holidays

HERMANN’S DARK LAGER—Don’t dye it green, weirdos

My Fellow Inebriates,

The strike action this week at the kids’ elementary school amped up my daily terrors. Even though the girls prefer ponies to bears, I was often included in their games. Looking back on the week, I’m astonished that I don’t have a new orifice. But, like any good Stockholm Syndrome sufferer, I like the kiddies. They are only the third most terrifying thing of immediate concern, the others being:

  • Fluffy. Whether he’s luring away my girlfriend with his overwhelming fabric-softened fluffiness, radiating a disturbing sense of mental vacancy, or making objects go bump in the night (with his mind!), Fluffy is an eerie reminder that my Granny might still be with us.
  • Leprechauns. Is it just me, or are leprechauns not totally creepy? I’m freaking scared of leprechauns, people; they’re right up there with clowns in the horror hierarchy. And with St. Patrick’s Day looming, these little shoemaking freaks are starting to amass.

Don’t get me wrong. I was crazy about Granny, Ireland is wonderful, and I salivate thinking about drinking Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. But Fluffy is all wrong on any continent (he made a picture fall down last night with his mind—OMG!), and leprechauns—yikes!

What the hell is a leprechaun anyway?

  • They are Irish Faerie folk—miniature, smart, and mischievous.
  • They like to play tricks.
  • They have wild music and dancing sessions in the woods at night.
  • Each leprechaun has a pot of gold, which it protects with magical powers.
  • They love moonshine (Poitín), but not as much as their sheep- and dog-riding cousins, the cluricauns, who are total drunks.
  • You can’t catch them, their gold, or their moonshine.

Like my fear of clowns, my fear of leprechauns is totally irrational and even less likely to get tested (unlike clowns, who will inevitably appear one day for a birthday party—shudder). But still they give me the willies. Could it be that I’m conflating the idea of leprechauns with…Fluffy?

Wanting a distraction, I started wondering what beer to dye green on March 17. As much as my dad and I like Guinness, it takes a lot of dye to turn it noticeably green—much like the filthy Chicago River—and, not knowing what’s exactly in green dye, I thought a lager would turn green more effectively while involving less chemical roulette.

But the only lager in the house was HERMANN’S DARK LAGER. This certainly wouldn’t do for St. Patrick’s Day, it being a red-tinged cola-black, so I reckoned I’d better finish it pronto lest on March 17 I forget its unsuitability, toss half a cup of dye into it, and need to be hospitalized with tartrazine-related conniptions.

HERMANN’S is perhaps the most acclaimed beer in the Vancouver Island Brewery Pod Pack, with at least ten medals to its credit, including three Silvers in the World Beer Championships. Crafted according to Bavarian tradition, HERMANN’S captures the old-world style yet offers mainstream characteristics. Countless Vancouver Island pubs pour HERMANN’S on tap because of this artful balance.

As mentioned, it would take a considerable amount of green dye to effect a noticeable change in HERMANN’S. It has a lovely ruby cola appearance that hints at its Bavarian heft. The predominant scent is malt—generous and inviting, with toffee, cocoa, and espresso slightly offstage. The taste doesn’t disappoint: toasty malt with some nuts and that oh-so-subtle coffee undernote. The finish is pleasantly drawn-out with just enough bitterness. This is something Vancouver Island Brewery products excel at—producing a wonderfully smooth arc from sweetness to bitterness with some very well harmonized flavors.

As comfortingly heavy as HERMANN’S is, it doesn’t lack refreshment. I could picture myself pounding a six-pack now or in the summer, although it would be a shame to drink it too fast.

But it’s not a candidate for St. Paddy’s Day; turning it green would be a hopeless task. And that’s okay. Perhaps dyeing beer green is on a par with dyeing the Chicago River green—a dipshit idea for nitwits (myself included) who don’t give a crap about consuming extra chemicals.

And, strangely enough, in Ireland they don’t dye beer green for St. Patrick’s Day; it’s a North American practice. (Surprised?) The Irish don’t do half the shit we do for St. Patrick’s Day. They usually just make some cabbage soup or something.

