Reviews

ALEXANDER KEITH’S RED AMBER ALE

My morning child abuse (abuse by children, if you haven’t been following) came with a reminder that today is a special day. I truly wouldn’t have remembered if Miss P hadn’t bounced around all morning about it—today is the day we defer to a soil-dwelling rodent on questions of climate. It’s Groundhog Day, my fellow inebriates, which means the creature will give us an opportunity today to either laugh off global warming or get up in arms about it.

Of course there’s a multiplicity of prognosticating vermin throughout North America. With a six-year lifespan, you can bet Punxsutawney Phil isn’t the original Punxsutawney Phil—unless Chuck Testa did an unusually good job reanimating him. Groundhogs mate like crazy between March and April, producing two to six young at a time, so there’s always a fresh supply for—given the media resources that get dedicated to the annual event—what must be the deadest day ever for actual news.

Cheesy Canadiana and/or Americana always make me feel like a beer, and with Miss P safely off to grade one, I decided to crack an ALEXANDER KEITH’S RED AMBER ALE. The cans had appeared in our fridge following a rare visit from (even rarer) friends of my parents—a “slumming it” product that I would certainly buy to take to someone’s house if I didn’t necessarily care about retaining their respect, or if I thought maybe I could trade up to something better in their fridge.

Everything about the pour suggests mass-produced domestic beer—hockey beer, if you will. The color is aggressively orange, the head loose and half-hearted. In terms of smell this amber ale doesn’t give much away; you have to just take the plunge and taste it.

And much the way my on-again-off-again-mostly-off girlfriend Dolly describes an evening with me, ALEXANDER KEITH’S RED AMBER ALE is pretty much a waste of time. It’s ordinary: tangy but sweet and thin with insufficient malt—the sort of brew that reinforces a general sense of unmet expectations and thereby propels the drinker toward more serious alcohol earlier in the day than planned. I do therefore recommend it for non-daytime imbibers as a method of jumping the mental hurdle into “Why not?” territory.

As I started a second can, I wondered if Dolly would be interested in Groundhog Day simply because of her fur fetish. Plenty of people share her proclivities, and with Valentine’s Day looming, they are probably stirring in their burrows much like Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie.

Social stigma hinders fur fetishists even more than it does daytime drinkers. According to my sources, “furries” fall into five categories, none of which dovetail too well with mainstream mores.

  • Fursuiters (those who like to dress up)
  • Otherkins (those who believe they are animal in spirit)
  • Furries (those who enjoy roleplay)
  • Furverts (those with fur fetishes plus every subset you can think of)
  • Trans-species (those who physically alter themselves to resemble kindred animals)

It was sweet of Dolly to cross the line into full-on bestiality with me, but I have to realize it’s over, and there are enough other bears in the house to give her whatever it is she needs without subjecting her to the odor of rancid beer. Drinking ALEXANDER KEITH’S RED AMBER ALE is my way of accepting Dolly’s rejection.

We all slum it sometimes, whether it be with Malibu or Alexander Keith’s. Dolly slummed it with me, but I think that was the bottom for her. And I don’t want to say anything mean about her. I really doubt she’d get that interested in a groundhog, even if it could predict the weather (which would be amazing given that the weather channel can’t).

So what happened anyway with North America’s groundhogs? Did they see their shadows?

According to the three most closely watched of these psychic vermin, spring is coming. So get out the hay fever meds, brush up on your climate-related conversation, and (Dad) take the Christmas tree down. Spring is sprung and love is in the air (unless you’re me).

CUTTHROAT PALE ALE—Arrrr!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Ordinarily I’d say you can’t watch too much Star Trek, but then you have bears like my friend Scary, who’s logged at least 10,000 hours watching every Trek iteration in addition to Stargate, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda plus every single other sci-fi program that every got green-lit for production. You could say Scary got sucked into another reality.

Scary used to lead a charmed life. Before his humans had kids they used to go to work every day. They’d leave Scary watching the Space Channel on a 50-inch plasma all day. They didn’t want him to be bored.

Then they had kids and suddenly the TV fell under new orders: Elmo, Sesame Street and Barney took over the screen, leaving Scary to wallow in his sudden secondary status and his sci-fi withdrawal. Feeling neglected, he became bitter, resentful, jaded. He became a dick.

With only his science fiction memories, Scary retreated into a dark world of apocalyptic fantasy and excessive snacking.

I invited him to join me in sampling Tree Brewing’s CUTTHROAT PALE ALE with me but he was too busy watching YouTube videos consisting of open sky shot in people’s backyards with some distorted (sometimes obviously modulated) audio behind—i.e., the strange sounds of 2012 that have gone viral recently.

