Grocery beers, Peyton Manning and Triple IPAs

I don't want to sound ungrateful about the beer-in-grocery-stores present gifted to us by the Ontario government last week, but jeez Louise this wasn't much of a launch.

Oh sure, Premier Wynne was on hand last Tuesday to kick off this new era in beer sales - and my "new era" line may be a bit of hyperbole - and her choice of a six-pack of Rhyme and Reason from Collective Arts .was a smart political decision because it is a damn fine beer.

But I would have hoped for a bigger splash, especially from the newly licensed grocery stores.

On opening day I wandered over to the Loblaws Superstore in North Oshawa - one of 24 in the province and the only store in Durham Region selling beer right now - to see what the fuss was all about. I found not a lot of fuss at all.

I was worried I had been misinformed about the location as I couldn't find the beer section until I had walked clear around the store. And then, there it was. All two end caps worth of beer, with one slightly bored young clerk handling questions from a crowd of two: "Is that all?" and "Where's the PC beer? This is Loblaws, right?"

Which gave me a little perspective on the issue. As a craft beer drinker I had only considered how this affected me and those in the craft-not-crap camp. I had not thought how the macro beer drinkers would feel about it.

My symbolic first purchase at an Ontario grocery store
included a Headstock IPA from Nickel Brook (pictured),
a Canuck Pale Ale (GLB) and a Side Launch wheat beer.

One of the concessions the big beer boys made to make this deal happen - a shocking concession, I thought at the time - was to agree that at least 20 per cent of the beer on the shelves be craft beer. I was following the events of opening day on social media and the general concession was the ratio was closer to 50/50. Here at Harmony and Taunton in Oshawa the number was closer to 70/30.

I know because I counted. Okay, I eye-balled it and made a good guess. Either or.

So if I felt a little underwhelmed by the launch, imagine how Mr. and Mrs. Bud thought about walking into a 'beer store' and seeing only a few of their favourites on display.

It must have been difficult for them.

I spoke to another Loblaws staffer during my walkabout and he assured me the store will be providing more space for more beer in the new year, along with more attention and funds to marketing and promotion, so we have that to look forward to.

For now I am happy there is one more place to buy beer, with two more Durham grocery stores (Farm Boys Whitby and Pickering Metro) coming on line soon.

Merry Christmas and Viva la Revolution!

Peyton Manning and the Colorado sour

The only thing better than good beer is good beer that is free, so when my pal James said he was going to Denver for the weekend to watch a football game and did I want him to pick me up some Colorado beers, I said, well, I said yes, of course.

Duh.

James, the proprietor of Oshawa's legendary Mr. Burger restaurant (home of the world's best Macedonian chicken sandwich), is a big Peyton Manning and Denver Bronco fan. His dad Bill, meanwhile,cheers for the New England Patriots. So with the two teams pencilled in for a late November game, a father-son outing was on.

Mr. Peyton Manning

James is also a huge craft beer lover, having worked in the restaurant business most of his life (Bill owns Stacks, a fancy-pants craft beer bar in Uptown Toronto), so tasting Denver's beer scene was also high on his to-do list that weekend.

Seeing Manning was number one on the list, making James' timing as bad as it gets, as the future first ballot Hall of Famer (Peyton, not James) hit the injury list the week before the game and did not play against New England, who just happened to be 10-0 at the time.

Damn. But there's always the beer.

But in one those that's-why-you-play-the-game moments, the Broncos and back-up quarterback Brock Osweiler played a great game and knocked the Patriots from the ranks of the unbeaten with a thrilling 30-24 overtime win in a raging blizzard, sending James and the rest of the fans in attendance home happy.

Except for Bill, but that's what you get for supporting the New England Patriots. Sorry Bill.

I am also a Broncos fan, so I was happy too, and I was even happier when I saw James a few days later and he gifted me a couple of bottles of Colorado's finest.

The Reverend from Colorado's Avery
Brewing, with some of his friends

Maybe not its finest, as one of them was a Sour, but free beer is automatically good beer, so I was ready for the challenge from the first of the two beers, a Sour/Wild Ale from Paradox Beer called Skully Barrel Number 27.

With 108 IBUs this beer was supposed to be super hoppy but I didn't get the hops at all. There was a little bit of roasted malt on the nose but mostly it was just...sour.

This was my second sour beer of the year and both tasted overwhelmingly sour, to the exclusion of all other flavours. Perhaps in time my palate will adjust. But not yet.

The second beer was more in my wheelhouse: a Quadrupel from Avery Brewing called The Reverend.

This was a big beer, with ten per cent alcohol and a rich, even reverential taste, with dark cherries, plums and other dark fruits, as well as lots of sweet malts and a bit of booze at the end. A real classic Belgian strong ale.

Thanks James. I don't know if Peyton Manning would love this, but I did.

Life Sentence IIIPA

For the second time in less than a month I found myself lining up for a special beer release.

On November 27 I was at the Summerhill LCBO in downtown Toronto for the much anticipated release of Goose Island's Bourbon County Vanilla Rye Stout (read Bourbon County and the InBev Bashers for the rest of the story) and I was back in Toronto last Friday for the release of Life Sentence, a Triple IPA collaboration between Amsterdam and Great Lakes breweries.

There was far less fanfare for Friday's release, but there was still a small hitch in my plan when I showed up at Amsterdam Brewery, thinking (wrongly, as it turned out) that because the beer was brewed there, I should be able to buy it there. Be off to Great Lakes Brewery (on the other side of the city) I was told. No worries.

Life Sentence IIIPA - a collaboration beer
from the great minds at GLB and Amsterdam

Once safely in the GLB retail store I still had to brave a lineup to get my hands on this hop monster but on the bright side, the lineup was exclusively inside and, more importantly, I got to sample the beer while I was in line.

That's how you handle a beer release.

I picked up seven of the tall boy cans - at $5 a can that was all I could afford - along with a pair of Lake Effect IPAs, two Long Dong Pilsners and a big bottle of the Imperial Bout, a 11.9 per cent ABV Vanilla Bean Coffee Stout.

The stout is still in my fridge and the Lake Effect and the Long Dong Pilsner were awesome as always but the real prize was Life Sentence because Triple IPAs  don't come around very often as they are expensive and time consuming to produce.

This one clocked in a 10 per cent and smelled of mango, grapefruit, orange and other tropical fruit goodness. It tasted of powerful citrusy hops and went down very smooth with only a hint of booze. Excellent stuff.

So good in fact that after I gave it an excellent score on Rate Beer (giving the beer its first 'official' score of 96 out of 100), I played Santa and gave a couple away.

I gave one to James because fair is fair, and one went to Trevor at Manantler Brewing in Bowmanville because he asked and because he heaped loads of praise on my blogging style. I may even have blushed.

Enjoy your beer my friends!










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