Monday, February 23rd

The week before you start a new job should be filled with preparation, and it has to some extent. I’m spring cleaning, which takes some doing when it’s too cold to air the place out properly. At some point you have to decide what’s Breweriana and what’s just an empty bottle. Do you really need the entire run of empties of Fuller’s Vintage Ale Bottles from 2006 to 2019? Wouldn’t you rather be able to store an extra couple of pairs of shoes in the front hall cupboard? 

I remember talking to Larry Sherk at Eastbound when he would pop in there for Mussels on Wednesday. This wasn’t that long ago, but a bowl of mussels for six bucks seems like a big deal from 2026. Larry lived around the corner and was a terrific collector of brewing artifacts. He donated his collection of Canadian beer labels to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at U of T. He told me that his entire basement was filled with cardboard boxes full of carefully arranged bottles and cans. I think those eventually went to Niagara College, but I have no idea where they might be. Probably in the storage shed next to the Cannabunker somewhere. 

I think the donations were probably certified by some actuary and counted against the taxes for the last years of Larry’s life. It’s a neat trick. I don’t even claim beer as an expense. The accounting would be worse than a hangover.

Speaking of taxes, since it’s nearly time to file, I’m spending a not inconsiderable amount of time thinking about T4 forms and when they might arrive. Later than usual this year, which speaks to low staffing levels even in the accounting division. 

Tuesday, February 24th

The mornings find me essentially housebound as deliveries are inbound that require a signature. ID and computer peripherals. The kind of things that you don’t want to leave in a midtown lobby. Somewhere between organizing the email inbox to streamline the various projects that are on the go and editing a dwindling number of chapters, I’m able to interview Kevin Head. 

Trying to add verisimilitude and colour to a narrative is difficult, especially if you’re looking for eyewitness accounts of things that happened in the 1970’s. Fortunately, the drugs were weaker then except for the acid and the musicians tended towards beer. Kevin Head was in charge at the open mic night at Ginger’s in Halifax in the decade before they installed the brewery and it does have a little Hejira to it, the detail of having a landing pad in a disused rooming house above a stevedore bucket of blood. No regrets, Coyote. 

He’s about the nicest man I’ve talked to this year, and his memories have trapped the place in amber to the extent that you can smell the beer soaking into the floorboards. Hearing Kevin talk, I can picture Ginger’s in operation, which I hadn’t been able to do before. I bet they had wooden captains chairs so you couldn’t lift them to fight with them. Low oak tables. I finally got an explanation of the split level layout and stories of the musicians who played there and which waiters would jive with the customers while carrying a tray of schooners. 

Memory is interesting. During lockdown, since there was no new sensory input, I started getting unprompted practically Proustian flashbacks. I swear I could smell memories. Denuded silver maples in August heat on the south bank of the Thames walking towards Blackfriars. The slightly figgy raisiny tobacco of Gauloises Bleues rising from a futon. The scent of freshly mown grass from the porch of the cricket pavilion at the Upper School as the Pink Floyd pig drifts over head.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder and they say familiarity breeds contempt and they say how can I miss you if you won’t go away? Recall is hard for a lot of people. You have to have been in the moment, and a lot of people can’t imprint memory that way. A lot of people never learn to be present. I can sometimes appear aloof in professional settings because I am recording. I jot notes through meetings to focus. I think you can learn it. Kevin’s a musician and probably got it through osmosis. You have to watch the band.

Do yourself a favour. Next time you see your loved ones and friends, really try to see them. Could you describe them physically? What colour are their eyes? How many wrinkles did they gain since last time you saw them? Sometimes the familiar just become a shape you take for granted. Take five minutes and sit and try to describe something as minutely as you can. Anything. It’s hard, but it gets easier. It’s a gift you can give yourself. 

Wednesday, February 25th

I should quite like to file my taxes since I’m expecting a refund, but Turbotax needs to update forms. It’s the kind of thing they probably ought to have mentioned before getting me to fork over the moolah. I’m exploring alternatives when additional supplies arrive delivered by the postman. Keep the boxes, the instructions suggest. Alright, but where? The amount of storage in a midtown one bedroom is minimal and the chaise longue is already surrounded. 

The editing push is on and we’re down to eschatology. Since I start full time with Statistics Canada on Monday, I want to get the majority of the work on Ron’s book done before then. I had always envisioned getting most of it done by April, but we’ve had to move it up a month. Naturally, the hardest bits to write are the bits that I wasn’t around for. When The Granite started brewing in Halifax, I was four. Ron was there periodically, but he never ran the place. Of course we have left these until last. 

There are bits that are leftover and they worry me. At one point we’d discussed recipes, but that might be superfluous. Why give away the secrets of the lamb curry? Get the punters in. We should talk about some of the charitable works The Granite has done, but how do we get that to flow and is the chapter going to be an awkward length? Get the manuscript formed up and worry about the seams later. 

