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Beer and Food Basics: Hops and the Marshall Stack

June 2, 2013 5:32 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

One of the things that frustrates me when I’m reading a bottle of beer is when there are food pairing suggestions that don’t tell you anything. “Try this with spicy foods,” the label proudly exclaims, as though that conveys any useful information.

Usually, when the bottle says something like that you can be pretty much guaranteed that you’re looking at a hoppy beer. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you knew why you were supposed to drink something with some kind of food?

Here’s the thing: Hops create a significant amount of flavour in beer, but the level of bitterness in the particular beer you’re looking at tells you comparatively little. IBUs have ramped up steadily since I started writing about beer, but where a beer ranks in terms of IBUs on a scale of 1-100 doesn’t really convey useful sensory information except “hope you didn’t like your tooth enamel, Skeezix.”

There are all these different varieties of hops. If you’re a music fan, you could think of them as guitarists. All of the hop varieties impart different flavours and nuances to a beer, so it’s a little like the pantheon of guitar players. You might have something like Robert Johnson with his soulful playing. It might be like Bo Diddley, thrumming away. It might be a picker like Chet Atkins or Mark Knopfler. If might be some kind of technically virtuousic thing like Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen. All of these players have their own distinctive sounds.

What the focus on IBUs has done is to distract us from the character of the hops being used in various kinds of beer. Focusing on IBUs is a little like focusing on the size of the amplifier. It’s like asking someone whether the concert was any good and being told that the Marshall Stack was the size of a house. All you can deduce from that is that the concert was loud and that someone’s probably going to develop tinnitus.

If you’re thinking about beer and food, the hop variety is almost certainly more important than whether something is a 25 or a 45 or a 70 on the IBU scale. You need to think about what makes that hop distinctive.

If you look at the hop profile listed on a grower’s website, it tends to impart information like Alpha Acids and Beta Acids. Alpha Acids are what make a beer bitter. If you read a little further down the list, you get into essential oil content, and that’s the really important thing to consider in terms of food.

For the most part, these are called terpenes. Wikipedia is telling me that they’re primary constituents of a number of plants and flowers and that they’re responsible in large part for why organic things smell the way they do. This means that these are in hops, certainly, but they’re also in just about all the other plants you’d eat. This includes vegetables and fruits and spices (and grapes. To be fair, there’s some writing about why monoterpenes are important in wine, but comparatively little about why they’re important in beer.)

Rather than come up with some comprehensive list, let’s take a look at three hop varieties and how the essential oils from those hops create flavours. You don’t need to remember their names, but I want you to understand that if you notice a commonality in flavour between your beer and something you’re eating, it’s not by chance: The number of permutations of flavour in nature is finite. You’re not imagining similarity. Everything is made of the same stuff.

FUGGLES

Using this link as a guide, we can see that the hop oils in Fuggles is dominated by humulene, followed by myrcene, caryophyllene and farnesene. If you’ve smelled Fuggle hops, you probably know them to have a woody, herbal, practically minty kind of aroma. That’s because the humulene dominates the list of essential oils. Humulene is a sesquiterpene and it tends not to break down during the boil. Myrcene, on the other hand, is pretty volatile. What myrcene there is contained in a Fuggle is going to dissipate during the boil and you’re going to be left with other aromatic compounds including menthol, citral, linalool, nerol, geraniol and limonene.

In terms of pairing with food, what does this tell us? Well, it’s going to be woody and slighty herbal with some spice notes dominating. You might, if they’re used as an aroma hop, get mint or citrus or floral notes. They’re usually used as an aroma hop because of the low alpha acid content.

The important thing to remember is that just about all the plants in the world smell and taste the way they do because of the terpenes. You might want a beer dry-hopped with Fuggles if you’re having lamb with mint sauce since the commonality is menthol. Or maybe you want to try it with a light thai dish containing lemongrass since the common elements are citral and nerol. The important thing to remember is that these are accents over top of the underlying woody character.

SAAZ

Saaz is similarly used primarily as an aroma hop because of its low alpha acid. If you’ve ever had a Czech Pilsner, you’re probably pretty familiar with the variety. It’s herbal and spicy and I would usually use peppery as a descriptor for the aroma. Saaz hops usually contain about equal amounts of myrcene and humulene. What it contains in larger proportion than just about everything else is farnesene, which is giving it that herbal, vegetation, spice character. Typically, farnesene is much higher in noble hops than in the new world varieties.

You might think of Saaz as being sort of gentle because of the varieties of beers that it usually finds itself in. Think a bit about what it can do for food. The possibility of interplay of spices is pretty impressive, with black or white pepper complimenting a dish. With something like a jagerschnitzel, you’re suddenly playing the farnesene in the aroma of the pilsner off the earthiness of the mushrooms in the sauce. The great thing is that you didn’t know you were doing that, but that’s one of the reasons that pairing works.

CASCADE

I’m using Cascade here to make a point about new world hops. It’s a great deal higher in myrcene than noble hop varieties, as are the majority of new world hops. You’re not going to get much woody character from the humulene because there’s very little of it. It can be used for bittering or aroma because of the alpha acid content. The reason you get citrus and grapefruit out of it in a dominant way is because the myrcene breaks down into other compounds that commonly occur in citrus like citral and citronellol and citronellal.

I think that the preference for big citrusy American hops has a lot to do with California and the cuisine that grew up there. If you have the ability to grow citrus in quantity (try doing that in England or Germany) you’re going to want to mirror that flavour in whatever you’re drinking. Picture a fish taco without that bright spritz of lemon acidity. It’s just not the same.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

If you’re going to think about pairing hops with food, you probably want to think of them not as a main component of your pairing but as an accent. Rather than bitterness the thing to focus on is the aroma and flavour that they’re imparting to the gustatory experience. Since the terpenes that make up the flavours that hops impart occur naturally in spices and vegetables, that’s where you should be looking for commonality or contrast in your pairing.

For instance, if you’re thinking about a steak, the hops really aren’t going to have any interplay with the meat. However, if you’ve seasoned the steak with pepper or you’ve got a chimichurri or mole sauce or you’ve marinated in citrus, you’ve got an element to play with. If you know a little bit about the hops that went into the beers in your fridge, you’ve suddenly got a playground to explore.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

The Basics of Beer and Food – Malt and Maillard

June 1, 2013 7:12 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

One of the things that frustrates me when I read about beer and food pairing is that the subject tends to get filed down into digestible sound bites. I suppose that makes sense given that a lot of communication on the subject takes place on twitter and in short articles. There are things that you hear over and over; notes cadged from Garrett Oliver’s Brewmaster’s Table and Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer.

One of the key rules that I’ve heard is that you want a light coloured beer with fish and a dark coloured beer with red meat. This has the benefit of echoing the traditional framework of pairing wine with food, but I don’t think that it provides enough information for people who are serious about pairing food with beer at home. I’ve been doing some research and I want to explain why this rule of thumb works in a general sense in a way that you can actually apply to your meal.

There are a couple of fairly basic principles that you have to understand about beer and food.

The first thing is, perhaps a little obviously, that beer is grain based. Certainly water makes up the majority of your beer, but grain runs a distant second. People claim that “hops are to beer what grapes are to wine.” I’ve got a t-shirt that says so. The fact of the matter is that the key thing to take into account when pairing beer with food is not the hops, but rather the grains that go into making your beer.

Most of the grain that goes into your beer is kilned (excepting things like wheat or oats). That is to say that the malting process results in a both the starches being converted into fermentable material. If you’re kilning a pale malt, most of the starches will be fermentable. If you’re kilning a darker coloured malt, two phenomena take place during kilning: caramelization and Maillard browning. Caramelization happens exclusively in sugars and it’s mostly responsible for the nutty and caramel notes you get from malt. The Maillard reaction happens because of a reaction between sugar and amino acids. If you’re getting biscuit or cracker like flavours from your beer, that’s the Maillard reaction.

If malt is kilned at a fairly low temperature, you might not get a huge amount of Maillard browning. However, there are specifically kilned malts that produce much larger amounts of Maillard browning. I’ve provided some pretty technical link there, but you can take my word for the fact that darker malts result in more Maillard browning products. Your darker crystal malts, for instance, are full of that flavour. As are Melanodin malts.

Maillard browning also takes place during the boil. You know that sludgy gunk that forms around the rim of the kettle that you scrape back down in? Some of that is hop sludge and some of that is Maillard sludge.

Why, you may ask, is this important? It will be. Be patient.

I was reading Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, and I want to talk to you about animals. Delicious animals.

Essentially, there are two kinds of muscle fiber in all animals. You’ve got short, fast twitch fibers and you’ve got long strand, slow twitch fiber. To generalize, your large land dwelling mammals like cows and pigs and mammoths and zebras are slow twitchers. Sure, your BBC nature documentary may show them doing dramatic things when they’re chased by lions, but for the most part being a herbivore  type mammal involves a lot of standing around grazing. Most of the musculature of these animals is designed for combating gravity in the long term. Some of the cuts of these animals are more tender than others, but by and large the slow twitch fiber will stand up to some pretty harsh treatment in the kitchen.

Fish don’t suffer the same effects from gravity. They have swim bladders. If you ever came home from vacation to find a floating goldfish, you know this to be true. Their musculature is basically about propelling them through the water with a quick movement of the tail. They’re darters. They’re always moving about. For this reason, they’re usually comprised of fast twitch, short fibers.

The culinary ramifications are important to think about. If you overcook fish, it flakes. That’s because of the short fibers. If you have an off cut of beef, you’re going to need to braise the hell out of it to break down the long fibers. Because of the way these different proteins are composed, we’ve ended up with different cooking methods for them.

You might steam or poach a fish with very light flesh. It requires a relatively delicate approach. Usually, you’re using some medium to transfer heat to them, whether you’re using steam or you’re cooking a sole meuniere in butter. Maybe you’re planking salmon and the ambient heat is doing its thing with a touch of smoke, causing the fish to steam itself. If you’re grilling fish, you’re probably doing whole fish and the skin is holding it together.

The majority of mammal protein you’re eating can be treated pretty roughly by comparison. Meat stands up to dry heat cooking methods like roasting or grilling or pan frying. The interesting thing about dry heat methods is that they create (I told you I’d get to it eventually) Maillard browning. Those grill marks on your steak? Maillard browning. The marvelous crackly bits of pig? Maillard browning. Anytime the recipe is telling you to sear the meat before putting it in your stew? Maillard browning.

So: here’s the important bit. Darker beer includes maillard reactions at a fairly basic and profound level. So do many of the dry heat methods that you’re going to use to cook meat. If you’re going to talk about pairing beer and food and you’re wanting to point out that beer works better than wine as a companion to a meal, it might be worth pointing out that this is something that wine doesn’t really have going for it.

By extension, one of the reasons that wheat based beers work so well with a wide variety of seafood is that they don’t contain as many Maillard components. I’m talking about Hefeweizen and Saison and Witbier here; anything with a significant amount of unmalted wheat in the grist.

If you’re trying to build a beer and food pairing for a dinner party or a beer dinner, it helps to be able to think through these things rather than simply judging a beer by its colour. These things can be designed from the ground up, but you need the information to do it properly.

Posted in: Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Book Review – The Audacity Of Hops

May 28, 2013 10:41 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

Recently, I was sent a copy of Tom Acitelli’s new book, The Audacity Of Hops, for review purposes. I finished it last week and I can tell you that it’s well worth reading. The prose is engaging and the story that it tells of craft beer’s rise to prominence is thoroughly well researched and entertaining. It’s not exactly a page turner, but for a book that has 40 pages of notes and bibliographical references, he’s done a great job of keeping it factually dense without having it become a slog.

It’s a book that has become necessary, especially since we’re now well into a third generation of people for whom craft beer is relatively normal. If you were born in Ontario in 1994, you can now drink. I see people in their early 20’s for whom locally made IPAs have always been around. That’s progress.

The problem is that without a proper chronicle of the good old days, like Acitelli’s book, it can be difficult to understand that this wasn’t always the case. It must seem inevitable if you are just now starting to drink beer that craft beer will continue to grow and expand in infinite ways. It has, in other words, become commonplace.

The Audacity Of Hops is really best compared to something like The Right Stuff. It wasn’t inevitable that Gordon Cooper was going to spend a whole day orbiting the earth. I don’t mean to suggest that craft beer is as important as manned space travel. What I mean to suggest is that the narrative structure is the same.

The analogy might not stand up indefinitely, so I won’t push it too far. Suffice it to say that when Chuck Yeager was flying test planes it was about pushing the envelope and seeing what was possible. It was the Wild West in terms of aeronautics. At the beginning of the exploration of space you had the Mercury Seven astronauts. You had a small number of people capable of doing a difficult and demanding thing. The public knew them and loved them. They were personalities as much as they were pilots and astronauts.

In any endeavor, there’s a brief period of time when it is associated with the personalities that excelled at the beginning. Whether they succeed or fail, there’s a tendency to impose upon their stories, if you’re reporting on them, a sense of dramatic struggle.

This is where Acitelli succeeds. He makes Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe, Ken Grossman, Charlie Papazian, Michael Jackson and Jim Koch look as though they were all taking on the world from the same angle, all intentionally cahooting. You’ve got independent brewers and people running semi-legal homebrewing shops and people writing about beer, and all of these folks are pushing the envelope of what’s possible. It may not have resulted in the International Space Station and the Mars Rover, but heck, we’ve gotten some pretty good beer out of it.

