Yukon Gold

Where to buy: LCBO

Price: $6.90/650 mL bottle

Food pairings: Ploughman’s lunch, shepherd’s pie, roast pork.

The verdict: A taste of England, from north of 60.

To most people, Yukon Gold means a kind of potato, or perhaps for history buffs, a reference to the Klondike gold rush.

These days, however, it also means something else: The bestselling draft beer in the Yukon.

Yukon Gold is the flagship product of Yukon Brewing, a craft brewery based in Whitehorse.

The pale golden, slightly bitter brew accounts for roughly one out of every three pints sold in the Yukon, more than anything from the Molson or Labatt juggernauts.

Not bad for a small brewer which was only founded in 1997. So how did Canada’s northernmost brewery take on the big guys and win?

Having a tasty beer helps. So does a fierce loyalty to local products, particularly when they’re seen as a good value, says Yukon Brewing co-founder Bob Baxter. Baxter and fellow co-founder Alan Hansen use five kinds of malt and three kinds of hops in their top-selling brew. But rather than the citrusy, piney notes found in many North American pale ales, the hops used here lend a slightly spicy, earthier character to Yukon Gold.

There’s a gentle sweetness to the brew as well, although it finishes off with a pleasant, but not overwhelming bitterness. If that all sounds familiar to anyone who’s ever spent time in an English pub, it’s no coincidence; Baxter and Hansen were trying to recreate an English-style pale ale, rather than a brasher, North American style one. One of the hops they use here is East Kent Goldings, a classic English aroma hop, so-called because it’s typically used to add a particular aroma to a brew, rather than just bitterness.

Yukon Gold is also proving it has more than just local appeal. Recently, Baxter and Hansen launched sales of their flagship brew at the LCBO, and have been offering it up in western Canada for a while.

“We have not been in a huge hurry to get into Ontario, honestly. We have our plates pretty full in the Yukon, N.W.T., B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Having said that, we are pleased with the opportunity to have some beer there ... we get a lot of requests,” said Baxter.

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They’re also hoping to get some of their other products into the LCBO, including their decadent Midnight Sun Espresso, and perhaps eventually, some of their single malt whisky, which they first starting distilling in 2009, and isn’t yet for sale anywhere.

“We have not sold a drop, just keep aging it away in the corner,” said Baxter.