And there are leprechauns there every day, people. OMG! That must be why Fluffy Bear is so freaky; he acquired magical powers living in Ireland and now he’s terrifying everybody here in Canada.

The countdown’s on…get your green on

My Fellow Inebriates,

One of my fave pubs

If you’re in an Irish pub you’re very likely to see a countdown prominently displayed. Pub owners get excited this time of year. They’ve endured over two months of winter doldrums, and they’re gearing up for the quintessential party that will bring in bar patrons and trigger them to start spending again: St. Patrick’s Day.

Isn’t it fitting that in 2012, our final year if you’re consulting the Mayan calendar, St. Patrick’s Day should fall on a Saturday? Propitious for pub owners and patrons alike, St. Paddy’s Day is a fantastic opportunity to cut loose, embrace the coming spring, get drunk, get naked, and embarrass yourself.

OMG, look what they do to the Chicago River every year.

St. Patrick’s Day is a curiosity in that it seems to transcend religion and ethnicity. Everyone happily clambers on board and becomes Irish for a day without involving any religion-based controversy. Happy happy! Whatever we’ve done as a culture to arrive at a day where everyone gets together in friendship to get blitzed, we’ve done it right. Think about it…Christmas has become a tug-of-war between secular and religious domains who argue over the appropriateness of manger scenes and the origins of the holiday. Easter juxtaposes uneasily with Passover, intermingling images of a springtime bunny and slaughtered lamb’s blood. Even Halloween has detractors who insist its dark themes invoke Satan. And somehow—despite being named after a Catholic saint—St. Patrick’s Day manages to please both secular and religious camps. Why is that?

Perhaps it’s because the occasion is primarily a New World phenomenon. Whereas the date of St. Patrick’s death was commemorated in Ireland as a religious holiday on which Irish people would go to mass and then have a nice meal, Irish immigrants in North America took it to a whole new level, tying it to revelry and drunken merriment in a way that stuck and spread worldwide, eventually spreading back to the homeland and elevating a formerly minor holiday to the status it holds today.

Essentially the modern idea of St. Patrick’s Day incubated in North America independently of Ireland and in fact burgeoned into the commercial celebration it is during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, gaining popularity among expatriate Protestants and Catholics alike and eventually becoming known as non-sectarian.

Surely this illustrates the power of alcohol to bring people together. If all holidays were focused on drunken revelry, so many of society’s problems would be solved. But did St. Patrick have any idea of his future legacy? Who was that dude, anyway?

St. Patrick was British. It’s true, he was a wealthy Brit whose family owned slaves. Everything changed when he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave to herd sheep. Wow! Talk about comeuppance.

He wasn’t particularly religious, although his childhood home was Christian. Finding himself among sheep, he started to hear voices and experienced a conversion.

He used the shamrock as a metaphor for the Christian Holy Trinity.

He banished Ireland’s snakes. Nah, he really didn’t. Ireland doesn’t have any snakes, and it never did. It’s too cold and bounded by water. Snakes have no reason to go there and no means either. They are most likely a metaphor for Druids, who steadily disappeared after St. Patrick embarked on his mission to convert Ireland to Christianity.

He lived a long time ago. St. Patrick died in 461, since which time traditions such as wearing green and drinking 13 million pints of Guinness every March 17 have sprung up. Curiously, prior to North America’s remaking of St. Patrick’s Day, wearing green had always been considered unlucky inIreland. Traditionally the faerie folk dressed in green and would kidnap children who wore their favorite color.

St. Patrick’s lasting gift to Ireland has been tourism. Millions of travelers would never have thought to visit that rugged and beautiful country if not for his story.

Something like a quarter of North America claims Irish descent, a figure that probably defies math. Irishness seems to appeal to people, and even those with an eighth of it in their blood will say on March 17 “Kiss me, I’m Irish.”

As you may recall, Fluffy, the possessed bear living with us now, is Irish. This dampens my enthusiasm for St. Patrick’s Day considerably. I wonder whether he will gather up his strength for that day and then unleash demonic wrath on us. He’s been building up to it gradually. Last night he turned the bathroom fan on (with his mind, people!) and made the computer go blue-screen while I was on Facebook (again, with his mind!). Is there nothing he won’t do?!