The name came first. The Establishment Brewing Company says a set of black and white polka dots called to it like a siren song, which is a roundabout way of arriving at Angine de Poitrine - the masked Saguenay duo the brewery refers to as everyone's favourite Quebecois weirdos. Fabienk is one of their songs. Two days before this beer was announced, it won the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, while the band's album Vol. II took the Polaris Music Prize outright. No act had ever won both in the same year.
The beer is a French Pilsner at 4.8 percent, and by the brewery's account it is the first time Establishment has brewed the style in over four years. The band, it says, was a good excuse.
The style itself is the genuinely unusual part. Pilsner Francaise is rarely explored on this side of the Atlantic, as Establishment puts it, and it shares its ancestry with the German pilsner most drinkers know. The divergence is in the grist. Corn joins the grain bill, and the brewery credits it with a rounder cereal sweetness in place of the bready character a German pils delivers. That is a fair description of what corn does in a lager when a brewer is using it deliberately: it lightens the body and contributes a soft, faintly sweet grain note rather than the crust-and-crumb flavour that comes from pilsner malt alone.
The hops are not named. Establishment says only that they come from more than one country while staying firmly in the classic European category, chosen for a floral, herbaceous effect in keeping with the style. Its listed notes for the beer are lemongrass, Teddy Grahams and daffodils.
Fabienk is available now in the taproom, through the brewery's online shop, and at EST retailers across Alberta.
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.