Reviews

PHILLIPS LONGBOAT CHOCOLATE PORTER—Chocolate art

Dan Lacey—Male Nude with Madchen

Today this Dan Lacey painting’s ebay price exceeded the funds in my PayPal account, at which point my dad said, “Why that one?”

I said I like the way the cat is staring directly out from the painting, the way cats do—sort of accusingly. I wouldn’t mind having a cat like that, except the whole household would be wheezing with allergies.

Despite my dad’s obvious discomfort about having a nude self-portrait of the artist with his cat on our wall, he’s made some progress toward appreciating Dan Lacey. Out of the blue one day he said something backhanded, like “He actually captures a good likeness,” or “I actually like some of Dan Lacey’s paintings.” He always qualifies with the word “actually,” as if to say the majority of Lacey art is not his thing.

But why?

Take this painting of Mitt Romney, the bidding on which has climbed to $76.00 following a plug by Jimmy Fallon.

Dan Lacey—Mitt Romney and Jimmy Fallon Engaged In A Game Of Nude Beer Pong: The Painting

Even though Mitt Romney’s not Canada’s problem, I like to keep an eye on him, so this painting could grow on me—but not my dad! My dad says it’s all wrong.

Luckily for him, I have less than $5 in my PayPal account.

My dad recoiled from this one too.

Dan Lacey—Mitt Romney in the Nude

Again it’s just my dad’s luck I have so little money—the bidding’s at $122 and climbing. The eyes are creepy, as though Romney’s considering who the biggest possible whackjob might be for a running mate. The way he stares out like that cat, he’s almost asking, Are you crazy enough? Because I need your vote.

My dad may be unwilling to invest in my art collection, but he did spring for a few onesies in the beer aisle a while back, including the almost unmentionable FRÜLI and—fortunately—several other better choices. Slightly on the weird side but not unacceptably so, PHILLIPS LONGBOAT CHOCOLATE PORTER caught his attention. In fact, he’d been looking for it since he tasted it (without me) on tap at a restaurant.

Chocolate porters are springing up everywhere these days and even being drunk by people who don’t usually like beer. Much the way people who avoid James Bond’s idea of a martini will down a chocolate one, those who dislike hoppy beers are sometimes amenable to rich, chocolatey beers that almost bridge the gap between flavored mixed drinks and straight beer. Almost.

If you are a fan of hops and malt, tastes like chocolate and espresso can be unwelcome. As a beer fan, you’re part of a choir that doesn’t need preaching to—you enjoy the standard spectrum of beer flavors and, while you might also enjoy a morning latte, you don’t necessarily feel compelled to combine the two drinks. I always thought my parents fell into this camp, but lately my dad’s been getting more open-minded.

We split the 650mL bottle between two Reidel glasses (egregious but true: I don’t ever get my own glass; I have to sip from one or both of my parents’). Lovely dark cola brown with an opaque white head, LONGBOAT CHOCOLATE PORTER makes no bones about being chocolatey—dark chocolate notes predominate overwhelmingly on both the nose and the palate. The mouthfeel is rich and creamy without being cloying and ends with just a hint of bitterness.

I see why my dad sought LONGBOAT CHOCOLATE PORTER out after trying it on tap. It’s nicely balanced and offers some unusual but still harmonious flavors. My mum (because she is boring) wasn’t taken with it, which was great, because I found myself with my own glass after she abandoned it. This is how things should be at LBHQ—me and my dad sitting around knocking back beers, heedless of his wife’s criticisms about chocolate having no place in beer. Yeah! I got my own glass and it was awesome.

LONGBOAT CHOCOLATE PORTER is only 5.2% alcohol, but when a small bear consumes 300mL of it, that small bear passes out. I got annihilated. And that’s why I ended up looking at paintings of Mitt Romney this morning—I thought it would help me throw up.

But as is usual with Dan Lacey’s art, his mastery overcomes the subject matter. Rather than yakking all over the floor, I found myself online trying to acquire another painting. Sadly for me, these ones are out of my financial reach, people, so you might have to get on ebay yourselves if you want any of them.

BROKER’S GIN—PART 8!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Do you ever feel you have a psychic connection to another person? Just yesterday I had the impulse to write to Julia Gale, Business Development Manager for BROKER’S GIN. At least three months had passed since our last contact, and I started worrying. Just before Christmas she had some knee surgery done to correct an injury sustained while busting out to the B-52s song “Love Shack.” I found myself anxious about the operation, the surgeon’s ability, and the general quality of the National Health Service.

Recently my Nana acquired a bionic knee, a procedure so painful that all she could say immediately afterward was “Ow.” (Once she got some meds in her she said things like “That knee surgery turned” and then conked out before finishing the sentence.) So I had a sense of how painful knee surgery could be and I started worrying about Julia—not just about her health but about the general state of things at BROKER’S GIN without her. Conceivably BROKER’S could be falling apart while she hit the nurse button for a double dose of morphine, and then how would any of us get any gin?

So I determined that I would write to her and, if it turned out she was in a terrible spiral of painkiller abuse, attempt to talk her off the ledge and back into the juniper-scented heaven of BROKER’S GIN.

But she’d read my mind and beaten me to it!

Greetings young LB

Are you worried that you’ve been forgotten?  Do you think that Broker’s Gin have given up on a listing in British Columbia?…

I’ll keep you updated!

