beer

BROCKTON IPA—Sometimes you need a kick in the head

My judgment is feeble at best, my fellow inebriates, so when Scientific American emails me about a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Venus transit  the Sun, appearing as a small black disk in front of our blazing star, I’m not sure if SCIAM is advising me to look at it.

All my instincts are telling me it’s not okay to stare at the sun, but I’m thinking maybe I can get away with it just once. Venus won’t do this again until 2117. Astronomers are excited by it because it illustrates the way they find exoplanets orbiting distant stars—by the planets’ silhouettes.

I asked my friend Scarybear whether I should look at the sun* to see the Venusian disc. He said I definitely should**, for long enough to adjust my eyes to the glare and then a bit longer to make out the small dark spot. He said it would be “the coolest thing ever.” When I asked him if we need to put a special filter on the telescope, he shrugged and said that my eyes would “probably heal pretty fast.”

And the winner is…the lager.

Sounds like a plan. After all, a solar filter for our telescope would probably cost more than a few cases of beer. Between a filter and another GRANVILLE ISLAND BREWING Mingler pack, I’ll take the beer.

And while I wouldn’t gravitate toward an entire case of BROCKTON IPA, I don’t mind finding three of them in the Mingler. Sometimes an India Pale Ale provides just the bracing, hoppy kick in the head that a bear needs.

Deep golden with white foam, BROCKTON IPA gives off a strong, earthy aroma—hoppy, bready, and slightly astringent. The taste is more bracing than the smell, with pine notes and hops front-and-forward but some malty caramel notes balancing it somewhat. With moderate carbonation and substantial weight in the mouth, BROCKTON IPA finishes with a lingering, satisfying bitterness.

IPA isn’t a style we seek out too often at LBHQ; it always seems off-kilter with its emphasis on hops at the expense of milder front-palate-pleasing flavors. And BROCKTON IPA is an example of a beer in which hops pretty much beat the shit out of the other taste sensations, not to mention the drinker. But sometimes you need a beer that kicks your ass, and when you do, one like this is great.

We could buy four cases for the cost of a solar filter! I mentioned this to my mum, who had no idea why I would posit the comparison until I told her I was following Scary’s advice to watch an unfiltered Venusian solar transit*** while pounding cases of IPA.

For someone who doesn’t like using the word “retarded,” she sure unleashes it on me a lot.

* Do not do this.

** Do not do this.

*** Do not do this.

CYPRESS HONEY LAGER—Good swill during unpleasant times

8:00am

Somebody mailed a human foot to the Conservative Party’s Ottawa HQ yesterday, causing police to declare a Hazmat situation while investigators pored over the Canada Post sorting plant where all packages go before final delivery.

Weirdly, a maggoty human torso had just been discovered in a suitcase in Montreal. Who knows where the head and remaining limbs are destined… I sure wouldn’t want to be a mail sorter this week.

Tory MP Brad Trost, a hardcore pro-lifer who apparently thinks Stephen Harper is too conservative and longs to reopen the abortion debate in Canada, first learned about the foot on TV. “It’s just awful,” said Trost, describing it as “someone’s sick idea.”

Newsflash, Brad: A picture or a story about a severed foot is a sick idea. An actual severed foot goes beyond ideation. Dude, when somebody mails you a body part, it’s either:

  • A mistake (Was it in an ice bath? Was it supposed to be reattached to somebody waiting at the hospital?)
  • A joke (Not funny!)
  • A message (What do you think it could mean, my fellow inebriates?)

▪ ▪ ▪

12:00pm

Wow! A lot can happen while you’re out swinging on swings, visiting Tim Horton’s, and watching dogs get haircuts at the pet store. The police just intercepted a package containing a severed HAND at the Ottawa Postal Terminal. They’ve connected the hand and foot with the torso in Montreal, plus they have a suspect. In all likelihood the gruesome mailings are a mob-style message related to the Charbonneau Commission investigating organized crime in the construction industry.

Although police have expressed doubt that any more body parts will show up in the mail, if I were an employee of Canada Post or the Harper government I would definitely be bringing a flask to work. Maybe even phoning in drunk.