There are interruptions. One of my bosses from an old job asks if I can fill in temporarily. Where was he in January? I have to decline. People want references for job applications, which I happily provide. An invoice payment appears just before the apartment runs out of toilet paper, which is the kind of winter it has been. 

Thursday, February 26th

Editing continues. Samples of coffee from Rampage Coffee in Saskatchewan are proving to be a mixed bag. I’m a little leery of the extra caffeine package. At 20, maybe I would have ordered a red-eye, but I’m plenty jittery now. Maybe the cold brew first.

Friday, February 27th

I have to prepare for Tripel Day. I’m giving a talk at The Granite’s event for International Tripel Day. I’m meant to introduce beer tasting to people who have signed up to drink ten Tripel samples. The chance they have some experience is significant. If you went too generic, you’d miss their level.

It is finally warm enough to cover some distance, so I hie down to Summerhill to pick up significantly marked down groceries at The Harvest Wagon and the Tripels I have to walk people through at the event. Westmalle and Chimay. 

It’s hard to know what tack to take here. You could get them to taste the beers individually, but I decide while reading up on the beers that it’s probably a good opportunity to explain how beer styles change over time with people’s thought processes. Beer is about people, after all.

Westmalle Tripel has candi sugar and whole cone hops (although the monks are maintaining a vow of silence over exactly which ones. Styrian goldings and Tettnang, at least.) and it tastes like beer from the 1950’s, which it is. The recipe is from 1956, amended from an earlier version in 1934. Ripe banana and pear drop ethyl acetate, but under that a lot of herbal interest because it’s 38 IBU and even with the yeast doing a lot of lifting, the peppery snap isn’t just from the phenolics. There’s rosemary and maybe a little thyme in there and Michael Jackson says orange peel in his book and who am I to gainsay that guy? He had the same stage back in 1993, so respect where it’s due.

Chimay White, on the other hand, is a victim of scientific advances and uses hop extract, which would have been a good idea in the 1960’s. It’s a 1966 model, so the suggestion in research is that it might have been Cluster hop extract. It’s got wheat starch and dextrose instead of candi sugar, so it comes across a little flatter and a little earthier. The carb is still high, but you lose a lot of nuance. Here’s the difference. To me, Westmalle seems vibrant and evocative. Chimay seems powdery and a little dusty. I still enjoy it, but it’s a less nuanced conversation. It’s the difference between a country lane verged with wildflowers and a parched dirt road. 

Now all you gotta do is remember all of that, throw in self deprecating jokes, and remember the names of various monastic prayer hours. And all before Compline. 

Saturday, February 28th

Although I have spent eight years standing in front of people teaching them about beer, I haven’t done it since December and I am rusty. It went ok, but I think I was losing them on the transition to explaining the scoresheet. You can win them back with the explanation that this is purely hedonic ranking, that whatever you like is the correct answer for you, and that there is no wrong answer. You can also get them back onside by letting them transition from tasting to drinking.

Of course there’s a right answer. Before the event I said to Mike Sawchuk that I thought Meuse Brewing had an unfair advantage because they’re from the Netherlands, Mischa has a lot of experience with the style, and they actually bottle their product. Sure enough, with a large enough audience, they proved me right. I love those nerds. I think I still owe Estelle a copy of Goodnight Moon for the wee bairn. 

The room was full of people I know, some of whom I’d taught. April Carreira turned up and it was lovely to see her. She managed the taproom at Waterloo after breaking in with Great Lakes. One of the things about being a teacher is that your students go off and accomplish things on their own and you get to be proud of them. It’s good to tell them. Ask yourself when the last time someone said that to you. Everyone likes that, especially if it’s earned. 

As you may have intuited, this gig can get a little isolated. Three different people turned up with things for me, all unprompted. Derek Beaton turned up with a Sierra Nevada Pilsner and a Sam Adams Pumpernickel Dunkel. Ed, one of my more recent students (I always think of him as Fast Eddie. Couldn’t tell you why), brought me a Red IPA from Common Good to get my opinion. There was also a vintage Upper Canada Brewing glass with a quote from Cervantes on it from a nice young man whose name I didn’t catch. I blame the seventh sample of Tripel, as does the Cervantes quote: 

“Drink moderately, for drunkenness neither keeps a secret, nor observes a promise.” 

Hay más mal en el aldea que se sueña, apparently. You’d like to go home, but you’ve been at home all week and working away, and besides, you know everybody, at least in that parasocial instagrammy sort of way. Something like a quarter of the 3 p.m. crowd end up shutting the place down at last call having switched judiciously to lower strength English beers. I guess it is a bit like Ginger’s after all. 

Sunday, March 1st

Editing. Too cold to go out. Called mom on her Birthday. 80. Will have to do something about a present when there is a paycheque. Thankfully, she’s quite understanding about the current strictures. Besides, what do you get someone who has everything? Certainly not any more china, for goodness sake.