Jules

Giddy at receiving this email, I sent a response:

Julia, you must be psychic! I was just drafting a letter (in my head) to you. I was getting worried about you and your knee. Just recently my Nana had knee-replacement surgery and was in tremendous pain. She had to exercise considerable strength of will to push away the pain killers. So of course I started thinking about you and your bothersome injury and the Love Shack-style gyrations that induced it. Are you recovered now? Are you off the pain meds or have they become a monkey on your back? Did the surgeon do a good job? I was a bit worried because I know your health care system is similar to ours…you wait a very long time and then sometimes the doctor smells like scotch, but not having to pay is nice.

Anyway, I hope you are well. I hope Martin and Andy visited you in hospital and brought you a flask plus a hefty salary increase.

Did you have an actual knee replacement or something less invasive? I do know something about having foreign objects in one’s body–my ass is full of dried lentils. Just imagine, if there’s ever a famine my family might be tempted to rip my backside open to find soup ingredients. And then I’d have a sagging behind, just like those teenage guys you see slouching down the street with their pants slung impossibly low so the crotch is at the knees and you get the impression that some waist-mounted dwarf is working the controls. Just recently I saw a posse of these dudes in orbit around an attractive teenage girl who was texting purposefully as she walked and thoroughly oblivious of all the falling pants around her. In the space of two minutes I saw each lad yank up his ill-fitting jeans at least once.

So if I lost my lentils, my rear end would look like that. The difference is that it would be naked.

Do you ever get drunk on beer, Julia, or just gin? I recently tried a beer that’s brewed much closer to you than me: Innis & Gunn Original oak-aged beer. It’s one of those sublime products that makes one suspect there is a higher power who cares deeply about one’s alcoholic needs—much like Broker’s Gin. I did check my local government booze shop the other day, incidentally, to see if Broker’s was there yet…but it’s not. But I know that with you back in the game the precious elixir can’t be far now. Ahhhh!

Be well, Julia! I missed you very much and honestly thought I was going to surprise you with a letter…but here you are, you’ve beat me to it.

Cuddles,

LB 

INNIS & GUNN ORIGINAL OAK-AGED BEER really is superb—enough to warrant its own review, written soberly. So that might take a while, but it is percolating between my two brain cells.

In the meantime, especially for you Canadians hanging on every new BROKER’S GIN post to find out when we can expect this ambrosia back in government stores, stay tuned.

Pee in the fridge, and FRÜLI too

Who says you can’t congratulate a kid too much?

Miss V received so much praise for providing a urine sample on Thursday that this morning she took the second empty sample cup out of the Biohazard bag and filled it up too. She even put it in the fridge.

I don’t think anyone’s allowed to get rid of it. She wouldn’t understand.

Next thing you know she’ll be looking for alternate sample cups—Rubbermaid and Tupperware containers that she can micturate into. The fridge will be full of piss.

Fortunately there’s room because we eliminated some near-piss last night. I know, I know—that sounds harsh—but every once in a while a beer gains entry into LBHQ that is almost undrinkable. (And then I drink it strictly to take care of tremors.)

The beer in question was Van Diest FRÜLI, a strawberry Belgian white fruit beer ringing in at 4.1% alcohol. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be grateful to my dad for buying only one bottle of beer, but in this case it would have been tragic to multiply the $2.45 FRÜLI price tag by more than 1.

We went through a fruit beer phase a little while ago with the UNIBROUE sampler pack, which, while a good primer on Belgian-style high-gravity brews, is nevertheless an acquired taste. For drinkers who tend to choose easy-drinking ales and lagers, a beer like MAUDITE, with its bottle-fermented orchard overripeness, can be overwhelming. But it is still a beer. However cloying its fruity characteristics may seem, it is hoppy, grainy, and malty. FRÜLI, on the other hand, is a complete departure from beer.

For one thing, it’s cloudy maroon. There’s no mistaking the strawberry component; the stuff smells stronger than a Strawberry Shortcake doll’s hair. It could compete with strawberry Jell-O or Kool-Aid (powders that should rightly be combined with vodka). Without even taking a sip, you know this beer is not right.

If you’re also an alcoholic, you’ll probably want to pound your bottle of FRÜLI. Classic WYSIWYG: smell and taste line up exactly in an uncomplicated strawberry assault. Let me quote Meet Strawberry Shortcake:

Soon the girls were loading the pink wagon with cookies. Strawberry Shortcake was berry, berry happy—not just to have cookies, but a new friend as well!

OMFG!!! Arghhhhh!!! Drinking a 250mL FRÜLI is like reading 250 pages of Strawberry Shortcake! It’s sappy, sweet, cloying, insipid, and candy-like. Its lack of resemblance to beer is offensive, people. Not even its weak alcohol content redeems it.

Now, perhaps I’ve had a bit more exposure to Strawberry Shortcake than some people. Fact is, if you like fruit but don’t care much for beer, you could drink FRÜLI. You could also put a scoop of Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s in it and call it a float, but it’s not a beer, dammit.

But it gets worse, my fellow inebriates. I visited Beer Advocate to see what my fellow reviewers think of FRÜLI. One of them said it was…sessionable.

That’s because you’d have to drink a CASE of FRÜLI to get drunk. You could get more punch-drunk reading a marathon session of Strawberry Shortcake books to two enraptured little girls, all the while questioning your parental judgment in letting them absorb such mind-numbing rubbish, than you could drinking FRÜLI.

The only thing that upsets me more than FRÜLI is…O’DOUL’S.

FRÜLI is the first beer I’m not sad to see vacate our fridge. It is not welcome back there! Miss V can put ten pee samples in there for all I care, but another FRÜLI …shudder.