beer

ASTROLIQUOR for May 4-10—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, deep down you really want to fall in love. Luckily for you the stars are lining up to grant your wish. Sometime between now and June you’ll fall head over heels in a sickening, poetry-writing, gooey romance. Of course ouzo and vodka will be involved, but it’s still the real deal! So get ready to tell your spouse about it and lawyer up.

Taurus, although you’re good at putting friends and family to work, you have trouble accepting help from strangers. This week you have to go outside your comfort zone, however, and recruit a colleague for an important task. Although this person has historically been a dick to you, he/she can be loosened up with some Red Bull and rum. Don’t think of it as taking advantage—you’re building karma for your coworker, so pass the flask.

Those psychiatric sessions are paying off, Gemini, balancing your emotions and turning you into something of a charmer. On your habitual drunken early-bird visit to a garage sale you discover that both an Aries and an Aquarius are taken with you. What a lovely dilemma! Make sure you follow your heart—when your head is full of cognac and vodka it’s too easy to pick randomly.

You’re in good spirits this week, Cancer, having solved a few nagging mental problems and discovered unknown inner strengths. You’re learning not to compare yourself to others, and to appreciate Canadian Club even when your neighbor is reeling around his yard with Crown Royal. You’ll have a nice flirtation with someone this week, but I’d leave that neighbor alone.

Leo, look carefully at your text messages and emails this week. Every communique, no matter how terse, contains subtext. Understandably subtext gets lost when you’ve spent the day sipping from a jug of Bailey’s, Goldschlager, and creme de menthe, but try to pay attention. In particular a colleague may be seeking your approval. It’s just good politics to play along.

You have a thing for an Aries, Virgo, even though you don’t actually like this person. This bad situation gains unfortunate traction from an ever-present travel mug of amaretto-and-Bailey’s coffee that you replenish furtively from a makeshift bar under your cubicle desk. Perhaps you should get some air before you decide to visit the supply closet with your Aries friend. No car keys for you!

Libra, you’re contemplating a self-improvement program featuring long walks. Not only will this make your body fit; your brain will benefit as well. Pickled as you’ve been all winter, you should gain some clarity pretty fast! It’s a new dawn for you, being sober throughout the day, but don’t forget to reward yourself later with some Irish cream and butterscotch schnapps.

Fear and hope take turns swooping in on you this week, Scorpio. You don’t have the funds to bail you out if your current business plan goes pear-shaped, but what the hell—you’re used to living this way. Not too many people have the stomach to hang with you, and that’s not a bad thing. Gambling looks dangerous this week, so stay inside and mix something up:

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • 2 oz vodka
  • 2 oz Tia Maria
  • 2 oz grapefruit juice

Sagittarius, the world looks very pretty this week. Your positive energy is at a peak, so how about a joyful blender drink?

  • 3 oz peach schnapps
  • 3 oz raspberry liqueur
  • 3 oz Frangelico
  • 3 oz cream
  • 1.5 cups vanilla ice cream
  • 4 oz raspberry jam

Puree that business up and let it cool your brain. You may need a walk afterwards, but the world will still be pretty—just spinning too.

Impetuous you’re not, Capricorn—at least not usually, but there are some weird stars in your chart causing you to be extra-gregarious and generally unprofessional. For instance, any cube farm worker knows vodka makes the best odor-free flask drink. So why is yours full of brandy and creme de menthe? Nobody’s gonna believe you just brushed your teeth. Watch out or you’ll need a box for all your stuff!

Aquarius, you normally enjoy risk and danger but sadly you’re having trouble finding it. Superfluous energy torments you, causing you to hit on drunken Geminis at early-morning garage sales and generally bother people of all star signs. Meanwhile, a Sagittarius is bothering you, out-talking you even and making you uncomfortable. Chill out and avoid a fight. Cherry brandy for you.

Pisces, people think you’re pretty down-to-earth. But this week you go nuts and freak out at your family. It might be an intervention or some such gathering where emotions tend to run high. Then again, it might be a wedding or a funeral. Whatever the event is, expect to be escorted away from it quite forcefully, perhaps while vomiting vodka.

OK SPRING 1516 BAVARIAN LAGER—Fantasy beer for the shackled

I spent the afternoon somewhat compromised.

Abandoned like a piece of prey to be carved up later, I had only positive thoughts to sustain me.

At first I tried to remember the most sublime alcoholic product I’d ever had, but then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t want to create a permanent association between my pre-K torture and say, some fantastically mind-blowing whisky. Plus I was thirsty. So I focused my thoughts on something refreshing but average.

A couple of months ago we bought an Okanagan Spring sampler pack. Of the four beers it included I forgot to review one, which came raging back into memory as I lay shackled by a hair bauble: 1516 BAVARIAN LAGER, brewed to commemorate Duke Wilmhelm IV’s 1516 declaration of the Bavarian Purity Law, or Reinheitsgebot.

Okanagan Spring’s 1516 BAVARIAN LAGER conforms to this historic law, being constituted of nothing but barley, hops, yeast, and water. (Which makes me wonder what the other beers in the OK Spring line-up contain.) Clear straw-yellow with a full paw of foam, it gives off a hayfield aroma—slightly malty and lightly hoppy without any attention-grabbing characteristics.

