The Bung Goes On: Cask Days 2013

My sympathies are always with the lost, with the misfits of life. Those who hope for the best, but have to settle for the least-worst. So my heart beat in time, yesterday, with those poor unfortunate souls who asked if we had any lagers or light beers at Cask Days.

"Try this..." I said, looking desperately around at all of the India pale ales, each probably hoppier than the last. "... Cranberry kolsch? I, uh, think there might also be a brown ale that's not too aggressive." 

Perhaps my suggestions were poured out. Frankly, I was too busy pouring more beer to find out. 

I had volunteered for Cask Days in a fit of cheery can-do optimism, the same optimism which has led me in to such undertakings as attending a knot-tying workshop and building a subpar birdhouse. Unfortunately, I had also decided to try volunteering at Canzine the same weekend. However, I managed to slot Canzine in on Saturday, Cask Days on Sunday, leaving little room for usual weekend activity of high-impact slothing. 

So I reluctantly trundled off to Evergreen Brickworks, knowing that my SmartServe card would put me behind the casks. I was worried that would mean seven hours of making irritation-inducing judgment calls about people's sobriety, but it wasn't that bad. You could get a half-pint of beer for two tokens, or a quarter for one. With hundreds of casks to choose from - I worked in just half of the area dedicated to Ontario beers, and we still had at least fifty - increased quantity means diminished variety. People were forced into pacing themselves.

Not that I was much of a help picking which brews were worth a token. Volunteers got free admission on their day "off," but thanks to my other commitments, I missed my chance to sample the beers. I also missed my chance to have a medium-sized t-shirt, so I ended up working in an official Cask Days muumuu. People kept on asking me, perhaps because of the authority conferred by the muumuu, what I would recommend. And I kept on saying "Ha, well, I don't get to drink until five. But a lot of people seem to like the No Chance with Morana, or the Cream in Your Jeans." The guests were pretty patient with that, and I also leaned heavily on the knowledge of fellow volunteer Mike, whose encyclopedic knowledge of beer made me feel like a dedicated Smirnoff Ice drinker.

Staying sober meant I also had a lot of time to observe what worked and what didn't for breweries at Cask Days. First of all, dial it to eleven on the beer name. Cream in Your Jeans, Fangboner, and, well, Tranny With a Busted Leg - which I found problematic, but nobody asks beer muumuu girl - were my most popular pours. The outrageous names dared people to order them, if only for the pleasure of saying Fangboner in a public place.

If you can't be creative with the names, then try mixing up ingredients. Because it's the fall, pumpkin is king, but everyone's had enough typical pumpkin ales, so smoke it or brew it in a porter. Add fruit, add spices, age it in oak. If people made it all the way to the Brickworks, they're going to want to spend their money on something novel. Unless they're light beer drinkers, in which case they're grateful for anything drinkable.

I'm not complaining. I'm not a Barvarian purist - just an observer, hoping one of these experiments will become the next great beer style.

Still, when I was finally released from bending over the casks, I didn't go for a 10% stout. I didn't drink an APA with an IBU of 80+. There were no skittles in my brau. Instead, I cashed my free chips in on a simple honey pumpkin ale. The day was so nice I didn't feel like it needed anything more.

Domestic Wednesday: Two Weeks Notice

A few weeks ago I bought the Beau's seasonal pack. I left a bottle behind at my friend Paul's house, and he kindly sent me his thoughts for this edition of Domestic Wednesday. Call it... Domestic Wednesday: The Paulening.

On Two Weeks Notice, a German Porter:

It tasted quite different then any porter I had tasted before, I did a little research, and it turns out that those clever Germans adapted the traditional English ale recipe into a lager, which makes it quite fizzy and dry. The Beau's website claims it has a chocolate and coffee aroma, but I couldn't smell either. It was strong, hoppy, and smooth. Interesting taste, but I think I prefer the English variety more.

-Paul 

 

Thanksgiving Turkey

Where I live (Canada, America's toque) this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend. Thus, I am back in Guelph. I have swapped the go-go pace of the big city for the quieter pleasures of petting the dog and avoiding any discussion of the future with my mother.

How's that going? Well, on Saturday I desperately started to talk about my boyfriend to avoid the topic of grad school, and this morning I burst into tears for no reason. Judgment: middling. 

Still, in spite of all future-related anxiety, my family is one of the things I'm most thankful for this weekend. Along with the dog, pumpkin beer, health insurance and texts from Dan. And there's more. I can't list it all here, but it's a long list.

I forget that sometimes. The list of things that bother me is shorter, but it seems bigger. I worry that I'll never have enough money, and that I'll always be disappointed in my life. Of course they're slightly bound up in each other, and it's difficult to know which to attempt to fix first. If I make more money, will I feel like less of a failure monkey? Or if I do something I think is worthwhile, will I stop caring about the bank account? In any case, focusing on what's not happening doesn't make me any likelier to make something happen. 

Furthermore, if I was handed a customer satisfaction survey for my life, I would check off a solid row of 3's for satisfactory. I'm a little directionless and debt-ridden, sure. But so many things are fine, there are so many things I lucked out in, that the small pleasures should be more than enough. It's a happy Thanksgiving - the pumpkin pie is more than enough.

Bike Cavalrywoman Declares War On Lazy Columns

If you need to crap out a column for one of Canada's newspapers, you have some choices. You can take the Wente path, and attack the big money liberal arts complex for the thousands of injustices (critical geography studies!) it perpetrates every day. But if you find yourself too ground down by Big Academia's clog heel to manage that, just write about bicycles.

R: My terror-mobile, temporarily not terrorizing some bipeds

Bicycles! There they are, the rulers of the road, nay, sidewalks even, each one to a man or woman clad in twin vestments of spandex and smugness. Please see this column by Rosie DiManno for proof, or perhaps the accompanying comments section, as there are literally DOZENS of anecdotes of asshole cyclists presented. Clearly, these thugs need to be stopped, or perhaps dispatched by streetcars, so the streets can be safe again. 

If the public safety aspect of these sort of columns doesn't grab you, think of the publicity. Complaining about cyclists is sure to net you many comments and even more page clicks, as the most rabid cyclists and cyclist-haters. So ka-ching, ka-ching, which conveniently rhymes with the ka-clunk, ka-clunk a cyclist's body makes as it is run over.

But let's return to the DiMannofesta: "... those who drive and those who pedal can wipe each other off the face of the city’s streets in this mutual roadkill rush to attrition and Toronto would be better off for it." For, you see, cyclists are "arguably the most sanctimonious breed on the planet: I cycle therefore I am divine." 

But nobody is more "divine" than an "ambulatory biped" like her, who walks everywhere. Everywhere, except when she's in a cab or on a bus. I'm not sure who will drive either of these vehicles once Toronto streets run red with the blood of drivers and cyclists. The roads will belong to the pedestrians then, or more likely, the rickshaws.

DiManno is also not entitled like those awful cyclists when she has to catch a bus on her street. "Public transit users need to either squeeze up against buildings or stand in the bike lane — which will get you a blast of invective from the cyclists." She just thinks she can use a lane designed for a flow of traffic as a bus stop waiting lounge: most certainly not entitled. 

In fact, cyclists are so awful that, DiManno tell us, "They have risen to No. 1 on my list of People Who Should Be Shot." Thanks to my intrepid reporting skills, I have found this very list:

Some might say that using violence for rhetorical impact as cyclists die on the streets is a tad... tasteless. They might even add that calling people who bike "ped-aphiles" - like pedophiles, ya know - isn't all that classy either. DiManno would probably come back and say that you don't know anything about taste, as you are probably a ped-aphile wearing a "stupid aerodynamic helmet." These helmets, by the way, will be the first thing online commentators will ask if you wearing if you do get hit by a car.

I am a sexual predator with a bounty on my head - I mean, a cyclist. I stop at red lights, make (often shaky) hand turning signals, and if I don't feel comfortable making a left hand turn, I get off my bike and walk it through through the crosswalk. According to DiManno and some of her commentators, I do not exist. And yet, I persist, not just in existing, but also in biking to work almost every day. 

I do so in the face of distracted pedestrians who wander into bike lanes or even just out into the road itself. I do so in the face of fellow cyclists, who salmon and shoal, pass suddenly without ringing their bell, and glide through red lights while I wait like a chump, or use the sidewalks while I brave the roads. I do so in the face of drivers who cut me off, open their doors without looking for traffic, barely give me a centimeter when they pass, or yell at me to get to the right when I'm in the left-hand side of the lane to make a left-hand turn.  

Not that I am a bright and pure beacon of perfect cycling myself. 

I have made mistakes on my bike. Turns out taxis can go into the bike lane to pick up passengers, so my apologies, Taxi I Yelled At Once. I tried getting around a bus once when I was impatient, and ended up in the wrong lane with nowhere to go. I have salmoned on small side streets, though if I do ever get an $85 fine for doing so, I'll remember with some bitterness the bike cops I saw going the wrong way down Augusta. And that driver who yelled at me for exercising my right to be in the left-hand side to make a left-hand turn? I probably did fellow cyclists no favours by calling her a jackass and screaming at her that I was making a turn.

Rather, in listing all of the things I have to deal with on the road, I want to show that there are entitled, careless individuals in every transportation class. And yet it's somehow always the cyclists who get put through the columnist grinder. 

Cars hit pedestrians: some people blame pedestrians for wearing dark clothes, or trying to rush the countdown. At the very worst I hear that driver is a problem, and they should never be behind the wheel of the car. But if one careless cyclist runs a stop sign and levels a pedestrian, well, all cyclists are dangerous, entitled terrors who must be checked immediately (perhaps shot on sight.)

What these columns like this miss isn't just a real solution, but the real problem. If we can't share the road safely and efficiently, then something is broken. Let's fix it. Rosie DiManno believes that the place for bicycles "should not be any North American metropolis never designed for bicycle-right-of-way." As if a city is a rigid structure, instead of a dynamic organism that can change and adapt. People can too. Build better infrastructure, apply the law well, change it if it doesn't make sense. Then educate drivers, cyclists and pedestrians on what is expected of them, and what others can do. 

But don't write another useless column like this one. Rosie DiManno: I might not yell GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY A--HOLE! as you stride through the bike lane and towards the cab that, as a 100% biped, you are somehow using. I will grit my teeth, and maybe glare, as I brake. But I will yell at you to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM YOUR KEYBOARD.

Le Thief, C'est Chic

For the past few days, I've been on the cusp of a cold. Maybe a flu. It's not enough to be any one thing (and therefore keep me off work.) Instead it's just enough to make me feel mostly cruddy, even though I've tried to smother it with NeoCitran.

So I am medicating before Muay Thai with tea and a book. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, a collection of short mysteries by Maurice Leblanc, was purchased on Dan's recommendation. It's the perfect thing for this kind of mood. Lupin appeared in 1905 as a sort of French, deliciously felonious counterpoint to Sherlock Holmes, who so far has made at least one appearance in the stories. Holmes' abruptness - perhaps, to Leblanc, his quintessential Britishness - does not contrast favourably with Lupin's élan. 

I feel like I ought to read these with macarons in hand. Unfortunately the cafe only has muffins. How very Holmes-y of them.

Cats Vs Dogs

I never understood why parents hit their children until my current cat, Marvin, came into my life.

Aww, look at that face, the anime-large eyes, the little pink gumdrop nose... the only thing that's not pictured are his concentration-shattering howls of need. I am paying attention to him: this is awful. I am not paying attention to him: this is WORSE.

Now here's my dog, Smitty, calm and content in the knowledge that his is the best life. EVER. Food, companionship, more food for providing companionship: it's all great. His biggest concern was when the phone would ring, and he would vociferously defend his flock from the cordless menace. But now my parents have cellphones. The threat is over. It is time to rest, and sleep, and occasionally sigh.

My cat would prefer to continue meow-howling - meowling - forever. I bought a spray bottle and now his favourite game is to meow, wait for me to grab the bottle, then see if he can sprint faster than the spray. Guess what: he can.

So it would seem that I have a clear favourite in the eternal battle between cat and dog. Sweet, selfless dog, vs. selfish, possible mentally unstable cat. Dog is god.

Just as I was writing this post though, Marvin hopped up on the end of my bed and quietly watched me type. Every morning I wake up to find him spooning me, content to be dragged into my arms like a bag of cat parts and squeezed like a stuffed bear. His cuddly nature is the one thing that has stopped me from punting him out of the window on oh so many sleepless nights. I'm not a dog person, or a cat person, I'm an animal person. And I'm in desperate need of a really good lint brush.

Domestic Tuesday: Oktobock

I love fall, or at least I do once the fall rush is over. When my customers ebb from complaining that their textbooks or coursepacks aren’t in the store, to complaining to other people that they can’t finish their papers on time, I can finally enjoy the season. Fall colours, wool-wearing weather, and so many exciting new beers on the shelves.

I had my eye on the Beau’s All Natural Oktoberfest Pack for a while. Can you tell why?

No, it’s not because I need an iron. See a few tentacles? Perhaps 24 of them? Unusually intelligent, sometimes poisonous, with two-thirds of their nervous system in their arms instead of their head, the octopus is my favourite animal. The pack’s Oktobock featured a red one on the label (I'm holding it in my left hand.) I had missed the Oktobock last year, but I wouldn’t let it get away this year, and so I picked up a pack for a friend’s board game party.

The Oktobock was the first thing I poured. To be worthy of the octopus, it had to be good, right?

Well, imagine my disappointment when it tasted of… jujubes. Wine and jujubes. But as somebody pointed out, I was pouring it into a wine glass, which had just been drained of red wine.

Yes, I am the least classy glassware user out there.

So I drained that glass and gave it a second shot. It still tasted fruity, and not in a way I appreciated. I love the complexity of beers with fruit notes, but this one ended up somewhere between medicinal and candy-like. With enough glasses (no one wanted to share), the 7% ABV eventually kicked in and my opinion improved marginally. I'm willing to give it a second chance, but I suspect it will never be my favourite Beau's offering.

And so I’ve learned: never judge a beer by its label. No matter how cute it may be.