The book kind of slows down towards the modern day. This is interesting, since there’s more information about more breweries and more brands of beer and more writers than ever there were before. Is it informational glut? Is it simply that it’s hard to put together a comprehensive history of two years ago if you’re attempting to thread a narrative through to the future?

This is a problem that craft beer faces, and it’s similar to the issues NASA faced following the moon landing. The initial narrative has more or less run its course.

The main issue with having legendary exemplars of an industry like Fritz Maytag, Jack McAuliffe and the others is that they’re by nature iconoclastic figures. These are, by and large, highly intelligent people who didn’t like what they were doing and chose a new career. Jim Koch ran against Mitt Romney for the presidency of their Harvard Business School class, for God’s sake. He probably could have done anything, but he chose beer.

I’ve mentioned before, probably in the context of the sale of Goose Island to AB In-Bev, that this iconoclasm tends to be a mixed blessing for the craft brewing industry. Without a certain amount of gumption, we wouldn’t be where we are today. The fact that people took risks on an unproven industry in the late 70’s and early 80’s is the only reason we’re experiencing this renaissance of locally produced beer. In some ways, it’s a good thing.

There are downsides, though. Because it’s one person’s dream, it’s not necessarily a generational, familial type of business. Eventually, the people who started the earlier breweries find themselves to be of a certain age and begin to think about retiring. Breweries are huge businesses with a lot of equity sunk into equipment and branding and it soon becomes evident that you have to sell the whole thing as a going concern. Depending on who you sell to, the public might get fickle. Goose Island got blowback on their sale. Someone like Peter McAuslan, who recently sold his St. Ambroise to Brasseurs RJ, was simply wished well.

At some point, the rest of the pioneers involved at the beginning of craft beer will also fade out of the narrative structure of craft beer. Fritz Maytag is retired. Michael Jackson (who I increasingly wish I had gotten to meet) passed away a few years ago and is already part of a new iconography. Jim Koch turned 64 the other day. Charlie Papazian is 67. These folks will eventually want to (or have to) retire.

The problem is this: You never get the power of the original narrative back. Yes, there are now more craft breweries than ever. Yes, it’s an increasingly global fascination. However, there are now more voices than ever and its becoming increasingly unlikely that they will all continue to sing from the same hymnal.

You can probably name all three of the astronauts involved in the first moon landing. It was a momentous event. If pressed, you might be able to name two astronauts from the 1980’s. You probably can’t tell me the names of the people on the ISS at the moment. Sometimes, NASA lucks out and gets personalities like Commander Hadfield and they manage to bring attention to space exploration. That’s about as good as they’re going to be able to do because you can’t be the first man on the moon twice.

Craft beer is going to be like that. Acitelli chronicles the deeds of Greg Koch, Tony Magee, Kim Jordan, Sam Calagione and Garrett Oliver. The problem is that despite the fact that they’re excellent spokespeople for the industry, the industry is now so large that I’m not sure there can reliably be one spokesperson for any aspect of it.

The milestone Acitelli chooses to end the historical narrative on is the fact that there are now more breweries than there were a century ago, before prohibition. A very reasonable question to ask, and one that Craft Beer should be asking itself far more frequently is “now what?”

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , ,

Big Rock – Changes in Direction

May 22, 2013 10:52 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

One of the things that always interests me in craft beer is how larger regional breweries deal with the market. Of course, there are independently owned regional breweries like Great Western who are pretty much devoted to doing one thing and doing it well. Then there are large breweries like Big Rock that make a number of different beers which would have been considered relatively adventurous at one point in their history.

It's Alberta. Each brewery is mandated by law to own a cow.

It’s Alberta. Each brewery is mandated by law to own a cow.

I’ve been compiling notes on beers from Big Rock for a while now, but it wasn’t until February that I got out there to see the brewery. One of the things that’s amazing to me is the amount of hushed respect that everyone I talked to had for the first brewmaster at Big Rock: Bernd Pieper. The brewery produces something like 330,000 HL and I was given to understand that most of it was laid out under his watchful eye. It can always be a little daunting to have a shadow like that around a brewery, especially if you’re trying to change direction.

Now, this is the size that they're making most of their beer on. It's huge. This is the third story.

Now, this is the size that they’re making most of their beer on. It’s huge. This is the third story.

The size is a significant factor in changing the direction of a brewery. If you’re making 200,000 HL of beer and another 130,000 HL of your capacity is tied up in brewing for contracts, then you’ve already got a relatively sure thing going. The beers all have an internal logical consistency for better or for worse. You’ve got a series named after animals which sells pretty well. You’ve got a series named after the brewery’s founder which is, I guess, more highly regarded. You can’t simply change a brand after nearly 25 years. Well, you could, but you’d always wonder whether the market would follow you before you rolled out the new brands.

It's the obligatory malt room shot. Only interesting because of the scale.

It’s the obligatory malt room shot. Only interesting because of the scale.

If you’re someone like Paul Gautreau, who’s brewing there now, I suppose the question is “what do you do to maintain the reputation of the brewery while attempting to keep up with emerging craft brewers who are free to create brands from scratch that feel contemporary?”

You have to stand out from the crowd, but in order to be considered by the crowd you probably need one offs. You could jump on the bandwagon and make a big hoppy west coast IPA, but that puts you square in the middle of intense competition from imports in a style you’re not known for. You could do that, but it would be an uphill climb. Instead, this year, they published a road map545957_10151547253490660_950734235_n

The decision to make a bunch of fairly esoteric beer reminds me a lot of Great Lakes in Ontario. In point of fact, one of the beers in the alchemist is a Stein beer, which is one of the things Great Lakes was doing when I first started paying attention. Superheating a lump of granite seems like a bad idea to me, but I have long since been rendered cautious by those PSA’s with the robot from Saturday morning cartoons.

Big Rock, possibly because they noticed that my column runs in Calgary, started sending me beer about a year ago. Now, some of them have been a touch underwhelming. I think that the Helles Bock was brewed very much to the dead center of the style and as a result wasn’t really a standout. I think the Saaz Pilz could probably have had a touch more Saaz in retrospect. I also question whether I simply don’t like their lager yeast strain. I usually get a slightly sour finish of Big Rock lagers.

I love it when people refer to systems of this size as their pilot system. It makes me wonder whether they homebrew in a small glacial lake.

I love it when people refer to systems of this size as their pilot system. It makes me wonder whether they homebrew in a small glacial lake.

But some of the Big Rock stuff has been pretty good. In point of fact, some of it has been really good.