On the palate 1516 BAVARIAN LAGER follows through with uncomplicated hoppiness and malt plus snappy carbonation. Crisp and light, it’s definitely a summer player—a beer you’d pound quickly from a paper bag at the beach, for instance, before it warmed up and became less palatable (or before the cops arrived and seized your cooler). 1516 BAVARIAN LAGER is a decent, serviceable lager, but not particularly memorable, although it could be if you were in an extended hostage situation and overwhelmed by thirst.

INNIS & GUNN OAK AGED BEER—Mass quantities wanted

My Fellow Inebriates,

Our whole family sucks at bookkeeping, so tax time is a real slog. Just recently my dad collapsed his decade-old business to go over to the corporate dark side, which is great for predictability and creating a beer budget, but leaves him with the task of tying off loose ends. We have a jumble of paperwork to organize if we truly want to give all the nuttiness of self-employment the heave-ho. As we go through our business-related assets we’re flipping a bunch of them face-down like Monopoly properties, which is depressing yet liberating.

At least for my parents. For me there’s a bottom line hanging at the end of all this nasty mathematics. What’s our booze budget going to be?

Based on 2008 figures, the average Canadian household spends 1.8% of its income on alcohol (in the U.S.it’s 1% because prices are lower and there’s less excise tax).

THIS DOESN’T SEEM LIKE VERY MUCH!

Consider this breakdown for Canadian and U.S.households:

Source: Statistics Canada

Wow! There must be some areas we can trim and/or reallocate to the alcohol category.

  • I can’t do anything about housing or the car, but maybe we can choose our food more carefully. Arguably Guinness is a food. Let’s commit to having Guinness at every meal and thereby reallocate 4%.
  • What about recreation/entertainment? What do they consider alcohol if not that? We should lump alcohol with recreation/entertainment. It’s not like we do anything entertaining anyway. We don’t even go to the movies. Let’s borrow 5% or so from recreation/entertainment for alcohol. That puts us up to 10.8%.
  • As for clothing, I’m happy to remain naked, but the thought of my parents strolling around the house with their gear showing is…beyond the pale flabbiness…
  • No getting around health care, but what is personal care? Correct me if I’m wrong, but a proper drunk doesn’t go in for personal hygiene and such. Let’s take 2% of that for alcohol. Ahhh, we’re getting somewhere: 12.8%.
  • Too bad about education. While my parents won’t be dipping into this fund again, with their hodgepodge educational attainments just sufficient to make them obnoxious at bookstores, the kids will be hitting the family up for university in a dozen years. Yikes…would it be so wrong to take a tiny bit of that for…sigh.
  • But look! Miscellaneous is my kind of category. The best kind of miscellany occurs at the liquor store. Adding 2.6%, which gives us 15.4%…looking better.
  • And here’s another useful category for our purposes: tobacco. It’s useful because we don’t use it—I’d love to take on another vice but I’m afraid of catching fire. Score another 1.2%, bringing us to 16.6%.
  • Lastly, reading. I mentioned my parents are obnoxious at bookstores. They ask for weird books and special orders. They hate borrowing books; they like to fondle their own for an unlimited time, dog-earing and coffee-ringing the pages. Plus there’s my dad’s Audible account—with a two-hour daily commute it takes him no time to burn through a narrated book.

So that’s that, my fellow inebriates. Budgeting carefully, we should be able to elevate the standard Canadian liquor expenditure of 1.8% to a more reasonable 16.6% at LBHQ.

If you ask me (and nobody has) our first purchase should be INNIS & GUNN OAK AGED BEER. Billed as a smooth Scottish beer with hints of toffee, vanilla, and oak, this fine product leapt off our local booze shop’s shelf when my dad went on his recent onesie spree. Of the miscellany he brought home it was the most delightful brew—the sort of ale we could all have fought to the death for if we had a bit more energy, and a lovely contrast to some of the weird things my dad bought that day.

Brownish amber with a finger (for those of you who have them) of off-white foam and some feisty carbonation, INNIS & GUNN OAK AGED BEER sidles up to your olfactory centre like it’s known you all its life. Psssst, it urges—caramel…toffee…early-morning bakery…oak…Scotch malt—and blammo! It has you by the short fur, caressing your senses with its whisky redolence. This beer has stunning complexity. The notes aren’t unplaceable; instead they conjure up scented memories of highlands, lowlands, peat and damp. INNIS & GUNN has you at smell, but wait until you sip, because that’s when it really grabs you under the kilt.

Yes, those toffee hints pay off in a complicated, balanced, malty, buttery symphony and an achingly beautiful oak-tinged finish. It was a crime that we had only one INNIS & GUNN bottle, people, and that my parents shared it between them. And the alcohol? Damn fine at 6.6%.

Following my new financial plan I’m recommending we earmark funds for at least 10 cases of this fine Scottish ale and I suggest all my fellow inebriates do the same—as long as you don’t clean out my liquor store.