My Fellow Inebriates,
Miss P might be the only kid in grade 2 who knows how to use the word “penultimate” correctly. On this, the Monday of the penultimate week of school, she goes armed with that word-gem and a host of other finicky English facts. She knows, for instance, that to decimate is not to wipe out but to reduce by ten percent. That she doesn’t quite understand “ten percent” does not deter my parents from filling her head with this and other grammatical gobbledygook. They are social misfits, and while they’re high-fiving each other about P’s vocabulary, P is shoving tomatoes into her mouth like a freaking animal because there are, shall we say, educational gaps at LBHQ, and etiquette is one of them.
Meanwhile, V has figured out the best way to expose our little world. “Would you like some alcohol?” she asks, and then cracks up. I’m betting that when Nana & Papa show up this afternoon, the first thing she’ll say is, “Would you like some alcohol?”
They will luck out, because Dry Weekdays have mercifully ended and we have a small supply of HERMANN’S DARK LAGER plus a chilled bottle of CUMA TORRONTES. Unfortunately we don’t have any more DOAle, Old Yale Brewing Co.’s contribution to the CBC Music beer band twitter project. The challenge? To mash up a Canadian band name with a beer style under the hashtag #CDNbandbeer. Since May 17, the resulting brews have been hitting liquor store shelves every Friday.
DOAle need hardly be explained to Vancouverites like my parents who’ve sacrificed many an ear cilium attending 120-dB DOA shows. DOA has anchored the Vancouver punk scene since the very late 1970s, with Joey “Shithead” Keithley the steadfast frontman throughout. Attaching the DOA label to beer was a no-brainer for Keithley, who reminisces about the integral role beer played for DOA in an interview with CBC, ending with a stern admonishment not to waste beer.
Joey Shithead says don’t waste beer.
And waste it we did not, although it sure disappeared quickly. DOAle is a darkly translucent cola-brown ale with a rich tan head. The aroma is rich and malty with generous lashings of espresso, chocolate, and toasty malt. Up front you get coffee on the palate with a sweet but restrained honey backnote and a lengthy bitter finish. The mouthfeel is substantial but crisp. At 5% alcohol it’s crying out for a “sessionable” label from the sort of beer wanker who’d get trampled at a DOA show (don’t look at me, I’d be freaking terrified). This is a very serious beer and in some ways a departure from the copious smashed-up Pilsner empties I associate with DOA, but still a good tribute to a legendary band.
And we still have half a dozen years and a Justin Bieber phase to go before P even thinks of going to see DOA. Will Joey Shithead still be there? Damn likely. But this beer probably won’t, so you should grab some now.
SEEDSPITTER pours fresh and bubbly, golden yellow. The aroma is light and wheaty with familiar witbier notes such as candied citrus peel, but there’s a lurking vegetal smell in there too—more like tomatoes than watermelon. Yeah, yeah, tomatoes are fruit, as Miss P would remind us while shoving five into her mouth at once, but they nevertheless have a vegetal vibe, and so does SEEDSPITTER.
Liquorstore Bear 