Brew Day fun at Lake of Bays 

"Congratulations! It's an IPA!"

What has free beer, free food, famous phantoms, melees with motel managers, a front row seat to drunk people swimming in a frozen lake and above all, time spent with friends, new and old?

Something called Brew Day at Lake of Bays Brewhouse, that's what. And that's also my idea of a bloody awesome weekend.

This craft beer hobby of mine can be pretty near perfect sometimes and that early spring weekend in northern Muskoka at Lake of Bays Brewing's Huntsville Brewhouse was a perfect example. I have been treated like a king so many times by craft brewery folk I almost expect it when I walk into a brewery, but the love on this day was over the top.

I was going to end with this artistic masterpiece, but this
cartoon drawn by David Buist (top left) is too awesome to
put at the end of the blog. It features (clockwise, from David),
me, Joel, Danny and Matt, with Phantom Donnie
snoozing in the middle

(And that's reason number 3,514 - give or take - why I love craft breweries and the people who help put their beer in my glass.)

Sometimes I get treated like the prince that I am because it's a brewery I frequent and the people putting beer in my glass are my friends. But I still get that royal treatment when it's the first time I ever walk into the place.

Saturday, April 13 was one of those special days when a baker's dozen of beer enthusiasts, bloggers, vloggers, homebrewers and social media influencers (alleged) descended on Lake of Bays' Huntsville Brewhouse to brew a beer. An IPA, in fact, although that wasn't officially confirmed until all 13 of us were parked in our chairs with a pint in our hands and a chance to talk about it with Andrew Walsh, who runs the brewing operations here.

It seems my pal Hago figured I'd need help raking
the spent grain out of the mash tun. No worries Hago

And as we were included in the recipe stage of the process, we naturally decided on a triple dry-hopped Quadruple IPA with truffles, gold leaf and life zest, though we eventually compromised on a regular, six per cent-ish IPA.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.

The genesis of this little party was a chat my pal Don had at his Oakville Beer Store with Tim, his Lake of Bays rep. This soon morphed into an invitation from
Rob, Tim's boss, to come on up to the brewery's Huntsville site (where recipes are tested and fine-tuned on the pilot system before being brewed in the big tanks 20 minutes to the south in Baysville) and test-taste  a bunch of their experimental beers.

And brew a beer of our own.

Besides organizing brew tours,
my pal Don loves going to Vegas
and his local, the Yard House, the most.
He might be there now

Don, being a very smart man (college grad, yo), immediately said yes and when he was told he could bring a few friends he said yes again and put the word out on Twitter, which is where I discovered this upcoming event.

I, being smarter than I look, invited myself and a few weeks later this unholy alliance found ourselves in Huntsville, sipping on Starboard NE-style IPAs and munching on fancy flatbreads, trout tacos and other delectable treats, courtesy of kitchen maestro Brian.

But in life, nothing is really free and after Andrew got our feedback on the beer we were going to make and earned our undying love and affection, Rob put us to work.

And by 'work,' I mean he made us taste a whole bunch of experimental beers and tell him what we thought of them, while small plates of delicious food kept mysteriously arriving at our table from the busy kitchen.

The sacrifices we make, yes?

Handshakes are replaced with elbow bumps
 when you have a cold. Here Darren
demonstrates the technique with our Hago

There was a Radler that tasted like a Cider (Red Sky at Night), a Peachy Paradise Milkshake IPA, the Paddle On Session IPA (possibly my favourite from the day), the Sunseeker Tangerine IPA, a Scotch Ale, a new Stout, a super secret Double IPA and possibly one or two others that appeared in front of us as a reward for all that heavy writing we had to do.

I know, right?

Emma and Jackie, the brewery's social media mavens, appeared to be keeping a running commentary on the festivities on Twitter and Lake of Bays owner Darren Smith, who was fighting a spring cold, was also on hand for most of the afternoon to answer any questions we had ("Why is the sky blue? What's your favourite beer? How come you've owned a brewery for ten years and still don't look 30 and I don't own a brewery OR look 30?") and to make sure none of us cheated as we graded our beers.