Some of them I never wrote about in the newspaper. I think they understand that not all of them are going to make it to print. Take, for instance, Barghest Barleywine. Well, first of all, there are only 3000 bottles. Secondly, it’s not for sale in four of the markets in which the column appears.

It was as though I had asked them to send me the beer with the largest amount of Bargh possible.

It was as though I had asked them to send me the beer with the largest amount of Bargh possible.

That said, it was a pretty astonishing little number. It had already been aged in barrels for a year prior to bottling. I think that it was made in the image of the Thomas Hardy, and while I had to drink the bottle that was sent for notes, I had the sneaking suspicion that it would probably have aged and improved for five years. There was a slight character of sherry-like oxidation that I think would have merged eventually with the dried fruit and caramel that was in there. I could see what he was trying to do, which was a good sign. Trying to emulate something that respected while most people are going for big hoppy American Barleywine is laudable. (Next time, larger volume and more bottles so you can do vertical events in years to come.)

Seriously, 3000 bottles is just not a big enough run for something like this.

Seriously, 3000 bottles is just not a big enough run for something like this.

The Purple Gas didn’t really do it for me. I mean, who puts together a wheat based beer with an indigenous fruit variety and blue agave nectar… I mean, other than that time I did it.

The Paradox Light Dark Ale, on the other hand, was pretty darn good. I don’t know why they named it the way that they did. It was essentially a mild bitter. It was nicely balanced and at 3.75% it would have been a great summer barbeque beer. Probably, they should have made more of that one as well. (In my notes I gave it a 3.5/5. The spider tasting chart looks a little like a dyspeptic seagull, which is neither here nor there.)

The Erratic Stone Fired Ale (see, cause it’s a hunk of granite and they’re named after a glacial erratic.) was probably one of the best packaging jobs I’ve seen on a Canadian beer this year. The aroma was a massive caramel and sweet malt hit, but on the palate it dissipates away through some minerally tones. The first sip is luscious malt, but maybe so much of it that it seems to recede on subsequent ones. I have written in my notes “interesting style, good experiment” which I think is all anyone can expect of a Stein Beer.

This is a legitimately attractive packaging solution. If you told me it was from Big Rock without showing me the press release, I would have been shocked.

This is a legitimately attractive packaging solution. If you told me it was from Big Rock without showing me the press release, I would have been shocked.

Last week, they sent a beer called Rosmarinus Aromatic Ale, which is pretty much a Pale Ale with some rosemary infused. The rosemary exists in it as a faint aroma and as an accent on the palate. I don’t know why, but the hop schedule seems to have worked with it. Of the new school, this is probably the best result. Really quite tasty, plus I bet you could marinate a Pork Tenderloin in it.

Here’s the thing: Big Rock and Paul Gautreau are getting better at creation, which is a hard thing to do when you’re brewing a really large amount of only a few kinds of beer. The quality of the one offs has been steadily ticking up since they started them. Some of the ones on the list I’m actually excited about trying. The thing is this: being a creative brewer is different than brewing a brand on a large scale, but Big Rock is managing the transition better than I would have expected. At some point in the near future they’re going to really nail something and shock the hell out of everyone that hasn’t been paying attention.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Reviews, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Hoppy Beers and Monoculture in Ontario

May 2, 2013 2:50 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

I want to suggest something to you, and it may be something that has crossed your mind if you’re a brewer in Ontario. I think that we’re all aware that large brewers are, if not faltering, then experiencing a period of contraction. This is probably as the result of the ascendance of craft beer in some small part, but it also has to do with shifting preference in packaging and with the economic recession from 2008 to the present. So craft beer is taking off. Why not buy a few bottles of really interesting beer instead of a 24 of lager that might be indistinguishable from its competition?

That’s the important bit: many mass produced lagers are as like their competition as it is realistically possible to be. It’s (and I borrow a term from Jason Tremblay who posted about this on Bartowel.com) a monoculture.

Tremblay went on to suggest that the current growth of craft beer is on the back of hoppy pale ales and IPAs. This seemed somewhat suspect to me, so I decided to crunch some numbers. I like a bit of data-centric research periodically, so what I’ve done is taken two snapshots of LCBO product lists based on their API data and broken down those snapshots into stylistic preference. The first is the earliest record I have access to: January 1, 2011. The second is from April 19th, 2013.

I have included only beers produced in North America. I have not delineated between macro and micro. I have included only one SKU per product, which is to say that while there might be different available formats of something like Budweiser, I have listed only the Budweiser brand as a coverall for those SKUs. If a product has listed itself as a Pilsner, I have simply taken the listing at its word. I hear you say “but Lakeport Pilsner isn’t really a Pilsner.”

Well, true. The data isn’t concrete. What it does is paint a picture of the last 28 months.

For January 1, 2011 there are 10837 existing SKUs of which about a thousand are categorized as beer, 571 of which are produced in Canada and 55 were American imports.

There are, by my count, 45 brands of Lager, craft or otherwise, that don’t differentiate themselves into stylistic subcategories. Basic Light beers count for 20 SKUs. Pale Ales count for 18 SKUs. There were only 5 Canadian produced IPAs. From the USA, the numbers are 9/0/2/4 in those same categories.

It should be noted that this does not mean that they were all on the shelves at the same time. Some were seasonals. Realistically, there were as few as three IPAs on the shelf at any one time.

If you fast forward to the present (or near as dammit) There are 20939 SKUs represented on the LCBO Product list (which goes some way to explaining why people aren’t grumbling about selection as much anymore). Of these 1427 are beer, 856 are produced in Canada and 95 are imports from the USA.

The number of undifferentiated lagers has actually decreased by one over the last couple of years: 44. There are now 22 light beers on offer. Pale Ales have grown to 27 SKUs. Canadian produced IPAs have grown to 22. (This is not to say there are this many on the shelves. Some of them were seasonals). From the USA, the numbers are 13/0/4/7.

Just for the sake of argument, I’ll point out that in January 2011, there had been one Double IPA: Garrison. As of April 19th, 2013, there had been nine from Canada and the USA.

So, this tells us that interest in Lager has waned very slightly and that there is almost no growth in light beer. If you’re a craft brewer, this is a good thing. It also tells us that the Pale Ale category has grown by a factor of 1.5 and that IPA as a category has grown by a factor of 4.4. If you include the American SKUs for those categories, there’s comparatively little change in lager. The growth of Pale Ale rises slightly to a factor of 1.55. The growth factor of IPA shrinks slightly to 3.2.

Now, I’ll point out that one of the nice things about the large brewers is that they tend not to brew a great deal for consumption that excludes mainstream sales channels. That is to say that there aren’t a lot of lagers that are sold exclusively outside the LCBO and The Beer Store.

