beer

CZECHVAR for St. Paddy’s Day? Why not?

Today I am recommending a run-of-the-mill, somewhat hoppy and refreshing but basically Euroskunk lager.

Why?

Because it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and if you get some godforsaken notion today that you have to dye your beer green, you’d best choose a light beer instead of pouring all your mother’s Nutty Club green food colouring into a Guinness. With CZECHVAR you’ll only need a few drops, and the beer’s so mundane and uninspiring that you won’t feel you’ve wrecked it when that green tint starts grossing you out a few minutes after you’ve done the deed.

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CZECHVAR is actually made by Anheuser-Busch, which explains a lot. A quintessential summer beer, it’s slightly hoppy and very fizzy, and it emanates a faint eau de Heineken.

Is it fitting for St. Patrick’s Day? Probably not, but on a day when one-quarter of all North Americans purport to have Irish blood, we can hardly get our underwear in a knot about drinking Czech beer. Personally, I’m going to pound this mediocre CZECHVAR for breakfast, get into some cheap Canadian rye for lunch, and then break into the mescal with the (green?) worm in it. By the end of it, for all intents and purposes, I’ll be green and possibly hallucinating leprechauns. And that, my fellow inebriates, is what March 17 is all about.

Bar2D2!

OMG, my fellow inebriates, I keep asking my dad when we are going to buy some proper bar accessories.

He usually says “never.”

And today my mum said, “Would you rather have an amazing bar and nothing to stock it with? Look at the liquor budget and make your choice.”

So I asked if we could have something small. Small and lovable. But they said the “small, lovable things” in their life were giving them a headache.

My thanks to George Takei and his constant stream of interesting and cool photos. I have no idea where he got this one.

My thanks to George Takei for posting this amazing picture…I ‘d never have known about Bar2D2 otherwise. My dad and I need this, no matter what Mum says.

Do you think they were dissing the kids? Or….or?

No!

VALLEY TRAIL CHESTNUT ALE—Cold-weather beer? I’d pound it all year round.

My Fellow Inebriates,

I don’t mean to be a dickhead, but today I’m reviewing a beer that probably won’t be on the shelves too much longer. It’s Whistler Brewing Company’s VALLEY TRAIL CHESTNUT ALE, a limited-release brew that bills itself as a fall offering (and which my parents failed to notice until Christmas).

At first this beer reminded me of the time we went with my Nana & Papa to VanDusen Botanical Garden for its annual Christmas light display. Just inside the entrance there was an old geezer doling out roasted chestnuts, pausing every now and then to honk greenies into a filthy handkerchief. The chestnut aroma was seductive and inviting, but their purveyor was not.

I didn’t really think about chestnuts after that. I mean, they’re just food. But when VALLEY TRAIL CHESTNUT ALE found its way into LBHQ, I remembered that old guy and his prolific snot.

This negative association might have deterred someone less obsessed with alcohol from downing the six-pack in a weekend. But I’m not really someone.

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If you can still find this cold-weather offering, I highly suggest it. VALLEY TRAIL CHESTNUT ALE is a hazy amber brew with wisps of deep-tan foam. The fragrance is overwhelming and robust—waves of chestnut and even hazelnut with hints of chocolate and vanilla. On the palate it’s sweet—my dad thought perhaps a little too sweet—with a kick-ass toffee/malt backbone and mild earth spices. The carbonation is crisp enough to short-circuit the sweetness nicely, so you get a modestly bitter finish working in tandem with a lingeringly sweet taste-memory.

This beer is freaking delicious, people. Whistler Brewing should definitely keep it on the shelves beyond winter.

Perhaps I should write them one of my letters.