By David MacDonald W hen Armstrong walked behind the bar to pour me the first 5oz sample – the German-style Festbier they call Coastal Lager – I was imme- diately reminded of my grandfather. He was a school teacher and lobster fisherman in Cape Breton who painted his buoys the blue, red, and white of the Montreal Canadiens. When storms snapped his lines and his buoys crashed to shore, local beachcombers always knew who they belonged to and that my grandfather would pay a modest sum for their return. He’d repaint them, measure new lines, tie them to a new trap and toss them back to the mercy of the waves off Port Morien until they were unable to fulfill their duty any longer. Sitting on its side on the bar with 24oz Tallboy cans of each of Spindrift Brew- ery’s four lagers perched atop – labels faced-out – was a blue, white, and red striped wooden lobster buoy that reminded me of my childhood in Canada’s Ocean Play- ground. It was slightly weathered with a new line attached as if it were recovered the morning after a nor’easter. It was a connection that made the flavours I was about to experience that much more full. “This is an Oktoberfest-style beer. So it is caramel in colour, has a lot of malt-forwardness to it and a nice bitter, hoppy finish to it. It’s quite nice.” As I watched him pull back the first of four custom beer tap handles that resembled in shape and colour the different buoys profiled on each can, I was reminded of our conversation earlier in his office. “Spindrift occurs when a wave crashes. Just imagine a wave crashing. You see a mist come off the back of that wave – that is spindrift. It’s fresh. It’s bold. It happens at an exciting time when the wave finally crashes,” Armstrong said from behind his desk. “It also happens in the winter, with snow drifts. The blowing snow that comes off the top of snow drifts is spindrift again. It’s very much Maritime imagery and that’s what we were going for.” “Do you want to try some?” Usually when I conduct interviews for the magazine, it’s me asking the questions, but this was definitely an occasion where I was hoping to be asked that one question in particular. The man asking was Andy Armstrong, co-owner and managing partner of Spindrift Brewery in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He was offering me samples of Spindrift Brewery’s four micro brewed lagers and after a tour of the 3,400 square feet state of the art production space where Brewmaster Kellye Robertson puts them all together, I was thirsty.
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OCTOBER 2016 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
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