Beau’s Lug-Tread Lagered Ale (5.2%)

Back in 2006, father and son Tim and Steve Beauchesne founded what was then called Beau’s All-Natural Brewing Company – now just Beau’s Brewing Company – in the hamlet of Vankleek Hill, roughly 100 kilometres east of Ottawa. Their first product was a kölsch-style beer called Lug-Tread, which out of respect for the German appellation they titled a lagered ale.

(I have credited the brewery in the past, but it deserves repeating that it is because of Beau’s that the only wide-spread use of the term “lagered ale” in the world occurs in Ontario.)

The years passed and the brewery, and its flagship beer, went through some ups and downs, not the least of which being an expansion shortly before the onset of the pandemic. As it turned out, Covid was a body blow from which Beau’s was unable to recover.

Enter Toronto’s Steam Whistle Brewing, which in the spring of 2022 agreed to buy Beau’s for an undisclosed price. In the years since, I have tried Lug-Tread from time to time, but until very recently found it to be lesser than its former self.

Which brings us to Steam Whistle’s 25th anniversary celebrations, a modest party to which I was invited on May 8 of 2025. There I sampled for the first time in a long time a can of Lug-Tread and the experience was nothing short of revelatory, to the point that I was moved to bring cans home for more detailed tastings.

While the label still says “Vankleek Hill,” this Lug-Tread is brewed at the Steam Whistle facility in Etobicoke. And its progress to get to this point has been somewhat painful, as I am told by Steam Whistle co-founder Greg Taylor, who notes that towards the final days of brewing at the Beau’s brewery, the fermentation side developed an infection problem that staff couldn’t quite shake,

So when production moved to Toronto after the Steam Whistle purchase, head brewer Erica McOustra was faced with the dual challenge of first ridding the beer of all vestiges of infection, and then replicating the character and taste of the original beer.

This she has now done, and quite admirably.

Pouring a brilliant gold colour with an impressively resilient collar of creamy white foam, Ontario’s original “lagered ale” offers a fresh and lightly fruity aroma, perfumed with floral notes of fresh peach, freshly picked herbs and alfalfa, and hints of candy floss. There is a soft sweetness to the nose, but one that is more of pale malted barley than of sugars or fruit, and it is most appealing.

The palate entry emulates the sweetness of the nose, inviting and lightly cereally rather than of caramel or other sugars. On the mid-palate, the sweetness turns first to a restrained peach fruitiness before it begins to ebb and dry, segueing to more thirst-slaking, almost pilsner-like notes of mild and faintly tannic bitterness coupled with cereal grains and a very faint grassiness. Impressively for a beer that both noses and begins with sweetness, the finish is almost bone dry and brilliantly quenching, with just enough bitterness lingering that the third, fourth, and subsequent sips reveal less and less sweetness at the forefront.

When I ordered a can at Steam Whistle during the 25th anniversary celebrations, I was immediately impressed by how much it reminded me of Lug-Tread during its heyday, when it was a regular both on the taps at my local and in my beer fridge. Sampling it again in my office and home, I believe it might actually be better now than it has ever been. Kudos to Erica McOustra and her team at Steam Whistle for restoring an Ontario craft beer mainstay to its former glory, and then taking it one step further.

89  ($3.95/473 ml)