Knotty Buoy is a Bavarian Pilsner and thus it’s buoy boast the colours of the Bavarian Flag. The newest entry to the line up, Abyss, a German Style Shwarzbier (black lager) boasts a cream colour buoy with a large black dot, symbolizing the tantalizing dark liquid that is Abyss. As he grabbed a fresh sample mug and moved back to the tap, this time reaching for the yellow and azure buoy tap handle to the Bavarian-style Pils they call Knotty Buoy, I had to ask Armstrong a follow-up question that had formed in my mind earlier: “When did it all come together?” I asked him after I finished 5ozs of Knotty Buoy, which did live up to its description as a refreshingly crisp beer with a dry finish.
After I sampled what I can only describe as a delicious tease of sweet malt, spicy rye, and orange flavours, he began to pour me another 5oz mug from the contents of the next tap, Riptide IPL – a northeast-style hoppy lager with subtle tangerine and pine aromas. He told me, “This is Nova Scotia’s first India Pale Lager – we’ve made a lager-version of an IPA. It’s delicious. It’s a north- east-style, Maine- style IPL and nobody’s done it before.” It was delicious. “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.” After Armstrong told me he’d pass along my compliments to chef, as it were, I took this moment to ask him why each can profiled a buoy rather than spin- drift itself. He explained that “When we tried to graphically depict spindrift it was impossible. You can’t do it justice. So Andrew Bell, my business partner, said, “Spindrift is a great name, there’s more than one story behind it, but what is more Maritime and nautical than lobster buoys? Every lobster buoy is individual; they have their own markings so that fisherman knows it’s theirs. So we’ve adopted that. Each buoy in the corporate logo represents the colours of each of the Maritime flags. Each of the Spindrift brews has a buoy with it’s own identity. This buoy is present on the cans and casts down to a replica buoy tap handle for the bars and restaurants. Coastal Lager is Blue and White to pay homage to Nova Scotia colour’s. Rip Tide is yellow with a red angled slash, as evidence when a rip tide occurs a red and yellow flag is placed on the beach.
“We brewed our first beer in August, 2015 but broke ground that February.”
But it wasn’t his first foray into the beverage industry, I learned.
“I own another company calledAtlantic Spirits and Wines and it represents dif- ferent alcohol beverages from around the world. So, I’ve been involved in the beverage and alcohol game for close to 25 years now. I’ve worked directly for Molson and Seagrum.” I was eager to have a sneak-peak sample of Spindrift Brewery’s newest beer, Abyss – a traditional German- style black lager that features a com- bination of malt proole and German Hersbrucker and Magnum hops –
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS • OCTOBER 2016
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