5e Baron Celebrate Their First Birthday
What a wild first year it’s been for Aylmer, QC’s Cinquième Baron Microbrasserie. They opened their doors on May 13, 2020, already deep in the throes of the pandemic, and have been navigating these turbulent waters ever since. It became clear very quickly that they came to play for real, offering up an incredibly diverse lineup of styles, brewed exquisitely and in a constant pursuit of improvement.
They had some incredible accomplishments in their first year, including achieving the 3rd place ranking for Best New Brewery in the world for 2020 by Rate Beer! They were also one of only three breweries in Québec to brew Black Is Beautiful, and one of very few anywhere to re-release it, twice as the original recipe, and again as a special Double Barrel version. It’s even still available on tap at the brewery! All their Black Is Beautiful releases are in support of Le Mouvement Say It LoudHER.
The week of their anniversary, they released a huge lineup of new beers including some very special bottle releases of their very first Barleywine! I was very excited to get my hands on these special anniversary releases, so let’s dig right into them!
Citadin
Czech Pilsner - 4.5%
With a lineup that’s rich with delicious lagers, a Czech Pils is something I’ve been anxiously awaiting to grace their taps and shelves. Citadin pours with a super clean nose that’s slightly floral with aromas of fresh bread. It has a crystal clear pour with visually high effervescence, giving it a huge head of foam with great retention. It’s clean and super dry throughout. There’s an earthy minerality on the mid-palate and just the very slightest hint of sweetness. The malt bill gives a generous backbone of dry bread crusts, and all that Saaz gives a nice peppery pop of spice at the finish. Clean, crisp, and super refreshing, this is a beautifully executed classic. This needs to be a regular fixture on their side-pour tap!
Sequoia
Double West Coast IPA - 8%
Few things get me more excited than when 5e Baron releases a new West Coast IPA, and in their first year, this is the fourth one they’ve put out, which is pretty impressive considering the wide range of styles in their repertoire. It is, however, their first Double West Coast! It clocks in at 8% and is hopped with Columbus, Nelson Sauvin and Cashmere.
It smells like a hike deep in the woods, with strong aromatics of pine, spruce, and dank weed. The carbonation is perfect, making the texture incredibly fluffy. Pine is abundant, alongside caramelized grapefruit, giving it a juiciness combined with pithy bitterness. There’s a sappy, sticky sweetness as well, with a background of earthy, wet grass. From the mid-palate to the finish, flavours of ripe stone fruit come out with a musty, juicy sweetness. It’s simply delightful. Complex and superbly balanced. The alcohol is undetectable. This is now on a short list of my all time 5e Baron faves.
3e Baron
Imperial Coffee Stout - 11%
5e Baron have a brewery twin in Ontario, who opened their doors on the very same day last year, and it’s none other than Third Moon Brewing. What better way to celebrate their shared birthday than with a collaboration? Third Moon love their Coffee Stouts as much as 5e Baron do, so this seemed like the perfect style choice. This beast is a hefty 11% Imperial Stout with cacao nibs, Madagascar vanilla, and “Brazil Cerrado Mineiro” coffee from Morning Roast Coffee in Etobicoke, ON.
The nose is sweet off the bat, and overflowing with enticing coffee aromatics, like a thick, freshly-pulled espresso. Like all their coffee stouts, it’s intensely thick and creamy like a milk stout, despite having no lactose. The malt bill makes it incredibly soft and pillowy like a fluffy cappuccino foam. It’s sweeter than their previous stouts, almost like liquid milk chocolate, with only a touch of roasty espresso bitterness. For me, the chocolate comes through a lot more than the coffee, but the coffee that does come through adds a nice bitter contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate. It drinks like a thick, fluffy mocha. As it warms up to room temperature, it continues to drink as smooth as silk. There’s still a good bit of milk chocolate sweetness but it’s not cloying. It’s devine.
Mixtape Pink
New England IPA - 6.5%
The latest colour to grace the Mixtape lineup of NEIPAs is Pink! Brewed with Enigma, Nelson Sauvin, and HBC 630, it’s got a nose bursting with juicy fruit, and tartness that’s making me think of guava, passion fruit, and red berries. The palate matches, with a full frothy mouthfeel and the same juicy fruits that were teased on the nose: tropical flavours of mango with a hint of guava, passion fruit tartness and a layer of strawberry. This is one of the more boldly juicy Mixtapes I can recall. It manages to stay pretty dry throughout, with a bit of a vinous grape juiciness to it as well and only a hint of sweetness on the mid-palate.
Bill in a Barrel
American Barleywine Aged in Bourbon Barrels - 10%
Another great way to celebrate a brewery’s first birthday is with Barleywine, and 5e Baron went big with their first Barleywine by releasing it in two barrel-aged versions! Bill in a Barrel takes its name loosely from the #BIL trend (“Barleywine is life”). Half of it was aged in bourbon barrels, half in cognac barrels.
The bourbon barrel version pours a deep burgundy that tints red in the light. It has a full-on aroma of fruit cake; candied fruit, raisins, dates, baking spice, and even a sweet syrupy glaze. On the palate is a maple-like sappy sweetness, combined with low carbonation for a frothy, cakey texture. The bourbon barrel imparts a soothing smooth vanilla flavour, giving it even more of a dessert quality without the cloying, sticky, thickness of a pastry stout. Dried fruit is abundant on the palate like a raisin butter tart. There is a boozy warmth to it, but not nearly the burn you might expect. It’s just soothing. As it warms, some baking spice comes through like nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, giving some layers to the sweetness along with a touch of heat. This was a goddamn treat.
Bill in a Barrel
American Barleywine Aged in Cognac Barrels - 10%
As expected, the cognac barrel version carries many of the same primary flavours as the bourbon barrel version, with a few subtle distinguishing characteristics. Dried fruits like raisins are front and centre on the nose along with the same maple sweetness. This maple character carries through on the palate alongside a deeper fruit character of prune. It’s frothy and sticky, but not heavy. The malt bill gives it the same remarkable cakey texture, but it still manages to have a kind of airy feel to it. The sweetness is like that of maple or caramel candy. The boozy quality is notably sharper in this version, giving off some notable heat, especially as it has some time to warm. The sweetness also gets a little more sugary, and it develops a bit of a flavour of old leather.
These two bottles were an adventure in flavour complexity! For the slightly softer and smoother flavours, I personally prefer the bourbon barrel version, but it’s a gorgeous beer either way!
In their first year, 5e Baron became one of my favourite Canadian breweries. The acknowledgement from Rate Beer, and the love of the local beer community and beyond is extremely well deserved. They are good people making exceptional beer. As we are finally starting to see the fog lift on some of the difficulties of the past year and a half, I am really excited to see what the coming years bring for this brewery. I’m looking forward to many beers this summer on their gorgeous patio!
Happy birthday to 5e Baron, and cheers to many more years of great beers and good times!
Keep staying safe and do your part to get us all a step closer to a new and better normal. Cheers!
Article and photography by Nathan Lefebvre.
Find Cinquième Baron Microbrasserie online:
Related:
Nathan
Nathan is a craft beer enthusiast from Ottawa, ON. He is the Co-Founder of @TeamLactose, he’s passionate about travelling for beer and he loves talking about beer from Ontario, Quebec and beyond.