You may wish to consider, however, the total number of small brewers not represented in the LCBO and the likelihood that basically every single one of those brewers has a pale ale. I don’t have a figure for that, but you have to realize that of the now 112 Ontario breweries reported on Mom and Hops’ directory it is probable that 7/10 of them have a pale ale as a continuing brand. Some will also have IPAs.

There are some pretty significant downsides to this. First of all, it’s just massively unsustainable. Secondly, it means that craft brewers are largely competing for the market segment that defines their expansion. Thirdly, the problem isn’t going away. I can think of at least three new pale ales and IPAs hitting the market next month. As smaller breweries attempt to get into the LCBO it’s more vendors competing for approximately the same slice of the pie.

What I guess I’m saying to you is this: If you ever had a good idea for a beer that you thought would work, now would be the time to diversify. Just because everyone else is making a hoppy ale doesn’t mean that you have to. Plus, the increasing number of American craft beer products coming to the LCBO is probably going to make competition even tougher.

If you’re going to launch a new brewery, you’d do well to do something to differentiate yourself stylistically and find something accessible for drinkers that provides value for money and has a novelty factor. It provides craft beer some genetic diversity and might just put some money in your pocket. Launching a non-descript Pale Ale or IPA that can’t compete against objectively better beers is more or less a recipe for bankruptcy.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

The Twisted Kilt

April 27, 2013 9:36 pm ⋅ 5 Comments ⋅

In this week’s column, I answered one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, which is “What do YOU drink.” I imagine that anyone with a beer blog or column gets that question quite a bit. Most people go with the tried and tested answer “a lot of different things, depending on…” and then there’s a brief period where they name variables like whether it’s the third Tuesday in the month or which direction the wind is blowing.

I’ve answered the question with the choice of the moment. That’s different than having a favorite beer, by the way. My suspicion has always been that everyone who writes about beer probably has a favorite beer, but that since it is massively impolitic to answer the question, we’re allowed to get away with proportional amounts of prevarication.

The other question that I get a lot is “Well, where do you drink?”

I get around. I’ve been to most of the beer bars in Toronto at one point or another, and I have to say that I’m generally happiest in my local pub. This was not always the case. One of the reasons that I became a beer writer was because my local pub inexplicably went downhill at some point in 2007. I ended up hanging out at Bar Volo instead, which is the kind of place that just drills beer information into you and convinces you to take pen in hand.

The Twisted Kilt is looks improbably like the faux tudor pubs in England look.

The Twisted Kilt looks improbably like the faux Tudor pubs in England look.

The Bow and Arrow, as it was then, had some serious problems. First of all, it’s a relatively large pub and it seats something like a hundred at a time, and probably more than that if it’s busy. By the time the Bow and Arrow was on its last legs, there might have been 20-30 people in at once on a Friday night. It was maudlin. The carpets hadn’t been replaced in living memory and the pub had acquired that stale beer smell that goes along with that condition. The food had gone downhill. It was caught in a miserable spiral of less income leading to less upkeep leading to less income.

It was Brutal. If you had wanted to write a textbook on running a place into the ground, you could have looked at the Bow and Arrow at its nadir and worked backwards for your narrative.

At some point about three years ago, it became The Twisted Kilt. People periodically misread that and think that I’m talking about the Tilted Kilt chain of breastaraunts that are creeping into the Ontario market. Just the other day David Ort asked me whether I worried what people thought when I updated Untappd from a place like that. I wasn’t really upset that he thought I would frequent a place where the waitresses excuse a certain amount of obscene leering for a 25% tip. I was upset that he was impugning my pub. (For the record, I don’t care how good people claim the wings at Hooters are. Being a server in a pub is hard enough without having to display your décolletage for douchebags.)

Just for contrast, that's the minto building at Yonge/Eglinton in the background, highlighting the improbability of a faux tudor frontage existing in the same neighbourhood.

Just for contrast, that’s the minto building at Yonge/Eglinton in the background, highlighting the improbability of a faux tudor frontage existing in the same neighbourhood.

The Twisted Kilt, while occupying the same space that the Bow and Arrow occupied, could provide a different textbook entirely. It has been building up relatively constantly for a few years now, and this is mostly due to having good management. The owner, John, is the kind of guy who looks at his enterprise on a nearly daily basis and attempts to decide what he can improve. This is a good quality in a pub owner.

Take the beer selection, for instance. When he started out the variety of stuff on tap was a bit samey. There were some standard Ontario offerings. There were some English Ales and some Euro Lagers. It wasn’t a very interesting lineup. At some point subtle changes started to be made. A crop of Paulaner lagers showed up one month along with a new beer tower.

Nowadays, when I go in there, he’s always got something to show me. They’re starting to get beers on tap before the other pubs in Toronto. He’s got Ommegang Hennepin. He’s got Maredsous. He’s got Hofbrau Munchen and Black Oak Pale Ale; a one-two sessionability punch that I’m not sure you can beat. It’s one of the most balanced tap lineups I’ve seen in town. Not European for the sake of being European. Not Craft for the sake of being Craft. It’s more or less one of everything.

When you consider the small number of taps and the location of the pub, the variety of the selection is boggling.

When you consider the small number of taps and the location of the pub, the variety of the selection is boggling.

He’s working on getting a selection of bottles of Belgian beer in. I haven’t seen the list recently, but I remember that some of the bottles were things no one else has. Part of the draw is the value for money. Duvel’s on at $6.50 a bottle (the regulars are now apparently going through about two cases a week). Westvleteren 12 is priced at $20.00. I popped in on Thursday night and he asked me whether I thought Green Flash in bottles was a good idea. The week before that, he was showing me pictures of the new chairs the pub will get in a few weeks. I have rarely seen a grown man so excited by chairs.

Of course, it’s not just about the beer. He’s managed to hire good people and keep them on. All of the bartenders have been there since the day the pub opened, which is something I don’t believe I’ve seen elsewhere. Turnover amongst the servers is fairly low as well. The food continues to improve, having gotten to the point where it’s near becoming a gastropub. I’ve gotten to the point where I trust them enough that I just order the special if I’m staying for dinner.

If you ask people about the beer scene in Toronto fifteen years ago, they’d probably mention that the Bow and Arrow was one of the highlights and that its sister pub The Woolwich Arms in Guelph was great too. I was at the Bow and Arrow fifteen years ago, and I can tell you that the Twisted Kilt is better than the Bow and Arrow ever was. It hit that mark about three months ago and it’s climbing steadily. It bustles. Wednesday through Saturday, it hums the way a neighbourhood pub ought to. They’re going to have to open the second floor.

Sometimes, I have tried to get some writing done at the table in the upstairs window. It has never led to productivity.

Sometimes, I have tried to get some writing done at the table in the upstairs window. It has never led to productivity.

