Lingua Ignota is Latin for "unknown language," and it is also the name of an actual one. Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century German abbess, recorded a private vocabulary and alphabet under that title. It had, as far as anyone can tell, one fluent speaker.

Brasserie du Bas-Canada has put the name on a Kellerbier. The beer is a collaboration with Isle de Garde, the Montreal brewery, and it went on sale this morning as one of seven releases in the Gatineau brewery's Oktoberfest lineup. It runs 5.0 percent ABV in 473 ml cans, with a limit of 24 cans per person.

Bas-Canada is unusually plain about why this partnership happened. The brewery says it has immense respect for Isle de Garde and that the quality of its lagers has always impressed them. For the collaboration, the two set out to brew a Kellerbier chasing maximum balance, with the intention of foregrounding what Bas-Canada describes as the signature of the delicate malts used.

That brief is harder than it reads. Kellerbier means cellar beer, and the style is traditionally a young lager pulled unfiltered from the lagering tank - softer, slightly hazy, and more malt-led than a finished Pils. An unfiltered lager built on delicate malt has nowhere to hide. There is no hop charge covering the seams and no filtration smoothing them out, so whatever the malt is doing is simply what the beer is. Two breweries agreeing that balance is the goal is a low-drama decision and a fairly exposed one.

The can matches the name rather than the beer. The label is a chartreuse panel carrying a crowned, haloed figure in line art, with the beer name set in heavy blackletter above the word KELLERBIER. In a release themed around Oktoberfest, it is the one design that looks like it came out of a manuscript.

Cans went on sale online at 11 a.m. today at bascanada.beer, from the brewery's Hautes-Plaines site. Orders can be collected within the week. Lingua Ignota is also one of the four lagers available in the brewery's $30 Oktoberfest tasting package, running September 17 to 20 at both the Gatineau and Hautes-Plaines tasting rooms.

Editor’s Take

Lingua Ignota is a genuinely strange thing to name a beer after. Hildegard of Bingen invented an entire vocabulary in the 12th century, wrote it down, and then more or less nobody used it again - a language with a single fluent speaker, preserved because someone bothered to keep the manuscript. Putting that on a Kellerbier is a quiet sort of joke about how much of brewing tradition works the same way: a regional habit, written down by whoever was paying attention, surviving on the strength of a few people who cared enough to carry it forward.

What makes it land is that the beer underneath is the least showy thing in the whole release. Two breweries with a mutual admiration society going, pooling their effort, and the stated goal is balance and the signature of the malt. No adjuncts, no hop bill to recite, nothing to hide behind. That is the version of ambition that does not photograph well, and it is sitting there in a can with a crowned saint on it, next to a Quadruple IPA. Delightful.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Lingua Ignota Takes Its Name From a Language Nobody Else Spoke

A Kellerbier brewed with Montreal's Isle de Garde, aimed at maximum balance and built to show off delicate malt. The name belongs to an invented language recorded by a 12th-century abbess.

Source & Editorial