Luckily, the lovely Christine and my somewhat less lovely parents were there to open the CUTTHROAT bottles.

I’d recently tasted THIRSTY BEAVER AMBER ALE, a delightful but more mainstream offering from Tree Brewing, so I was buzzing with anticipation and the usual alcoholic jitters. I realized I didn’t miss Scary’s company; with his End-of-Days mentality and general paranoia, he’s not the sort of guy you should take along on any sort of mind-altering odyssey. Although in lots of ways I share his fascination with the apocalypse, I don’t think it’s going to swoop in on a seven-headed dragon the way he does. Plus there was more beer for me and the humans without him.

Poured into the glass, CUTTHROAT PALE ALE is golden orange with a foamy head that dissipates quickly. Right away the aroma is intriguing: malty and grassy with suggestions of caramel and buttered bread. So the actual first sip is disconcerting—instead of the mellow, malty flavor I’d expect from a pale ale, CUTTHROAT jabs you with hops and an aggressive carbonation level that actually challenges the palate to reconcile its one-two-punchiness with the delectably gentle malt promised to the nose.

It’s kind of fisty that way really. Everything olfactory tells you you’re in for a soft, caramel-tinged sipper, and then CUTTHROAT yanks your arm up behind your back and says very threateningly, “Bend over!”

Because it’s really much more of a bitter than a pale ale. The hoppy profile would appeal tremendously to IPA fans as well as classic bitter drinkers. After a quick adjustment of expectations the hops are in fact delightfully clean and fresh, not to mention perfectly appropriate for the fizz level.

The finish is very dry and long. At first my impression was OMG, what was that? but halfway through the bottle I was smitten with CUTTHROAT and couldn’t possibly begrudge its take-no-prisoners assault on my tastebuds. It’s a fantastically violent beer that, in all honesty, Scary probably couldn’t have handled.

As Christine said approvingly, “It is called CUTTHROAT, after all.”

SMITHWICK’S ALE—What to buy with that government cheque

My Fellow Inebriates,

It came completely as news to me today that the Canadian government does not and has never had any plans to subsidize my drinking.

My parents were characteristically insensitive about the whole thing.


I was talking about the hundred bucks per child my mum gets each month in the mail. Little did I know, the money in question represents not a small beer fund provided to keep Canadians happy, but in fact the government’s laughable and deliberately blinkered estimate of what monthly child care might cost. The $100-per-child benefit is sent to all Canadian families with a child under 6, to help them “balance work and family life by supporting their child care choices through direct financial support.”

As of January, the cheque has been halved because only one of the kids is under 6.

I just assumed the money was for beer because such a paltry sum couldn’t make more than a 15% dent in child care costs. I figured most parents received the cheque, snickered at it, snickered at the government, then cashed it and headed for the liquor store.

Okay, so it would be a bit of a departure from the norm if my mum took the cheque and bought, say, eight six-packs of SMITHWICK’S ALE. But even if she were willing—how sad it is that, thanks to Miss P attaining 6 years of age, it would cover only eight and not sixteen half-sacks!

My dad has enjoyed SMITHWICK’S for years, although he occasionally opts for GUINNESS instead. My mum doesn’t mind it, and probably gives it a bit more allegiance than it deserves because she has some Irish genes, but finds it less interesting than other ales and a bit too hop-forward than it needs to be.

As you can guess, I love SMITHWICK’S. It pours a nice rich amber with lovely foam and a slightly earthy but mostly malty aroma. On the palate it is crisp and refreshing with a longish, hoppy finish. It’s a bit of a cross-over between a lager and an ale, which makes it perfect all year—refreshing in summer but heavy enough for fireside imbibing in winter.

Once you’ve been drinking SMITHWICK’S for a while, its lingering bittersweetness becomes an acquired taste. It’s true—we’ve had SMITHWICK’S more than any other beer in the house over the years and I do find myself desiring its refreshing hoppiness every single day.

I was only joking when I suggested 6-year-old Miss P should earn some money. She doesn’t even really like doing her homework, and is otherwise such an absurdly happy kid that I wouldn’t want to introduce her to the wicked work force too soon. That and the fact that they don’t hire kids to sweep chimneys any more…because to do so would be demonstrably more archaic than supposing that $100 can buy anything meaningful in the way of child care.

But I do think my mum should get cracking and find a way to replace Miss P’s monthly $100 government largesse so we can stay properly hammered while we’re helping her with her homework.