It took me a long time to write about The Twisted Kilt because there are really appealing qualities in having a neighbourhood pub that isn’t a destination. For one thing, it is just barely sparsely populated enough that I usually get the same stool. That’s not going to last forever. It keeps getting better in minutely perceptible ways on a weekly basis and eventually quality will out. As a beer nerd, it’s fun to watch the progression. For me, it’s practically like a spectator sport. I don’t know that it’s one of the best pubs in the city yet, but if it keeps ticking along as it has it will be soon.

 

 

Posted in: Reviews, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: ,

The LCBO Dupont Brewery Feature

April 22, 2013 4:12 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

Probably the most interesting thing about the currently available LCBO brewery feature is the fact that many of the beers from Brasserie Dupont are not as easily quantifiable as past featured breweries.

If you look, for instance, at one of the first brewery features from Tree Brewing in British Columbia, many of the styles that were on offer were relatively accessible. They had a dopplebock, a hefeweizen, a double IPA and a raspberry porter. There’s not much to be said against any of these beers, pleasing as they were. They are relatively accessible styles and fairly easily explained. Dopplebock is covered annually during lent. Hefeweizen is quite popular as a summer staple. You might need a double IPA explained to you if you’re new on the scene and have never read a blog.

The brewery feature from Shipyard featured big American bruisers. The Norrebro Brygghus and Nogne features had some less easily explained standouts (I’m thinking specifically of the Nogne Underlig Jul, which is a sort of Christmas Ale by way of Scandinavia and contains some interesting spice additions).

The brewery feature program has been a success, but I think that this is partly because the offerings are not particularly daunting. That goes more or less out the window with Brasserie Dupont, especially since the average beer drinker will need it explained to them exactly why the brewery, which specializes in Saison, a style that is really only beginning to have representation on Ontario shelves, is held in such high regard.

From what I’ve seen of the Brasserie Dupont lineup, the beers don’t really seem bothered to confine themselves to particular sets of guidelines. This is one of the real strengths of Belgian ales. The brewers don’t really care to restrict themselves, being far more interested in just making something that they like. Look at BJCP sections 16 and 18 which define Belgian Ales. There’s so much variation within each of the subcategories that the categorization can only ever really be a loose approximation. It’s an attempt to categorize knowledge systemically through imposition. It’s useful as an intellectual tool, but probably not reflective of reality, which has a bias against rigid categorization.

That said, the Dupont beers wind a bit farther afield than some, probably because of the house yeast character. The Saison yeast ferments hot and creates a lot of ester and a certain amount of authentic Wallonian funk. Average ale yeasts will ferment optimally between about 58 and 74 degrees. Dupont Saison yeast is up in the range of 80-95 for best results. I remember the first attempt Great Lakes made at fermenting with Saison yeast, buying into the romance of the thing about brewing in March for a summer beer. The ambient temperature in the brewery wouldn’t let it work at the high temperature, even with space heaters pointed at it. (Eventually they got it and those beers are doing extremely well.)

The result is a pretty phenolic experience. It doesn’t have the “horse blanket” thing that Brettanomyces does. There is a suggestion of damp, fermenting hay. I think Saison is a good deal closer to Sheep Pen than Horse Blanket. There’s a suggestion of damp spring drying out for summer if that makes any sense; of the dust rising from earth that is giving up the last of its moisture in the sun. These things can all be experienced on a hot late may day at Riverdale Farm.

The Monk’s Stout is the least alcoholic of these offerings at 5.2% alcohol and I think that it’s probably closest to being a dry stout, and the yeast character comes across relatively mildly, leaving an impression of roast character. It’s not the most approachable of the Dupont beers currently available in Ontario by a long chalk, but it’s an interesting variation on what would be a traditional style if made by another brewery.

The Cervesia seems to me to be a sweeter version of Dupont’s Saison, retaining much of the carbonation and character of the original. The additional sugar seems to bring out slightly more floral character and it leans towards the territory of Strong Blonde Ale or even a Tripel (but without the additional graininess.

The Moinette Brune (for which my tasting notes mysteriously include the phrase “oooh, I went”) is an extremely interesting representation of the difference that a brewer’s house yeast can make in a relatively standard style. It pours more red than brown, with a fairly vibrant head. There’s the fig, brown malt flavour and a small amount of chocolate that you would typically experience in a Belgian brown ale, but the yeast dries it out slightly and seems to make those robust flavours more subtle. Because of that there’s an initial surge of the flavour that you expect which then fades gradually to the finish.

That said, I think that the most interesting beer in this release is the Biere de Miel, which is apparently an organic product. The brewery at Hainaut has apparently always had apiaries nearby, so it makes sense that it should be used in their beer as it was prior to the takeover of the brewery by the Dupont family. For me, the really interesting part is that there is a pronounced spearmint character in amongst the floral highlights. I don’t know exactly where that comes from. There are hops that give off a mint character, but usually it is not this pronounced. I end up wondering whether the honey used in brewing was taken from a colony of bees that were pollenating spearmint, since there are differences in flavour between colonies reared next to clover or alfalfa or blueberries. When you add this to the hints of apricot and lemon, I begin to wonder whether this might not pair particularly well with a Mediterranean dish, either from Spain or possibly Greece. I really can’t recommend the Biere de Miel highly enough, especially given that Dupont has done what would be basically unthinkable in Canada: They’ve made a honey beer a highlight of their repertoire.

Posted in: Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Beer and Food: Goose Island and Nota Bene

April 14, 2013 9:19 pm ⋅ 20 Comments ⋅

The other day, I was invited to a lunch launching a couple of Goose Island’s beers in Canada. Specifically, Matilda and Sofie. The Goose Island property is a contentious one, and to attempt to relate the details of the lunch without at least acknowledging some basic facts about the brand and about their perception would reek of incompletion.

As most beer nerds (and I suspect relatively few other people) know, Goose Island was bought out by AB InBev a couple of years ago for about 40 million bucks. Some of the existing personnel have changed over. John Hall, the original owner, stepped down as CEO. Greg Hall, who was the brewmaster is now making craft cider.

There was outcry about the purchase. People swore up and down that they’d never drink the stuff again. Then there was an announcement that some of the beer would be brewed in upstate New York. Again, people more or less lost their minds.

It has been about two years since the takeover, and for better or worse, I had never managed to get to Chicago when it was under the old ownership. I have no platonic ideal of what the product ought to be to compare it to. For me, it holds no sentimental value. I feel like I’m relatively well equipped to talk about the beer and the food that was paired with it without a whole lot of bias.

So, that being said, let’s have a look at what’s going on here.

I'll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

I’ll say one thing for goblet style glasses: they lend your beer a sense of gravitas. A sippy cup would simply not cut it.

