The sky's the limit

What do you do on your first full day in Montréal? Visit the Dieu du Ciel! brewery, of course. If the day happens to be a Saturday you probably shouldn't as the place was packed, with a queue out the door when we arrived early that afternoon. Thankfully it moved quickly and before we could decide to leave, we had a table. It's quite a small place, the corner bar about the size of, well, a small neighbourhood corner bar. We wedged ourselves in and set about the menu, opting for flights to start with.

Synergie: 1 Passion Houblon is the portentous name of my kick-off beer, a 5.5% ABV passionfruit IPA. There was a lot of the tropical ice lolly about this, all tangy passionfruit sorbet. Its glaring yellow colour makes it look as summery as it tastes. The texture is soft and there's just enough of a hop kick in the finish for it to pass as an IPA. It almost misses tasting like beer at all. Very enjoyable if you like the sweet and juicy flavour of passionfruit though.

Moving right, next is Moralité, an American-style IPA of 6.9% ABV. It's a deep orange colour and every bit as heavy as it looks. The aroma offers sweet jaffa and mandarin but this gets squashed somewhat on the flavour by sticky toffee and caramel. Some bitter rind and oily dankness survive but there's an absence of zing. True to style, I guess, but not a great example.

A bruiser to finish: the 8.3% ABV double IPA Immoralité. This was quite a murky affair, paler and sicker-looking than the previous one. The aroma is bright and fresh, however: all mango and tangerine. Weighty hop resins start the flavour off on a positive note but get followed by a blast of un-fruity caraway. Urgh. Hints of orange juice manage to peek through, but not enough to make it taste properly citrus, and all of these hop flavours struggle against a burning alcohol heat. It's a bit of a mess, lacking the usual DdC! finesse.

Speaking of which, the wife's flight started with Péché Mortel stout, of course, tasting as good at source as it does everywhere else. On the other end is Rosée d'Hibiscus, allegedly a witbier but 5.9% ABV and hot as hell. Hibiscus combines with the flat heavy texture and intense booziness to make it taste like cough mixture. It's definitely not as cheery as the clear pink colour might suggest.

Our flights land with Disco Soleil, a kumquat IPA. This didn't taste like kumquats or IPAs, arriving a clear lager yellow and tasting quite plain. There's a non-specific fruit quality and a long bitter finish, but that's more herbal than citrus: marjoram in particular. This could almost pass as a north German pilsner. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it's a bit dull and defintely not the beach party it's advertised as.

One last round before we go. I opted for Dernière Volonté IPA in its Brettanomyces re-fermented version. It brings the Brett all right: a massive dirty funk effect immediately from the start, settling to a gummy and sweet peach finish. It's lacking in the hop department, however, having a warm and wheaty porridge-oat middle where the hops ought to be. I enjoyed it, but it really could have done with some extra fruit character, from both the yeast and the hops. There are better versions of this style out there.

And for the lady, Aphrodisiaque, a chocolate and vanilla stout. This was today's unreasonably short-poured beer, sporting a thick off-white quiff. It smells sweet and wholesome, as rich as its 6.5% ABV implies. Milk chocolate is to the fore in the flavour followed by a charming mix of summer fruits: red cherries and strawberries. There's a contrasting bitter kick next, before a floral rosewater finish. A whole pint of this might prove difficult drinking but the general structure of the flavour is spot on. A happy note on which to take our leave.

Dieu du Ciel! bustling on a Saturday

When we had been considering going elsewhere, I noted another fun-looking bar just down the street. We went to investigate more closely on leaving Dieu du Ciel!. Siboire is part of a small chain of microbreweries and bars. This particular branch -- an open and lofty space with bare brick and bright windows -- doesn't have a brewery but does sell the Siboire range.

Seeking to further my education in brut IPAs, I ordered 0° Plato first. This arrived a bright and hazy yellow and all of 7% ABV. There was a lot of suspended yeast grit in it, making it taste dreggy, which didn't meld well with the booze heat. I got a mix of lemon and garlic flavours, giving the impression of a table beer or similar rough saison, an effect accentuated by the salty bathbomb herbs. The whole thing was far too confusing to be enjoyable and taught me nothing about brut IPA.

My companion was still on the big and dark beer buzz, picking Impérial Express from the menu. It's 9% ABV, dark brown and largely headless. A strong coffee aroma leads to a strong coffee flavour, all thick, sticky and delicious. A dark chocolate bitterness rises in the finish, rounding it out nicely. All the good things about imperial stout in a single package. Happy times.

For the second round I opted for La Certitude Camerise, a sour fruit beer. The camerise is new to me, being a kind of elongated blueberry. There's a simple Ribena vibe about this 3.9%-er, a soda minerality and a sense of forest fruit yoghurt. There's not much else going on and I don't expect the camerise to take over the beer world as its next miracle ingredient.

Since I was interested in that, the waiter presented me with a taste of their actual blueberry beer, BleuAle. It's not that different; maybe a little more complex on the fruit flavours, with hints of raspberry in with the blueberries, and with a more assertively sharp sourness. Still quite run-of-the-mill for this sort of thing, however.

Our last one here was Trip d'Automne, a lightish tripel of 7% ABV. I wasn't expecting much from this either but it really takes the style in some fun directions. It's absolutely still a tripel, with the proper amount of heat and honey and spices, but there's a gorgeous enticing peppery aroma and then bags of fresh and juicy cantaloupe right in the middle of the taste. Black peppercorns and strong aniseed add extra layers of complexity, their impact boosted, not masked, by the alcohol. This was definitely up with the best of Belgium's tripels, in my estimation.

There'll be more pub hopping in this part of town later in the week, but we're going south next, to the neighbourhood we stayed in.