Beers for Breakfast

I have been bugging my work pals Scott and Steve to pop over for a beer for weeks now. There was one excuse after another before I finally got them to commit to visit after work on Wednesday.

'After work' to property maintenance people who have no snow to shovel is nine in the morning, but I'm not going to quibble over semantics.

And thus, Beers for Breakfast was born.

Now neither Scott nor Steve are serious beer drinkers. Scott, in fact, enjoyed but one beer a year - always a Guinness - until he started working with us and, well, his drinking quickly escalated after that.

I think he's up to one a week now.

Guinness is still his number one but I've got him trying other Stouts and I had just the thing saved for my friend.

All or Nothing Hopfenweisse

Steve, on the other hand, had a wobbly pop from time to time but always macro stuff like Canadian and not often. Beer just wasn't his thing. But after I took him to the Durham Craft Beer Festival in July and introduced him to wheat beers, he became a bit of a changed man.

It was a brewery from Kingston - Stone City - and their Windward Belgian Wheat that had Steve wild about wheat beers, so what to serve my pals wasn't a difficult choice.

Steve, who is something of a hero to some of the downtrodden in downtown Oshawa, had to have an All or Nothing Hopfenweisse brewed by the Dornan brothers, Shwa boys to the core and underdogs at heart.

For Scott I brought out the bottle of the Imperial Bout, an 11.9 per cent alcohol vanilla bean coffee stout I picked up when I was at Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto for the release of their glorious Life Sentence Triple IPA just before Christmas.

What's that? Nearly 12 per cent ABV beers are not a good idea at nine in the morning? Please. It's not like he's getting the whole bottle anyway because I saved this for me too.

GLB's The Imperial Bout

And by the time we had settled in, made some small talk, watched the World Junior Gold Medal Game for the sixth time, talked some trash (okay, a lot) about the wonderful company (emphasis mine) we work for and discussed which football teams we were going to bet on to get us the hell out of that company, it  was nearly 9:30.

That's close to drinking time, I'd say.

There was a further delay as the Imperial Bout was a fancy pants beer with wax covering the top and it took me ten minutes to scrape enough off so my bottle opener could get a grip to unlock the dark goodness inside.

Save for a little self esteem damage as I fought with the wax, it was worth the wait. Gorgeous dark pour with a frothy head that lingered for a good while and made the beer look like a chocolate milkshake.

Scott missed all that, however, as he took a phone call while I was fighting with the wax and by the time he got to his beer the head was all gone. Mine, however, was still going strong.

Patience, my friend. Patience.

Meanwhile Steve wasn't waiting and was enjoying his All or Nothing. "So what does it taste like, Steve? I asked. "Like the other wheat beers," he answered.

Scott - The Stout Man

So I started feeding him some suggestions: Banana? Citrus? Spices? Which got Scott, now off the phone, into the conversation. "You're just telling him what he's tasting," he accused. "Hey," I countered, "if he doesn't taste banana he's not going to lie and say he does."

I wish I had remembered to ask if he got bubblegum, too.

As it happened, Steve did get banana on the nose but not when he drank it (fair enough) and he got pepper (good call) and orange pekoe on the tongue.

Orange pekoe? You mean like tea? Because that's a new one. He still insisted yes, so I figured it was orangey citrus flavours he was picking up.

Steve - the Wheat Lover

The main thing was that he liked it. Now I had to see what Guinness-loving Scott had to say about the Imperial Bout.

I know what I liked about it. The aroma of bitter chocolate and a bit of licorice was awesome, and the roasted coffee flavours came through later, with more bitter chocolate and licorice. Very bitter but rich and velvety smooth at the same time. Excellent stuff.

Scott?

He  agreed it was rich - "a lot of calories," noted the dedicated gym rat - and picked out sweet and bitter chocolate nuances, but said the overwhelming flavour was sweetness.

So how does it stack up against your Guinness?

"I'd give Guinness a nine and this is an eight. This is good but Guinness is better. But what do I know?"

Well, you know what you like Scott. That's what is important.

We talked some more while we finished our morning beer, with Steve telling a story of his friend Ron calling him in a panic the previous day, with cops swarming the building they lived in looking for one of the downstairs tenants. Steve was at his exes at the time attempting to feed his children some dinner while also trying to calm his excitable pal down.

"I'll be over later Ron," he shouted. "I'm cooking spaghetti here!"

With the incident about to move to phase two on this day, the boys finished their beer and were on their way, with Scott headed to the gym and Steve headed home to save the day once again.

Scott told me later that day he thought drinking high alcohol beers early in the morning gave him a sense of "normalcy" (that's what he said) and I agreed. I like this Beers for Breakfast thing.

Now to get Steve on board. I think we'll do it again next week.

Scratch tickets, beer cans and hookers, oh my

I had a delivery the other night from Bill's Place, a little greasy spoon located right in the heart of The Shwa's soft underbelly.

I got to the house, just a few blocks north in Oshawa's downtown, and the lady came to the door with a credit card in her hand. "Uh", I told her, "Bill could have done that over the phone but I don't have a machine. Twelve dollars and ten cents. Cash only."

So she invites me inside - me and half a century of stale cigarette smoke together again - while she calls Bill, who tells her that she can pay him the next day as long as she can find the five buck delivery fee for me.

So she rummaged around her flat and came up with a $5 winning scratch ticket. And for a tip, a bag of beer cans worth $3.50.

Back I go to Bill's Place to collect my $12.10, where I am accosted by a persistent prostitute who gave me an exaggerated wink, followed by a wave and then the classic line that she is sure will close the deal.

"You got a smoke sweetie?"

I said no, but I wondered later what I would have got for that scratch ticket and the bag of cans.

The Goblin King

You remind me of the babe
What babe?
The babe with the power
What power?
The power of Voodoo
Who do?
You do
Do what?
Remind me of the Babe

David Bowie taught us that we can all be heroes, if just for one day. R.I.P David 1947-2016