The launch took place at Nota Bene at lunchtime, and the beer and food pairings were designed by their chef, David Lee. It seems that the beers are more or less exclusive to Nota Bene until the end of April (although, I have heard reports of them popping up in other quarters.) According to a representative for AB InBev, Matilda and Sofie should hit liquor stores the week of April 29th, with other brands following in the nearish future.

The concept of a beer launch in Toronto that is restricted to a restaurant, as opposed to a pub or bar is something of a rarity. I don’t recall that happening before. Even a single location launch is practically unheard of. I believe this to be because of the specialized nature of the Goose Island Vintage Ales. I’m sure that you could drink them by themselves, but they cry out for food. This is not because there is some hole in the flavour profile that needs to be filled, but rather because there is so much nuance throughout. Food teases things out of them.

Take Sofie, for instance, a Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale. It’s a Saison with brettanomyces and it’s aged in neutral oak barrels for three months. Neutral oak, as it was explained, essentially means that the barrels were used for wine at one point, but have been re-used frequently enough that they now only impart oak flavour. The aroma is huge with pear and pepper and tropical fruit and wheat and the mildest touch of barnyard. On the palate it diffuses into ripe peach and kiwi and passion fruit and honey. It finishes dry and is dangerously more-ish. The carbonation is vivacious.P1020516

It was paired here with Poached Nova Scotia Lobster with a Citrus Vinaigrette, Pineapple-Vanilla Reduction, A Foam made from the beer itself and um… Crispies.

Now, the lobster is rich and the carbonation cuts right through that, but there’s nothing particularly revelatory about pairing seafood with saison. Where David Lee’s pairing shines is on the understanding of the periphery. It might seem overly elaborate to include a foam and a reduction and a vinaigrette on the same plate, but all of them hit different tones in the beer. The Pineapple-Vanilla reduction is especially clever because if there’s even a mild note of vanillin from the barrels, it will highlight it. Not mentioned in the brief on the menu was the bed of what I believe were enoki mushrooms. I had never considered it previously, but there is probably some umami component in a bottle conditioned beer that resonates there, creating a detail in pairing that is somehow more about commonality in mouthfeel than flavour. A trick I had never seen before.

Matilda is a Belgian Pale Ale, but no less complex. The aroma I picked up off of it, aside from the cloves and some other baking spice which likely derive from the yeast were stewed apple and possibly persimmon. The hops are Saaz and Styrian Golding, and there’s this quality of depth to it reminiscent of some English Pale Ales which I can really best describe as forest floor; that hint of herbal dampness in brisk autumn.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I've tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

Matilda is so much clearer than other belgian pale ales I’ve tried that at first I assumed that it would be more like a Belgian Amber. I was wrong.

It was paired with a Suckling Pig and Boudin Noir tart with Maple-Smoked Bacon, Mushrooms, Arugula and Truffle Vinaigrette.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn't that clever? I don't know if he intended it that way, but I'm given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

See how the arugula is reminiscent of Oak leaves? Isn’t that clever? I don’t know if he intended it that way, but I’m given to understand that authorial intent died with modernism.

Looking back now at the plating, I wonder whether David Lee came to the same conclusion I did: Matilda is an Autumn. From the plating up through the pastry to the mushrooms to the staggering variety of pork, he’s practically recreating that forest floor, layer by layer. The suckling pig is (and I hate to use the word) unctuous and the boudin is surprisingly light. The bacon and crackling are, I suspect, just there to round out the concept of the pig rooting for truffles. It is not so much a pairing of beer and food as an evocation of October.

You can see why they chose Nota Bene. David Lee should really be doing this kind of thing more frequently, as he clearly has some insights into how pairing beer and food should work.

As to the Goose Island beers, let me say this, if you’re concerned about the takeover: Both Matilda and Sofie are lovely, complex beers. If you’ve had them before, I would advise to seriously consider should you find there to have been a decrease in quality, whether it is imagined. If you haven’t had them before, you’re in for a treat.

As for the launch at Nota Bene, I have to suggest to you that I have not seen anyone pair to the whole flavour profile of a beer like David Lee. The specialty menu is on until April 30th.

Posted in: Beer and Food, Reviews ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

In Which I Plug The Brewer’s Plate

April 11, 2013 4:47 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

I’m sitting here and I’m trying to come up with an interesting and insightful way to plug The Brewer’s Plate.

I mean, you could go with “It’s one of the premiere events of the Toronto beer scene!” or “It just keeps getting bigger and better!” or “I know $125.00 seems like a bit of a spend, but it’s a better value than last year since there’s even more stuff!” or “They support a marvelous charity called Not Far From The Tree that you should look at!” or “Jamie Kennedy’s going to be there, and he’s a pretty nice guy” or “Hey, wanna learn about beer and food?! This is the place to do it!”

Any or all of these things would be accurate things to say about it. I could plug previous editions that I’ve written about, like the one from two years ago at the Wychwood Artscape Barns. That was a nice day, except for the rather startling man on stilts trying to navigate through an increasingly compact throng.

But the truth is that just about everyone has already done it.  I was asked if I’d get the word out about the event, and unfortunately, I just couldn’t figure out a way to make it play nationally in the newspaper, because I suspect there’s nothing worse than reading about an event you really want to go to in another province that you can’t possibly get to. I mean, there’s some disgruntled foodie in Edmonton who’s looking at that if it’s an article and thinking “Curse your eyes, Jordan St. Whatsit, you slightly tipsy scribbler! This is not relevant to my interests in an immediate way although possibly we could steal the idea!”

I mean, I can’t even give it the Craft Beer Advent Calendar treatment with the bad doggerel. What am I going to do, rhyme it in Homeric couplets? It would be a challenge to try that with some of the chefs’ last names. Karen Vaz for instance could only merit Hudibrastic poetry given that she works at the Rebel House (and even then only if you’re a cockney). There was a brief appeal in that Barbara Frum and Atrium seem like a natural.

The brewer’s plate is going to be excellent. I don’t know exactly what the highlights are going to be. There are celebrity chefs in addition to the regular chefs this year.  There are more regular chefs than there were last year! One of them is Howard Dubrovsky, who cooked what was possibly the best beer and food pairing event I’ve ever been to! His seafood chowder was so good I considered offering him an involuntary unpaid internship at St.John’s Wort.

There’s so much stuff that you’ll never get through all of it. There’s just no chance. You could be three people and you’d still never manage it. There’s a silent auction! You might win stuff! It’s going to be exciting. There’s going to be music and people and entertainment and slightly drunken revelry and people are going to have a really, really good time.

So buy a ticket already and send a shirt to the dry cleaners. It’s going to be awesome!

Posted in: Beer and Food, Shameless Plugs ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

In Which I Break My Arm

April 4, 2013 9:52 am ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

Infrequently, I write about things other than beer. This is one of those times.

