Ah Beer. What's not to love? So full of beery goodness. So tasty. In moderation, so many health benefits. In excess, so much inflation of self worth and importance. But wait you say, that picture is not the beer I know! Where's the clean, crisp, beachwood aged, cold filtered rocky mountain glass of lager us Canadians know and love?
North American Lager is dead. Long Live Beer.
Some background: I like good, flavourful beer, usually from but not exclusively, small craft brewers. That's right, I like flavour in my beer. My theory is simply if you're going to consume this much liquid, why shouldn't it have taste? Too many times growing up, we're bombarded with beer ads claiming "No aftertaste" "Dry" "Smooth" "Extra Cold" and so on - basically a million ways to say that the beer will go down, you won't taste a thing, and you'll be ready for more. Congratulations - you've just become a marketer's dream.
Now I'm not saying drink only Stout, or 10% Barleywines, or whatever. I am just saying wake up and realize that there are over 70 different beer styles on the planet. Lager makes up a fraction of those styles. There is so much good beer out there, but we only seem to be able to grasp the "Top Ten" high volume swill at our local foreign, Big Brewery owned Beer Stores. It is this inability to even acknowledge there might be other stuff out there that has me breathing fire on my keyboard.
But all is not lost. Craft beer is gaining. Slowly, but gaining. We're about 20 years behind our American cousins (that's right - remember growing up being told all American beer is so thin and watery compared to our hearty Canadian brewskies? All a marketer's urban legend, more on that in a future blog post. I mean, Labatt Sterling compared to border brews like Old Milwaukee would seem hearty! Not to mention we measure our alcohol differently) here in Ontario, but our micro brewers are finally starting to pull their heads out of the sand and make some interesting brews.
So my plan for my beer related posts in this blog will be to highlight some of the better and interesting breweries and brewpubs I've had the pleasure of trying. For some, it will be old news, but even to those, maybe it will turn out to be a refresher, as we tend to always look in the beer world for the newest and latest while sometimes forgetting about old favourites. I'll also chat about where to find to good beer in Toronto and abroad (I love traveling and sampling what local areas have to offer). But I'll also point out the crap - not just the obvious targets like BudCoorsLightDryIceMaximumNoCarbShot, but also the craft breweries who give craft beer a bad name, or those beer places and events who are simply fronts for corporate swill. What's the worse that can happen, no one will read this blog anyway, right? (This is incentive for you to spread the word and get me in trouble).
Finally, a little more background on beer and me. I actually didn't start to drink the stuff until I was in my 4th year of University. More on that later. Sure, the first beer I ever had was when I was 12, after bringing in hay with my brother for 8 hours. Local farmer pulled a couple of Molson Canadians right out of a deep well, were he had them chilling at the end of a long rope. Hated it. Still do. But thankfully I moved on from good old Canadian.
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about beer, although like anything, there are those out there with tons more to offer on the subject. A few years ago I joined a site called ratebeer.com to keep track of everything I've tried. I've long maintained, and still do, that my main motivation to join the site was not to tick numbers, as some do in this little cult, racing to see how many beers they can sample while they're livers are still in tact, but simply to keep track of what I have tried, as I have a horrible memory for such a thing. So now I know, for example, when I have a beer and a bite at a cool place like the Granite, I'll know which beers I love, and which ones I do not care for. Neat, eh? The site also lets me keep track of countries I've sampled (48! Wow!), Provinces, states, styles, etc. I think that stuff is pretty cool without taking it too seriously. I know some friends of mine take great pleasure in playing "Stump the Jeff" when traveling, as they try and find beers I have not rated (for the record, I'm at 1600 and counting so it is getting a little difficult for them! But I so appreciate their efforts!).
Let me know what are some of your favourites, fire off any questions you might have, or just use this post as inspiration to go and have a chilled tasty one. It is 11am and I am at work and I just made myself thirsty as hell.
Je5
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