Reid’s Dundurn Ale is no ordinary beer. Brewed at Valentino’s Restaurant in Westdale by Devyn Prince-Reid, the beer is named after William Reid, the 19th century Head Gardener at Dundurn Castle. Wayne MacPhail takes up the story. 

It’s late fall and Devyn Prince-Reid, the 32-year-old brewer at Valentino’s Restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario is standing in the kitchen garden of Dundurn Castle, rubbing a hop flower between his fingers.

Those hops, Cascade, have been grown in the historic garden for two centuries. The rectangular plot once provided flowers and produce for the friends, family and servants of Sir Allan Napier MacNab, a railway magnate and politician in the 1800s. It also offered up a mainstay of the castle’s beer supply – the Cascade.

Prince-Reid is here to make it possible for Hamiltonians to once again taste a beer brewed as it might have been in the basement of its famous Canadian castle.

He’s pleased with the citrus scent of the crushed hops in his hand. “Look at these, they’re beautiful,” he says, sweeping an arm toward the bank of hops that grow jubilantly up and over the south-facing wall of the garden. He’ll harvest about two pounds and then transport them a few city blocks and two centuries away to the popular Hamilton Italian restaurant where he’s been brewing beer since 2012.

His “Strange Brew” house beer and his constantly rotating styles of ales, stouts and lagers has been popular with Hamiltonians year after year, but he doesn’t think they’ve had anything like what he’s calling Reid’s Dundurn Ale. It’s not named after Reid himself. It’s a happy coincidence that William Reid, Dundurn Castle’s head gardener in its heyday, shares Devyn’s last name.

The castle’s senior curator, Debra Seabrook, sent Prince-Reid a historic beer recipe and a journal from the Seagram’s Museum to give him a taste of how beer might have been brewed in the castle during the 1800s. When Seabrook interviewed for the curator’s job she had shared her hope that a Dundurn beer might be possible, so she was keen to see the idea ferment.

The ancient recipe gave Prince-Reid the germ of a recipe he tweaked with the addition of some modern hops for bittering and some contemporary aromatics to augment the flavour the historic hops would provide. He handcrafted a recipe, strongly influenced by history and hops of Dundurn Castle.

“I’d never delved so deeply into the history of certain hops before picking them out for this recipe,” he said.

Prince-Reid normally doesn’t use any finings in the Valentino’s brew, but the Seagram’s recipe called for some (historically extracted from fish bladders) so the young brewer decided to toss some into the Reid’s to give the dark ale a marked clarity.

At the time of writing, Reid’s Dundurn Ale was still fermenting, but he’d had an early taste to test against off-flavours. “It’s got a butterness I haven’t had before in a beer,” he explained. “It’s going to be delicious.”

He’s making six batches of 60 litres each. “That’s the usual amount we brew for our rotating tap,” he says, “and there wasn’t enough hops to double that, though I wish we could have.”

Prince-Reid makes the beer by steeping British Brown and Victory malts in water. That sweet brew, redolent with the grain’s natural sugars, is then boiled while bitter hops like Fuggles and East Kent Golding are added. In the last few minutes, Reid tosses in a cheesecloth bag full of Dundurn Castle’s Cascade hops to give it the unique aromatic flavour. Prince-Reid sent some of spent grain, or “wort” over to Dundurn Castle so it could be made into bread in the site’s wood fired ovens – something that would in MacNab’s time as well.

Victoria Bick, the head gardener for the historic site, says she loves this project because, “it expands what we get to do with our produce. Our primary reason for being is education, to have people come into the garden and see what we’re doing. But the hops is something we’ve never used before for the purpose for which it was intended, which is beer.”

Prince-Reid can’t say enough about the castle staff. “They were fantastic. They were so enthusiastic, and knowledgable about the history of the castle. I had an indescribably fun time hanging around the grounds,  and harvesting the hops with them.”

Paul Spadafora, Valentino’s general manager, hopes the hops experiment will bear fruit for years to come. “To me it’s a natural connection. This incredible garden is just down the road,” he says. “I am extremely passionate about our industry and if an opportunity arises that is something different, something outside the box, you need to go for it. I think it’s always for restauranteurs to adapt and keep people interested,” Spadafora added.

Next year Prince-Reid wants to use the Dundurn Castle hops to brew both a bitter and a batch of “small beer”, the sort that would have been served to servants, women and children in the castle’s heyday.

Bick loves that idea because they might be able to have visitors sample something that was a staple of the household.

But, this year, the very first batch of Reid’s Dundurn Ale will be launched at a free event in the Hayloft of Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, Ontario on December 16 from noon to 4 p.m.. Visitors will be able to sample the first batch of Reid’s Dundurn Ale and try some bread made from the spent grains that went into the beer itself.

The new beer will then be exclusively available at Valentino’s Restaurants while supplies last.

“Craft beer is so popular at the moment, we need to take advantage any way we can,” says Spadafora. “An opportunity like this to collaborate with a well known icon like Dundurn will benefit us tremendously.”