About six weeks ago, I suffered a fracture of the greater tuberosity of the humerus. That’s the sort of knurl of the bone in your upper arm that attaches your bicep and rotator cuff. I had long wondered, having watched a deal of Sportscentre, exactly what the rotator cuff was. It turns out that it is the part of your arm that allows you a free range of motion. Say you want to get something off a high shelf or take off your jacket without having your face contort into a rictus of agony or lift your arm very, very slightly; that’s part of what the rotator cuff does.

I know what you’re thinking: He’s a beer writer. Probably he was incapacitated with drink at the time of the accident. Possibly it’s the result of a drunken bar room brawl.

There is no such story. The truth of the matter is that it was a fluke accident caused in total sobriety by a patch of black ice. I had recently discovered that I prefer anchovies to bacon on toast for breakfast and was on the way to the store to purchase both. It was six in the morning and I wasn’t even hungover.

I don’t suppose that the majority of people get to 32 without having experienced so much as a hangnail. That was approximately the expected life span in the medieval period. I thought that it might be instructive to share with you some of the things that I have learned as a result of the experience.

1.)

  • There is a portion of the BBC television program Last Chance To See in which Stephen Fry manages to fall rather awkwardly off a gangway in the middle of South America. He was on his way to visit the river dolphins in order to track conservation efforts. It is a program worth seeing if you’re interested in endangered animals, Stephen Fry or sexually frustrated parrots. Objectively, the most unexpected moment in the series is Stephen Fry breaking his arm as a result of his attempt to get on a boat. He is as polite as it is possible to be under the circumstances, and I had always wondered whether, when faced with the sudden catastrophic pain that accompanied the injury, he was playing it down out of either staid Englishness or whether he knew that the cameras were rolling and wanted to avoid profanity so that there would at least be usable pre-watershed footage.

As it turns out, profanity is a vastly overrated thing in these types of situations. While the discovery that you’re out of mustard may provoke a volley of four letter words, and a series of strikeouts from your favorite baseball team might engender new and interesting portmanteau vulgarities, cursing will do you no good as you lie on the ground considering what you have just done to your ankle and shoulder. I am pleased to say that after approximately thirty seconds of consideration, I expressed a hearty “botheration.”

2)

  • “When the house is on fire one forgets even the dinner–Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes.” – Nietschze, Beyond Good and Evil

This is to say that despite what would turn out to be a minor debilitating ailment, I went and bought the bread for toast anyway. You can learn a lot about yourself with a broken arm, not the least lesson of which was that I wasn’t going to let the situation be a total loss. For reference, Anchovy tins are difficult to open one-armed.

3)

  • If you suffer a really painful injury, the doctors in Emerg will prescribe something for the pain. In my case it was Percocet 325/5. Initially, I joked with people that I might do a review of Percocet in the style of a beer review (drying on the palate with a constipatory finish). It turns out that I hate Percocet, but at least the results were predictable. Even a single one would knock me completely out. On the way to approximately four hours of lying there in complete stillness would come the terrible aural hallucinations. I dispensed with the Percocet on day three, discovering that no amount of water or fibre or coffee would relieve their most commonly experienced side effect. Also, since they contain acetaminophen, beer is more or less out of the question. Terrible stuff. If you’re ever in a position where you find yourself taking them, my suggestion is to wean yourself off them as quickly as possible.

4)You will have taken for granted by now that you will be able to perform certain everyday actions indefinitely and without complaint. Without thinking about it, you have probably attributed to one hand or the other various of your day to day tasks. You might lather your hair left handed when shampooing. You might carry your keys in your left pocket despite being a righty. You might well use your left hand to push the buttons for the elevator. It should go without saying that breaking your arm means that you will have, for the first time in years, to think about how you carry out simple actions on a day to day basis.

For instance, if Barry Pletch drops by with a package of St.Ambroise products (Pale Ale now in Cans! Somehow more assertively aromatic! What a triumph for St.Ambroise!) and you put a bottle of Oatmeal Stout in the fridge door for later and completely forget about it whilst going to attempt some other activity easily accomplished while invalided like, oh, I don’t know, breathing gently or staring out the window, you might find very quickly that the situation requires thought. Or, at least it should have done.

What happens in reality is that you open the fridge right handed, reach in left handed, jolt with pain upon realizing that you cannot, in fact, do that, but not before having upset the bottle with the action causing it to shatter on the kitchen floor. You will spend the next thirty minutes painfully re-learning how to use a mop while trying to decide whether to attempt to pick up the broken glass or simply abandon that section of the apartment indefinitely.

Similarly, bath time was a challenge. If you decide that you wish to soak your rather badly sprained ankle with a broken arm, you will need to put more thought into it than usual, with an especial emphasis upon getting into and out of the tub. Of course, it’s likely that you will not plan out such a simple activity, taking for granted that everything will go to plan.

It turns out that gently lowering yourself into the tub is a feat really only made possible by the fact that you usually have two working arms. This doesn’t even begin to cross your mind until gravity has made itself known. It is said that Archimedes yelled Eureka upon entering his bath. I contented myself with an unintentional cannonball, an “oh, bugger”, and the knowledge that the ceiling was probably due for cleaning anyway.

In short, your day to day life will become a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption designed solely with your inconvenience in mind.

5) Having healed up nearly completely, I will say this: I hadn’t used the emergency room in Canada since I had an ear infection on a family holiday in Montreal in about 1993. Encountering it for the first time as an adult, I have to say how marvelous it is that we live in a country where you’re unlikely to go bankrupt if you suffer an accident. I read stories from the United States about the number of people who find themselves suddenly struck with inexorable debt caused by medical services when they are hit by a car or tumble down the stairs. In some parts of the USA, the injury I suffered would probably have cost something like $5,000 dollars without taking follow ups or prescriptions into account.

I know that my experience wasn’t typical. I went to Sunnybrook Emerg at a non peak time and spent maybe 75 minutes there from admission to X-Ray to scheduled fracture clinic follow up. That’s low for the system. I have had three follow up visits with the fracture clinic at Sunnybrook, all of which have been relatively painless (although hospital waiting rooms remain a mostly featureless void where the life cycle of magazines comes to an end). The most expensive part of the entire procedure was the prescription for Percocet, which came out to something less than twenty bucks.

I know that these services are not free. We pay for them through our taxes. We’re lucky to be able to do so. When they argue about Obamacare in the US, you will periodically see Canada pointed out as a negative example because our medical system might require a longer waiting period for conditions with complex diagnoses or long term consequences. We should work on that. The simple fact of the matter is that if you’re in Canada and you suffer a serious, comparatively routine injury or illness, you will be seen to in short order and you will not have to consider upon how to pay for it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. If that’s not something we can be proud of as a country, I don’t know what is.

Posted in: Non Beer Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , ,