Bicycle Craft Brewery – Stubborn Cardinal IPA

The video

New England style unfiltered hazy pale ale made with Citra, El Dorado, and Columbus hops for a more complex, tropical and citrusy flavor profile. This amazing brew is a Spring 2025 seasonal beer.

Full text of the tasting …

Paul from FineWinesAndBeer.com:

Okay, so I’m here with Fariborz at Bicycle Craft Brewery in Ottawa, and we’re tasting Stubborn Cardinal (IPA). 

All right, so you told me earlier how you wound up coming up with a name. Basically a cardinal flew in?

Fariborz from BCB:

We were brewing this beer, and at that point we didn’t have a name for it yet. So, the back door was open and a cardinal flew in to the brewery, and we tried to send it out. It went up close to the ceiling, so we couldn’t reach it anyways, so we left the back door open for it to fly away. It stuck around for almost the whole day. 

So we called it in the stubborn cardinal. We figured that’s a cool name for the beer. That stuck. 

FWB:

So one of the first things I noticed that appears like all of your beers, are unfiltered. 

BCB:

They are yeah, they’re all unfiltered. We just believe it holds better quality, better taste. It obviously reduces its shelf life, but our beers are not meant to be stored for too long anyways.

FWB:

So this one is currently in LCBO (we’re talking in March 2025 right now), and this is a seasonal, so it won’t be year round, but it’ll be for the spring season. Okay, well, let’s try this one together. Cheers! [Tastes] Oh, isn’t that gorgeous!!

BCB:

So very soft. Very nice, soft NEIPA (New England IPA), and you get a lot of citrus character from it. You get a lot of dankness from the Columbus hops. We use quite a bit of that in the dry hopping. And it’s very nice and soft. You can just really enjoy the softness of the beer and the malt backbone and the hop combination.It’s almost like a juice. Like you’re drinking a juice, but still with the beer qualities. 

FWB:

So what are some of the other notes that you’re getting in here? 

BCB:

I definitely get some citrus here. I get a little bit of a tropical fruit character. There’s some passion fruit, definitely. I get that in here and and then the hop dankness. It adds layers, I really like that. 

FWB:

So tell me again, what all hops are in here?

BCB:

There’s Citra, Columbus and El Dorado. 

FWB:

So how many ingredients are in your beer? 

BCB:

There is obviously the water, the biggest ingredient. And then there is the malted barley, malted wheat, and malted oats, and then there’s yeast. And the hops obviously. And that’s it. 

Editor: At Bicycle Craft Brewery it’s just 4 ingredients (water, grain, yeast and hops). In this case there are 3 types of grain, so 6 ingredients in total.

FWB:

Wow, beautiful.