beer tasting

HONEY BROWN ALE & PINOT GRIS—How I cope with death threats

My mum took the kids to Fort Langley and e-mailed me THIS photo.

bearskin

I need a drink. HIGH TRAIL HONEY BROWN ALE it is. And it’s helping.

But there’s something familiar about this Vancouver Island Brewery offering.

Aha. It used to be SPYHOPPER HONEY BROWN ALE. Same brewery, same beer, different packaging. Who knows why they changed it? Has spying acquired a negative connotation somehow?

Oh well, who cares? It’s good. You should buy it.

high-trail-case-and-bottle-mock-4web

I thought HIGH TRAIL would help regarding that bearskin thing, and it did, somewhat. (BTW, my fellow inebriates, bearskin is rough. It is not soft. You would not like it. And you should not buy it.)  

Except then my Nana sent this video:

OMG. I thought Nana was better than this. I didn’t think she was a sadist! She even called this video “something for LB”!!

Calona Vineyards pinot grisOkay, so my Nana has turned really scary, which means I need a drink. Something stronger, this time—maybe CALONA VINEYARDS ARTIST SERIES PINOT GRIS (2011), and maybe an entire bottle. At $12.99 you can afford to pound a whole bottle, but unless you’ve been traumatized by a video your Nana sent you, you might want to savor it more slowly. An InterVin Best Value selection, this Pinot Gris is gently off-dry with apple and pear aromas. It has moderate acidity and a surprisingly substantial mouthfeel, plus 13 percent alcohol, which will appeal to those drinkers who love white wine but are often frustrated by its typically lower alcohol content and the resultantly longer time commitment to getting plastered. This Okanagan wine is an excellent find, and even though my Nana freaked the shit out of me with that video, I will share a bottle with her the next time she visits.

As for my mother and her bearskin rug e-mail, I’m referring her to the compost bin outside, in which all sorts of fruit and vegetable peelings are rapidly turning to alcohol. That’s where a wild bear would get alcohol, right? Let’s hope she doesn’t run into one.

BEACHCOMBER SUMMER ALE—Enjoy, designated passengers

My Fellow Inebriates,

This week the car decided it no longer wanted my mother driving it. Perhaps it got fed up with her sighs about its eight-cylinder profligacy. Maybe it remembered the sweltering day when she parked it under trees that drooled sap over its windshield. Or finally it just exercised a judgment call on her lack of coolness.

How did the BMW manage to bar my mother—but not my father—from driving it?

Ingeniously. The car has automatic seats, adjustable along half a dozen parameters and then—since no two drivers’ asses are exactly alike—recordable into memory.

bmw seat memory

Jiggle the levers up, down, and around until not just the seat but the mirrors and steering column are positioned exactly as you like them, then hit the “M” button followed by your number (1, 2, or 3). Since Dad’s the primary driver, he took number 1. Mum took number 2, and my friend Scarybear claims he has the number 3 setting “for midnight drives.” Voilá! That crazy car remembers your personal settings, so if somebody else changes them, all you have to do is press your button and your ass is happy again.

Midnight drives indeed. If you ever see something like this driving an oncoming vehicle, hand over your keys.

Midnight drives indeed. If you ever see something like this driving an oncoming vehicle, hand over your keys.

If the BMW itself is smug about its wonderful car seats, Dad is just grateful. Only the BMW provides the support he needs when his lower back hurts. He’ll even go for a long drive just to assuage back pain. Just him and the clever red car.

And even though most of the BMW’s features make Mum roll her eyes, she secretly loves the automatic seats—or at least she did until this week. That’s when the car got fed up with her bullshit comments about preferring “environmentally friendly” vehicles and froze Dad’s seat settings in place.

All very well if Mum were 5’10” like Dad, but she’s practically a Hobbit. If the car could actually achieve Scarybear-appropriate settings, those would be closer to my Mum’s number 2 than Dad’s number 1. Even if the car didn’t maliciously shut her out of its seat-adjusting wonderfulness, it probably just got fatigued going from one extreme to the other and back all the time.

Some men would be happy having the car all to themselves. For Dad it means driving the kids everywhere—swimming lessons, birthday parties, you name it. If we run out of milk, he has to go get it. The same goes for beer.

So what did he get?

beachcomber-case-and-bottle-mockActually, Mum picked beer up before the car decided to take its revenge on her. BEACHCOMBER SUMMER ALE from Vancouver Island Brewery siren-called her from the liquor-store shelf on her last visit, and the car seemed okay about allowing it in the trunk. The car did not, however, point out that she’d accidentally bought a weissbeer; it isn’t quite smart enough to know she wouldn’t have intentionally picked a brew with fruity tasting notes. That, or it just thought “fuck you” and off they went.

For what it is, BEACHCOMBER SUMMER ALE does it well. Cloudy gold and hop-redolent, this unfiltered beer comes across clean and fizzy yet tropical with grapefruit predominating over a basic cereal foundation. It’s crisp and refreshing but not so light that those hops won’t rough you up a little. The fruit doesn’t stray into rotting-orchard territory, but all the same, if you don’t get the fruit-and-beer concept, you probably won’t be too excited about BEACHCOMBER.

I was, of course, excited. Whenever beer is opened, I get excited. And Mum should be excited too, because her next revelation was this, leveled at Dad:

“Ha! Now you are always the designated driver.”

LOBKOWICZ BARON—Toasting our little grads

Congrats to our two little graduates, who rocked grades K and 2 this year. Obviously their accomplishments call for a toast, but when I suggested it, my parents accused me of appropriating the occasion as a drinking excuse. “Never!” I protested, while sidling over to our one bottle of red wine on the counter. But they nixed it and instead shared a solitary beer.

Baron beerMy mum had bought only one bottle of this Czech dunkel, LOBKOWICZ BARON on the weekend after watching a fellow customer load his entire basket with the stuff. He raved about it, pointing out the excellent price ($2.17/bottle) and describing it as dark and “sweet but not too sweet.” It sounded normal enough, so Mum shot out her hand and grabbed one before the dude could empty the shelf, and before long it was beckoning yours truly from the fridge.

Advancing to grades 1 and 3 is a big deal that warrants free-flowing liquor, I maintained, but it was not to be, so I will tell you about my tiny portion of LOBKOWICZ BARON. As promised by the dude in the liquor store, it was dark brown with persistent tan foam and a doughy aroma. Accompanying notes of malt, caramel, and yeast was a somewhat unwelcome metallic note all the more evident because of the beer’s simplicity. To be honest, it tasted like my dad made it, which I wish he had, because then we’d have a garage full of the stuff.

Overall, LOBKOWICZ BARON is friendly and uncomplicated, quite mainstream and, being on the sweet side, a good pick for drinkers who dislike being shit-kicked by wayward hops. But LOBKOWICZ BARON is very ordinary, and therefore inappropriate for significant occasions such as today’s. Certainly V, who was touted for her “inventive spelling techniques” and P, whose stint as “Goat Three” of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” won her accolades, would side with me and advocate hitting the sauce early and wantonly. Too bad they are not in charge. But one day they will be.

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