The Bucket List Beer love-fest

If there was a beer I had looked forward to trying more than Lake of Bays Bucket List IPA I couldn't remember what it was.

The beer was created by a team of experts - 13 in all - who travelled to Lake of Bays Brewhouse in downtown Huntsville last April to show veteran brewer Andrew Walsh how to properly and ethically take credit for brewing an IPA.

Because despite the heroic efforts of myself and other members of the ragtag pack of (alleged) beer influencers to perform vital duties such as dumping the malt in the tank (without losing the bag in the process) and cleaning said tank out of spent malt after the first boil, it was Andrew who did all the important stuff.

I still want a medal though.

Anyway, it was a fantastic day filled with great hospitality from the brewery staff - including owner Darren Smith - and good friends and we ended up brewing a West Coast-style IPA that we all knew would be the best IPA ever because we brewed it.

The original art - credit David (top left) - depicting
the remaining members of the Huntsville
Brew Crew in Phantom Donnie's hotel room

With Andrew's help of course.

But that was back on April 13, while the ice was still on the surrounding lakes and the promise of summer seemed so far away.

Fast forward to July and still nothing but crickets from our friends at Lake of Bays, so one of our group - Ottawa Matt, I'm pretty sure - asked what was up with Bucket List?

I'm glad you asked, replied Jackie and Emma, the brewery's social media mavens: "You all will be receiving packages in the mail very soon."

Except for you, Glenn. Could you send us your address again? We seemed to have misplaced it.

Turns out the shit-ton of hops we threw in the tanks made the beer a tad pricey to make on a large scale so they just made the one batch; intel which was unearthed by the investigative skills of my pal Don, who used to  work for newspapers back in the days before #fakenews, so you know you can trust it.

I do, anyway.

(Lake of Bays has said  they might make the beer their regular West Coast IPA in the future - probably with a tweak to the hop recipe from 'shit-ton' to 'lots and lots' - so perhaps we will see this beer again one day.)

In any event, packages were indeed sent out to the lucky 13 via Canada Post and on July 25 Sudbury Danny was crowing about his shipment of three cans, each adorned with a Broken Axe Pale Ale label.

Wait, what?

The same day he posted a new pic on Twitter, this time with a label - designed by artist extraordinaire David Buist - depicting an epic moment near the end of that wonderful night when the five of us (of 13) who were still standing (and drinking) invaded Beer Bro Don's hotel room.

(Don - hereby known as Phantom Donny - had disappeared - 'Phantomed' - about an hour before. We tracked him down and after banging on his door long enough to wake him - and an irate motel manager as well - we watched the Leafs-Bruins game and drank Lake of Bays beer for an hour while Don slept. And then we got kicked out by the aforementioned motel manager. Good times, good times.)

Danny (bottom central in the pic) had taken it upon himself to 'personalize' his cans with David's art, which was a stunningly brilliant idea. I don't know how many others in the group followed suit, but I know I did.

After I finally received my beer mail the next day.

And here is the art immortalized on a can of
Bucket List IPA (delicious!) and on my
personalized glass too!

Actually, I was sure I wasn't going to get my beer until the Monday because it wasn't on my porch when I got home from work, nor was there a note from Canada Post telling me to pick up my package from the nearest outlet.

And then Roy and Kat, who live upstairs, handed me a package that was delivered to their unit by mistake.

The truth is I was a little hesitant to get too excited about the beer because I've gone so deep into the Hazy IPA craze that true, piney West Coast-style IPAs have been leaving me, not exactly cold, but cool at best these days.

Would I love the beer we made?

If my post on Twitter was any indication, yes. Yes I did.

Gorgeous pour, with pine, a little ripe citrus and some back-end bitterness. I think I did a great job brewing this!

My post also earned high praise from Ottawa Matt, who has been scoring our beer pics on Twitter ever since Huntsville: Level 166 glassware combo. New high score bonus. Carves himself off and puts himself front and centre bonus hahaha. Palm tree of sorts foliage bonus. 1 ups Danny bonus.

I actually loved this beer. Almost as much as I loved taking credit for brewing it.

Thank you Huntsville Brew Crew. And thank you Lake of Bays Brewhouse.

Cheers!

A Spiegelau story

My love affair with Spiegelau glassware didn't last long, as I discovered mere weeks after I purchased my first (and only) four-pack of the glass (designed with IPAs in mind) in 2014.

The glass was created in collaboration with American craft beer legends Sam Calgione (Dogfish Head) and Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada) to support the "complex and volatile aromas" in IPA-style beers.

Something about the beer re-carbonating itself and re-releasing the aromas every time you raise the glass to your lips, if I recall.

Broken dreams...

They also break really, really easily, and three-quarters of my initial purchase (on sale at The Bay) came out of the sink in pieces (despite my best efforts to be gentle) really, really quickly.

My last glass stuck around for another six months or so, and then I was Spiegelau-free until I started acquiring brewery glassware a couple of years later.

My beer brothers seem to have a love-hate relationship of their own with the glasses. I know Don owns a bunch and is forever breaking them but still buys them. Polk, on the other hand, seems to be singing their praises a fair bit. So maybe it's just me.

Last weekend, all three in my collection - from Town, Muskoka and Manantler breweries - ended up in the dish rack at the same time. The Manantler glass, by the way, went home with me after my last visit to my once and always favourite brewery just a  couple of days before.

The legendary Spiegelau glass

The glasses were braced in the rack by a large baking sheet, and when dumb ass me removed the sheet, catastrophe ensued. Two of the glasses fell in the dish rack - which seemed innocent enough - while my Manantler glass cleared the rack and allowed gravity take it down.

I got a foot out quickly to cushion its fall, but it still hit my ceramic tiled floor hard.

And it didn't break.

I was shocked, but pleased at the turn of events, and I quickly put all three glasses away safely before anything else happened. And then I, bare of foot as I was, looked back at the floor and saw the two broken pieces of glass.

Damn. So I retrieved the three glasses and looked at them, carefully this time. And it was the Town glass, which appeared to have been struck by the baking sheet in just the right (or wrong) spot.

And now I'm short one more Spiegelau glass.