit overpowering, with some classice weizen esters, but also more peppery and spicy notes as well. At the time I reported that I appreciated the beer, but questioned its weizenbock-ness, and opined it might be a bit overdone.

This time, the weizen yeast notes are more pronounced, as is a light bread and honey sweetness. If find this version to be more bitter and with a noticeable hop character to it, once again bending the traditional style a bit. I also note the beer is smaller – 6.5% compared to last year’s 7%. Overall I found the beer more balanced and aligned.

I won’t opine on which I preferred, as 18 months later there is just no knowing that. Neither will I pontificate on what I think they changed in the beer. That the recipe has been changed seems obvious, but it is a mug’s game to try and pinpoint what they did. For example, you might say they increased the hopping rate for the new beer. Maybe not. Some of that pepperiness I got last time could have been from hop interacting with other flavours in the beer. Even a different harvest year can make a difference.

Plus there is the age old caveat that much of the differences found are due to my palate and not the beer. To be honest, I doubt that. While I recognize time and place can impact taste perception, I would hope my palate is good enough that I can demarcate changes in the beer.

Comparison was not the reason for reviewing Handshake. The backstory was too good to pass up (even a second time), and seemed a good fit right now. The retrospective on last year’s version is just a happy by-product of my review choices.