Red Sky at Night. The Radler
that tasted like a Cider

The next thing we know, we're brewing a beer.

With 13 in the posse, Andrew took us in smaller groups, so this seems like an appropriate time to introduce our well- travelled crowd of misfits.

Besides Don and myself, there was Soldier Boy Hago, Matt and Joel from Ottawa (dubbed the Ottawa Beer Mafia); the Hamilton Craft Beer Couple (Paul & Kristal) and their friends Paul & Colleen; Graeme, Curtis and Sudbury Danny; and David, our artist extraordinaire and my host later that evening at a cottage on semi-frozen Lake of Bays.

Craft beer may be about collaboration but this being hockey playoff season (Game 2 of the Leafs-Bruins first round series was on the tube that night) there was a bit of competitive spirit in the air, what with fans of the Leafs, Bruins, Habs and Senators are all under one roof.

All in good fun, of course, especially as we had an IPA to brew!

Andrew taking our little group through the
brewing process. That's David, Danny and
Curtis watching the magic

Our group had the honour of pouring the malt into the tank, which was a trickier task than anticipated. Love that malty brewery aroma by the way. Smells like ... victory.

And Ovaltine.

What goes in must come out, and we were also employed a little later raking the spent grain out of the tank, and then dragging carrying the bags up the stairs to the street.

The bad knees complained a bit about this but the rest of me said shut up knees! There's beer involved!

Once the brewing process was well underway (and the test beers were all tasted and the scores recorded for Rob and his marketing team) we were free to start spending our own money and food and ale. Which we did, after thanking our hosts for their hospitality.

But before we sat down for our second dinner, we rendezvoused up the hill to where the cars were parked for a beer exchange, which is where I got my hands on my first Sunsplit IPA from Dominion City and a couple of Stray Dog beers, courtesy of Ottawa Joel, as well as brews from Tuque du Broue, a little Ottawa-area brewery where Ottawa Matt works part-time.

Beer trading time in Hunstville

I, in turn, gave away some local brews from Little Beasts, Manantler, Chronicle and 5 Paddles because somebody has to spread the word about the great beer we have in Durham.

The weather was accommodating, so we chilled a bit in the sunshine with a few beers (there may have been some smoke as well) and talked about our next adventure, which looks to be Ottawa sometime this summer.

Beer trading over, we assembled back in the brewhouse for ... more beer trading, as the Hamilton Craft Beer Couple left some parting gifts for the rest of the group. I scooped up In the Palms from Grain & Grit and a New Limburg Belgian IPA.

The New Limburg may have been from Graeme David.

We stayed another hour or so, and at some point we noticed we were a man down. Where's Don? Has anybody seen Don? He appeared to have vanished, but having known my Beer Bro the longest, I had an inkling about what really happened.

This is not Don.
But it could be

Don phantomed. He's good at that.

So we got on the phone and maybe 30 minutes later Hago was able to rouse him long enough to learn his whereabouts: a motel, just up the street, a fact quickly confirmed by Lori, our lovely and talented server on this glorious day.

"He asked if there was a motel nearby and I told him just a few blocks away," Lori told us, seeing the looks of concern for our missing comrade on our faces. "So he bought some beer to go and started walking.

"He'll be fine," she added reassuringly.

David being put to work pouring
malt into the mash tun

Hago and Graeme had family commitments and had to leave the party at this point - the rest of our group had exited a half hour prior - leaving just five of us to rescue our friend in case he was attacked by a bear or something.

So we did what good friends do when a mate goes missing in potentially hostile territory. We leisurely finished our beers, paid our tab, lingered over our goodbyes, bought beer for home and then drove at least two kilometres over the speed limit the one kilometre to Donny's motel room.

With the drapes pulled wide open we could see our boy when we pulled up, so naturally we banged on the window repeatedly until he woke to let us in.

He then promptly fell back asleep.

There was Matty and Joel (the Ottawa Beer Mafia), Sudbury Danny, David the Artist Guy and myself, and when Danny found the only chair the rest of us picked a corner of the bed and watched the third period of the hockey game, while drinking snoozing Don's Starboard and trying to stay vewy, vewy quiet.

Because we're considerate like that.

The Huntsville Brewhouse. Scene of the crime.
Most of the crime anyway

Not considerate enough, it seemed, as an angry little ball of motel manager soon showed up to demand we leave. Or get a room.

My Leafs, in position to take two on the road to start the series against Boston when the day started, were minutes away from a disappointing loss on this night so I didn't fuss too much, though I did have some choice words for our new manager friend.

I had considered getting a room but with David's aunt having a cottage only a few minutes away and motel guy still standing there looking angry and ball-like, I figured a cottage on a lake in Muskoka was the better option.

So we said our goodbyes to Matty, Joel and Danny (Don was fast asleep) and pointed the car west. It was a 20-minute drive, mostly on a winding cottage road, and was pretty scenic, up to the point when I nearly wiped out a deer just 100 metres from the cottage.

So cool. Not hitting the deer, that is, and my adrenaline was still pumping when we got to the cottage and parked the car in front of a Winnebago of undetermined age and walked in to a party of David's cousin Morgan and a half a dozen or so twenty-somethings, enjoying beer, joints and stories.

Lake of Bays in mid-April is still cold and
 still frozen, except for the first 15 feet or so.
T

I'd say this was my kind of party.

Of the tales being told, tall and otherwise, I especially liked Morgan's story of a zombie chicken that came back from the dead in his back yard. I wish I could remember more details but there was that beer and weed thing going on and my memory of the night is kind of sketchy.

I remember eventually leaving the trailer and retiring to the cottage, where we found more twenty-somethings, more beer and even more stories, this time almost exclusively about skydiving.

Everyone in the room - except myself and probably David, though I never asked - had jumped out of a plane at least once and some of them had done it hundreds of times, which was the reason they all knew each other.

So we watched videos of jumps gone wrong, which elicited oohs and aahs from the crowd, and I listened as they talked about their own parachuting experiences.

All this talk of jumping inspired Morgan, who decided a midnight jump in the frozen lake was in order and had begun sweet talking his friends into joining him.

Tori, or possibly Richelle, after a dip in frozen
Lake of Bays

But first some sustenance to warm the insides,  he said.

"Do you want a sandwich?" he asked me.
"What kind of sandwich? I countered.
"A damn good sandwich," he replied.
"Yes please. I will have a damn good sandwich."

So in due course David's cousin brought us a couple of damn good sandwiches and I happily munched while Morgan tried to entice me to join him for the swim. I gotta say I was tempted - I've done this once before, but it was two weeks later in the year and many years ago - so it was a hard no.

And soon after the eating of the damn good sandwiches we all went down to the dock and watched as Morgan - now stripped to his skivvies - and two of the young ladies brave the elements and the freezing cold water to do that Polar Bear swim thing.

Morgan and Richelle waded in from shore and had towels waiting for them when they were released from the icy embrace. Tori, however, took the plunge from the end of the dock and came out of the water like some frozen Lady of the Lake with no towel waiting for her.

So she walked up the little hill to the cottage deck, icicles forming with every step, until a towel magically appeared.

And that was my cue to call it a night.

A big thank you to David, his cousin Morgan and all his friends for the capper on a fantastic day in Huntsville. An even bigger thanks to my college chum Phantom Donnie for organizing the brew day event, and to everyone involved in this adventure.

And a huge tip of the cap to Darren and his staff at Lake of Bays Brewhouse. If the beer we made is anything like the day we had it will be the best beer ever.

Cheers!