With a six-pack of GRANVILLE ISLAND CYPRESS HONEY LAGER I could just manage it, although my friends weighing more than a pound might want to consider a full case. Amber-yellow with a quickly receding beige head, this lager promises honey. Instead bakery leftovers and cloying malt waft from the glass. If you detect honey then you have a finer nose than I and/or the power of suggestion is strong with you. If this latter characteristic fits, you might not wish to drink CYPRESS HONEY LAGER while reading about detached body parts crawling with maggots—you wouldn’t want to cement that association.

Honey, when added to a lager, often mitigates the tinny lightness of that brewing style and lends some depth. But one sip of CYPRESS HONEY LAGER confirms what the nose suspected: precious little honey. Sweetness, yes, but of a juvenile, corn-syrup stripe unable to elevate this lager from a thin, watery and even sour taste experience. This would be an excellent keg beer. If, say, you were moving from a house with a mean landlord and wanted to host one last housewrecker party, CYPRESS HONEY LAGER would be a good choice. Its promise of delicious honey is exactly like a parsimonious landlord’s commitment to fix the toilet.

If you don’t have enough friends to warrant a kegger, but you do like pounding beers while watching morbid CBC news stories, this lager would do for that too.

OLD SPECKLED HEN—For select animals

My Fellow Inebriates,

After consuming a product like HELL’S GATE GENUINE PALE ALE, a gustatory reset is in order. While our tastebuds haven’t been entirely traumatized, they are certainly casting about for respite. Thankfully my dad didn’t stock our house full of HELL’S GATE; he had the sense to limit himself to a six-pack and look around for something else just in case.

What he found was OLD SPECKLED HEN, an English nitro-can pale ale endorsed (at least on British TV) by a beer-drinking fox.

I didn’t know foxes enjoyed beer, but I suppose if slugs can enjoy it then it’s not completely absurd. Just this morning Miss V found a nasty-looking slug sliming its way across the sidewalk. She studied it for a while and poked it with a stick, then asked how we could lure slugs into our yard. My mother offered to pour some HELL’S GATE into a dish—if only V would wait until late afternoon so she (my mum) could justifiably finish the remainder. At LBHQ our tastebuds have to be pretty damn offended for us to waste beer.

It’s a good thing we have the HELL’S GATE because we certainly won’t be pouring any OLD SPECKLED HEN for the slugs. Lovely clear amber with a well-behaved light beige head, this ale exudes malty complexity: fragrant honey, toffee, and unplaceable herbs. Despite these sweet notes it’s smooth and well-balanced with a satisfyingly bitter finish.

The only mistake in going from HELL’S GATE to OLD SPECKLED HEN is the expectation of fizz the former sets up. HELL’S GATE demands a Pop Rocks–type distraction to acquit itself, but OLD SPECKLED HEN is nitro-carbonated, which makes for fewer fireworks on the palate and a much more transparent presentation of the goods. What you taste is what you get, and with an ale as sophisticated as this one, extreme carbonation would get in the way. Of course Canadian beer is mostly uber-carbonated, so we tend to expect and even long for some snappiness. It might take you two or even several nitro cans to divorce yourself from fizzy expectations and appreciate OLD SPECKLED HEN’s moderately carbonated charm (i.e., Dad, you should have bought more).

Of course you probably know all this, my fellow inebriates. You know there’s a time and place for punk-ass items like HELL’S GATE, whereas OLD SPECKLED HEN belongs in book-lined drawing rooms, leathery English pubs, and the headquarters of blogging bears.

Thus there won’t be any beer challenge weigh-in from slugs, because they’re getting nothing but HELL’S GATE. Poor gastropods—who knows what V has planned for them. No sense in getting their hopes up with OLD SPECKLED HEN. They’d just think it was some sort of pre-execution last supper.

One word to the wise: nitro-can beer makes you fart powerfully, so ventilate your setting properly, unless, as beerbecue recently suggested, like James Joyce, you’d rather not.