Beer!

[Odyssey]

Note to Trevor: The "craft beer revolution" was in the 80's. This is now a battle for market share and getting real beer back into the USA, AND Canada.

The guy on the horse yelling "The craft beer is coming, the craft beer is coming!!" only just got here. lol
Our revolution started far later than yours IMO. Figures. I remember over 20 years ago sitting in a pub and being offered something new...a beer NOT brewed by one of our big 3 or their affiliates. I thought "awesome, and about friggin time." I sat and sipped whateveritwas and was intrigued by a newspaper placemat under my glass. It was a 2 page periodical of all the craft brewers in the USA. Jumpin jeezus. Even way back then you had many dozens of small batch brewers in each state...and growing like a wildfire.
Our craft beer revolution has finally caught fire, and is consuming a lot of consumer attention. But like any fire it will only burn what fuels it, and there will come a time when some kind of equilibrium is found. In foodie beer canoe terms, I hope there will come a time when there will be enough people proactive enough to get up off their couches to find/purchase/support small time cottage industries to keep our lives more interesting than the megacorporate big box store offerings.

Post holiday blues have gripped our house. All the family have left. All the leftovers have been eaten. Leftover beer to be consumed...not. My little brother and his wife stayed for New Year (we played cards, hugged and kissed at midnight, and went back to euchre - that's what you do at our age. lol). I offered 2 growlers of local craft goodness. He brought a 12-case of horse piss. dang kid brother. He clearly didn't get enough rug burns and noogies growing up. lol.
I'm sipping the last growler solo. His bottles of blandness might go in the composter. Or maybe I'll save them for the next card game.

 

[Canotrouge]

The guy on the horse yelling "The craft beer is coming, the craft beer is coming!!" only just got here. lol
Our revolution started far later than yours IMO. Figures. I remember over 20 years ago sitting in a pub and being offered something new...a beer NOT brewed by one of our big 3 or their affiliates. I thought "awesome, and about friggin time." I sat and sipped whateveritwas and was intrigued by a newspaper placemat under my glass. It was a 2 page periodical of all the craft brewers in the USA. Jumpin jeezus. Even way back then you had many dozens of small batch brewers in each state...and growing like a wildfire.
Our craft beer revolution has finally caught fire, and is consuming a lot of consumer attention. But like any fire it will only burn what fuels it, and there will come a time when some kind of equilibrium is found. In foodie beer canoe terms, I hope there will come a time when there will be enough people proactive enough to get up off their couches to find/purchase/support small time cottage industries to keep our lives more interesting than the megacorporate big box store offerings.

Post holiday blues have gripped our house. All the family have left. All the leftovers have been eaten. Leftover beer to be consumed...not. My little brother and his wife stayed for New Year (we played cards, hugged and kissed at midnight, and went back to euchre - that's what you do at our age. lol). I offered 2 growlers of local craft goodness. He brought a 12-case of horse piss. dang kid brother. He clearly didn't get enough rug burns and noogies growing up. lol.
I'm sipping the last growler solo. His bottles of blandness might go in the composter. Or maybe I'll save them for the next card game.

In Quebec it is well over 25 years ago that craft beers were available in a few brew pubs and pubs, but not much for bottled stuff... Now it is crazy out there, more than 250 I think and like 50 new one a year(probably 50 die a year also) but yeah it is crazy!!

 

[Odyssey]

We don't make it back to the belle province nearly so often as we once did. It was so good to drop in to the depanneur or grocer for a good selection of beers and wine. Our provincial alcohol stores LCBO (regulated in Ontario, clearly we can't be trusted. lol) have a pretty good selection these days, but not many beers from Quebec. It does depend on which store. I have happy memories of standing outside the Provigo at Mont Royal and Saint Urbain thinking life couldn't get any better. Bread? Oui. Cheese? Certainement. La biere? Ben cris oui! Allez allez - Let's go!!

 

[Odyssey]

Same brother same evening, different story. While talking over cards he suddenly said "Wait! I've got something for you!" He went out to his truck to fetch...2 cans of beer. He had bought a case of Quebec beer for a family friend back there (another long story) and remembered I used to drink the same stuff in the 80s while I was living there. A blast (and bloat) from the past. Laurentide. We each had one small can (I used to drink it by the many quarts). Burp blah. After one small can I got a headache and quit. I was drinking tea by midnight, no more of those old 80's memories. Some things you just don't want to go back to. Let's make new ones.

 

[sweeper]

I watched the first wave of the revolution crash and drag down a couple of my favorite breweries. Now it's a battle just to keep up with all the new breweries/brew pubs/new beers from established brewers. Just in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts we are fortunate to have plethora of breweries pumping out many very fine beers without include the rest of western Mass.
MY Local Beer/Liquor store claims to have a "Mile of Beer". They certainly have more beers then I will ever get to even if they stopped bring in new ones, but I'll try, what the heck.

 

[yellowcanoe]

A recent beer lesson.

If you place a bottle Yuengling Black and Tan outside in the 10F weather while you work in the shop it will freeze solid in short order. So icy solid that it pushes off the cap. That was not the lesson.

The lesson was that frozen and thawed Black and Tan is not that tasty. In the name of science I retrieved an unfrozen Black and Tan, and drank them while alternating sips. Bleeech, and Yummy.

That does raise another question. I know some folks freeze cans of beer for tripping storage. Does this work better with beer so crapty that the flavor killing freeze actually improves it?

Ergo you need to make minicell beer cozies. Two high ought to do one bottle right?
Uh the cans metal is so thin that they explode or at least leak.. Don' t do this in your tripping truck
these folk are trying to keep their beer from freezing and need some beer cozies too.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

 

[memaquay]

This was at my last wedding, that's my twenty foot cedar strip. I think there were close to 1000 beers in it.

 

[Canotrouge]

This was at my last wedding, that's my twenty foot cedar strip. I think there were close to 1000 beers in it.

Like I always say, not the quantity, but the quality that matter hahahahaha... That said, that 20 footer makes for a great cooler!!

 

[sweeper]

I see a lot of Blue in the Canoe Dilly, Dilly.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

frozen and thawed Black and Tan is not that tasty.

That's to be expected. The freezing kills the virus-infected insect parts and fecal matter, the millions of bacteria, spores and other fungi, and the virulent protozoa and amoebae, which are introduced into beer during the harvesting, transportation, brewing and fermentation processes and which give beer its tubercular tang. Distilled and purified water is a healthier choice on canoe, car, train, plane and LSD trips.

 

[Guest]

Distilled and purified water is a healthier choice on canoe, car, train, plane and LSD trips.

I have tasted basic distilled water, and laboratory quality water run through reverse osmosis and deionization. Neither were pleasant, I would rather drink a once frozen Bud Lite with a cigarette butt in it.

The bottled waters that are actually purified, not Coke or Pepsi water products straight from whatever the bottling plant metro water source, usually have trace minerals and salts added back in for taste.

Remind me never to bet on the stupidity of humans. When I first heard of Pay Television I laughed my arse off. Yeaaaah, OK, we now have cable TV.

Yeaaaah, OK, I have bought bottled water.

https://www.google.com/search?q=we+...P2VMKHUhkBAIQ_h0IpgEwEw#imgrc=QtMNEFOBwNfdlM: