PGP 5.0: Once There Was A Pub Game In My Town…

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So, aside from the fact that I was not a contestant in the Wellie Boot Chuck and that I walked by the Wellie Boot Chuck to actually go to the pub, I thought the Wellie Boot Chuck at one of my favorite pubs on the planet went rather well. See, I was under the impression that the boot chucking was done in the street in front of the pub and under some sadly false illusion that the view of the chucking could take place with an oatmeal stout in hand. No. Twas not to be. And, see, there was a 37 second walk from the stout to the chuck and I was more focused on the stout. So… we were in the pub. But I am pro-boot-chuck and, of course, pro-charity so it was not the pub, it was not the chucking… it was me. If you appreciate that you will understand everything.

And science can teach us things even when we don’t wish to learn. So, what do we learn from the Kingston Brew Pub‘s rubber boot throwing? First, it does not take a lot to put together a good pub game.

Frankly, the silliness adds to it all. Secondly, a pub game can be good for the community even if it is good and silly. I don’t know how much was raised for charity but it was likely more than your pub raised… definitely more than I raised. Third… it’s throwing a boot in public as your appetizer for a little craft ale. I would have thought that was your secret wish in life. And not just because it’s mine.

To be clear – we did walk by and see the crowd of wellie chuckers. It was a lovely Saturday afternoon and the wind was still providing for the prospect of a great chuck. A lovely sight was made by smiling happy chuckers filling the air with wellies. What I want to know is this – why more pubs don’t do this? Perhaps they do.

PGP 4.0: Is There An Anti-Pub Game Movement?

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I think the Pub Game Project is the only beer related movement which has taken off with less haste than Lew’s recently reinvigorated Session Beer Project, now with its own blog and Facebook group. No time for social networking with the PGP as the only digital handiwork it should ever give rise to is a good round of shove ha’penny. Yet apparently (but much to my surprise) the PGP actually has enemies in very high places in Maryland:

A veteran state senator has abandoned his effort to ban drinking games such as beer pong and flip cup in Baltimore City bars in the face of a growing online lobbying effort. Sen. George W. Della Jr., a Baltimore Democrat, said such games encourage excessive drinking, which leads to raucous behavior in city neighborhoods. A bill he introduced late last month would have outlawed any games that award drinks as prizes in city taverns.

Wow! And the synopsis of the proposed law provided by the State Senate is even grimmer characterizing it as: “prohibiting a holder of a retail alcoholic beverages license or owner or operator of a bottle club from allowing drinking games or contests on the premises.” What is a drinking game? Darts where the loser buys drinks? What other pub games could fall under this law?

Sure, this is aimed at beer pong and is stoked by incidents like the banning of the game by universities. But this clearly goes further as the text of the bill itself indicates: warning, pdf! The proposed section 21-105.1(B) states that no license holder may allow the playing of

…a game commonly known as beer pong or any other game or contest that involves drinking alcoholic beverages or the awarding of drinks of alcoholic beverages as prizes.

I read that as very broad and going well beyond beer pong or drinks as prizes. Oddly, the proposed law applies only to Baltimore but, if violated, a licensee could be fined or even have their license pulled for allowing this somewhat commonplace if not traditional pastime. People playing games as they are enjoying drinks – even games involving drinks. Must be wicked.

It all reminds me of the steps taken in mid-1600s England to ban the toasting to the health of this politician or that member of royalty – not because it was unhealthy and led to over drinking and not because it was loud. It was because it was suspected as being seditious. Whisperers. Pamphleteers. Are these beer pong players, these darts for beer gangs, these shove ha’penny men not the same thing, the beginning of a modern day thin edge of a wedge? Never mind of what the wedge consists. Those kinds of questions might raise eyebrows. Best to know your place if you know what’s good for you. Wouldn’t want to be known as a pub gamer.

Another Reason To Not Visit A Wetherspoon Pub

Pete and Jeff and most of the other British bloggers I follow regularly trash the JD Wetherspoon chain. I may never have the chance to go to one but this story from Portsmouth, England gives us all another reason never go if you could:

Two Marines were refused entry to their local pub the day after fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan because their military ID wasn’t good enough. Dan Buchanan and Kelvin Billings were gagging for a homecoming pint and brandished their ID – which includes their date of birth – when they were stopped at the door. But the pair were then stunned to be told it was not acceptable. Buchanan, 21, said: “I was putting my life on the line for Britain a day before and that didn’t count for anything. We were disgusted and angry.”… A spokesman for JD Wetherspoon said it only accepts a passport, driving licence or UK citizen card as valid ID.

I am a little surprised that beer and the military seems to have become a minor theme around here. I wonder if it is because we are an army town here, too, and I am used to seeing young people in camouflage walking around town and sitting in the pubs all the time. Plus, there is nothing more irritating that an organization deciding that it will determine when you are what you plainly are in law and in fact. These two people were clearly of age, were able to identify themselves as being in “their local” and likely could have established their age in a bazillion different ways – never mind the fact that they were just back from the front and likely ought to not have paid for one beer that night. Shame.

So, like them, why not consider yourself barred by Wetherspoon as well. Badge of honour as far as I can tell.

The Pub Game Project: Pub Conkers!

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I think I only know about conkers because I am the child of immigrants. When I was little, grandpa came over from Scotland and was quite pleased to see that the schoolyard had a chestnut tree. Away he went picking up the windfalls and – all personal ethics and the Conkers Association rules being apparently damned – he soaked them in vinegar and baked them in the oven. After stealing all my Dad’s shoelaces, he drilled a neat hole in each horse chestnut and sent us off first to teach the game in the playground and then destroy hopes of all our elementary school classmates through unleashing the doctered nuts on the unsuspecting.

Apparently, some dreams are harder to dash as this story shows:

The Eagle pub in Askew Road, Shepherd’s Bush, held the tournament on Sunday which was attended by around 20 people…General manager Linda Sjogren said: “People were cheering the contestants on, there was lots of enthusiasm. “One of our regulars had collected about 60 conkers from a secret location. We still have some left over.”

The winner got a free pint a week for a year. Note: 20 contestants. Good news that it does not take a large crowd to actually pull off something so pleasantly batty in any given pub. Good also to know that there is a World Conker’s Championship held each fall in case your ambitions aim even a bit higher still.

Maine: Novare Res, Off Of Exchange Street, Portland

While in Maine, I headed out one night with pals who lived there to find a new Belgian beer bar that I had heard plenty about – Novare Res. We had a bit of trouble finding the place at night as it sits in a mid block courtyard near the corner of Exchange and Middle Streets in the old port part of town but once we found the right alley we were in for a treat. Set up with two main sections, a beer celler as well as a courtyard beer garden, Novare Res provides a layout that will work on a stinking hot Saturday afternoon or a stormy winter night. Inside, it’s brick with new Ikea-esque pale pine laminate on the benches and tabletops. Very comfortable.

There is a solid draft line up, from which I picked a Monk’s Flemish as well as a Bernardus 12 for one of the company. The food selection is limited to cold cuts and cheese plates but that was fine with me – though the lack of Belgian fies gave a moment’s concern. This approach must help keep costs down, however, as the real feature is how reasonably priced everything is. Our waiter was friendly, interested in knowing what we knew about beer and a keener herself – I got to explain that “oudbeitje” sounds a lot like “ode bitchie” but with less bite and a bit of a loopy “yee” sound at the end. Prices? I will have to check my receipt, still out in the car, but I think a full measure of Bernardus 12 was $7.49. The De Ranke XX we split was close in price to what I would expect to pay at a retail bottle shop like Tully’s. Verdict? Go.

The Sort Of Pub I Wish I Lived Near

278I have to admit that I am not exactly a guy with a regular pub. Frankly, when I head to the States on holiday with our pals like I will tomorrow for ten days, I am more likely to have a favorite bar I go to regularly than I would have here. But none are like the pub mentioned at the BBC today, “The Pigs” at Edgefield:

Locals at a village pub in Norfolk are beating the credit crunch by bartering home-grown produce for pints. The Pigs public house, in Edgefield, near Holt, encourages drinkers to contribute to its traditional food menu in return for free alcohol. A sign placed inside the pub reads: “If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, bring it in and let’s do a deal.”

Who wouldn’t want to go to a pub where this could happen: “someone will say ‘that rabbit tasted great’ and we say ‘here, meet the person who shot it’.” But it’s not the food that particularly attracted me when I checked out the pub’s website, it’s the games. Sure there are quizzes, darts, billiards, dominoes and even shove ha’penny but right there to the lower left of the page so generously titled simply “drinking” it says you can play “I Spy“. What better indication of a genial spirit than the invitation to spy with one’s little eye something that begins with “J”.

Following My Bliss In Oswego, New York

Have I mentioned I really dislike the idea of following your passion? It’s so much based on the immediate and the result. “Follow your passion” is what people are told to entice them into entry position IT jobs that never pan out or pull out the credit card to act on the next spontaneous urge. And it smacks of no respect for idleness. No, bliss is the thing. That cooler draw on the heart. The stuff of naps and toes playing in the tidal zone. The part of you that puts mild ahead of extreme double imperial IPA every time. It was a big day. Out the door at eight with one kid to collect another after their first stay-over. The promise of treats for all was a key leverage tactic. I felt like Ron dragging the kids around – but instead of Brussels, I got to go to Oswego, NY, home of C’s Farm Market and King Arthur’s brewpub.

When we got to C’s a little past eleven, I finally got to meet the blissed out (and maybe, OK, even passionate about beer) Dave and Maria who I have been emailing but missing the face to face on for a few years now. A while ago, they have taken the family fruit market and added a beer selection – then they discovered craft and have kept discovering. What I saw yesterday was easily a doubling of shelf space to fine beer with more focus compared to 2006 on US craft than imports. Peaches were placed in the hands of kids as we talked about the trade and their market. They were happy to report that they have seen a matching increase in sales and even mentioned that there was a happy gang from the Ottawa area that seemed to make the trip two or three times a year to full up the trunk. I left with 54 bottles of various sizes and strengths to replenish the stash including the new-to-me brews like Collaboration not Litigation as well as Old Ploughshare Stout and Red Sky At Night saison from Baltimore’s Clipper City. Future plans include tasting sessions starting in the fall. Sadly, under NY state law you need a special license for growler pours and they don’t issue them any more so that dream may have to wait for a while.

Also maybe a little sadly, things looked like they were not as busy over at King Arthur’s, one of my favorite brewpubs in terms of comfortable design, river mouth location and in-house micro-brew selection. Their dream location near the banks of the river in this historic downtown seem to have been undermined lately by a complete rebuild of the Bridge Street bridge. They are now disconnected from the hotel guests a few hundred feet away on the other bank. This may be compounding the pressures on all small brewers as there were only five beers on offer, three of which were flavoured wheats and none of which offered any level of hoppy bite. With my BBQ burger, I tried their 5% Summer Brown which promised a touch of coriander. I thought this was a great twist on a malty mahogany ale with a bit of licorice and treacle coming through the rich nutty graininess. If I say this had shades of HP sauce you need to understand that in the most positive of terms. Very nice beer.

Meta-Beer-Blogging…Or Watching Troy Watch Phin And Paul

BeerBistro! after all the people go to bed.
I had a great time Friday night. It was fun to meet the Southern Tier guys as well as the very dapper Liliana and Vlado, those great folk behind hosts Roland + Russell (who, by the way, I am starting to think were either two dusty Victorian-era sherry broker gents were secretly offed by L/V on their way up the drinks trade…or are the names of their dogs) but the real fun was being unexpectedly surprised. Greg Clow was kind enough to tell me that by times I am too cranky and – you know what – he’s right. I claim to have an excuse, however, as by times I feel like one of those 19th century astronomers trying to figure out the layout of the canals on Mars. I sort of live in a bubble placed some distance from our beery subject matter. I don’t get to these beer dinners, I don’t have access to a swath of great pubs, can’t just pop out to anywhere for a Rochefort of any degree, my nearest craft brewers are two hours drive away and until Friday I had only met one other person into beer writing face to face. I organize family trips around beer hunting and get sleepy around ten pm, too, so closing down BeerBistro was not what I had expected.

As a result, I build up some presumptions. One was that the beer dinner idea was going to be a bit stiff. You have to understand that I am a BBQ in the back yard in frayed hiking shorts kind of guy. When I walked into the Academy of Spherical Arts in jeans and a ball cap – albeit a lovely Adirondack Brewpub one – and saw folk in Toronto casual (aka eastern Ontario dress-up) I was worried. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The table guests from Southern Tier, The Toronto Star, the LCBO beer and marketing groups and R+R made for great company. And the food and beer matching thing was not as lame uninteresting as I feared. I don’t think I will get too much into obsessing over pairings – as I prefer beer as ingredient than a match – but it was really interesting to see how the chocolate dessert reacted with a raspberry wheat altered the beer drastically, removing the grassiness, highlighting the fruit and making for a palate cleanser. The third course, a variation of what I know as Cambodian “Western Style” yam and chicken curry (my education gleaned from Kingston’s excellent Cambodian joints) was also just dandy with the heat of the ST IPA.


The wall o’whisky and whisky’s friends at The Academy

In the end, the food and beer was just a side show to the gathering over beer. It was really about meeting Troy finally and speaking a bit about his plans for his beer writing whether at his blog or TAPS, the recently revived Canadian beer magazine – that’s him taking a photo of Phin DeMink and Paul Cain; putting a face to the name of Cass, the founder of Bar Towel as well as contributors like Harry; speaking with Sheryl Kirby, partner of Greg over at Taste T.O; talking to Josh in the end for hours about the economic tensions that are affecting where craft brewing is going; reusing my old jokes like the time the grade one teacher asked what Daddy did and was told “my Daddy takes pictures of beer!”

The next day I stopped by Church-Key again, making the 50 km detour to Campbellford to pick up some fine local ales. The day was sunny and warm and, because it was Saturday, there were more cars in the parking lot than I had seen before. People were sitting on the porch drinking samples just enjoying John’s beer. The shop was busy. I grabbed a six each of Northumberland Ale and West Coast IPA and drove on home.

Three Days And Three Side Orders Of Onion Rings

gpr6I got to tick two new to me diners off the list during this weekend’s central New York, The Glenwood Pines Restaurant in Ulysses down near Ithaca as well as the Crystal Restaurant in downtown Watertown. I think the first place dates in part from the late ’40s while the second is an all-1920’s kinda spot. I never did take a photo of the quite admirable onion rings at Shorty’s, also in Watertown, though. On Friday night, on the way south, we walked into selection of NY state fish fry specials. I had a slab of haddock on a bun the size of your forearm. I wonder where they got the fish? Maybe Norway.

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Saturday at noon, the double Pinewood special, as illustrated, set me back $8.95 and I had onion rings and battered corn nuggets, too. I had no idea what a battered corn nugget was but that was even more reason to try. Turned out to be a little lump of creamed corn in a sweet dough. gpr4Dandy stuff. I was seriously doubtful of my capacity to suck back the burger but it was delightful with a Genny Cream as the kids played the bowling game. A good place for having a beer as kids run around and the food was particularly good diner grub. Again, very reliable onion ring action.

The Crystal Restaurant was a different kind of experience but certainly still a good joint. As I mentioned, it is pushing 90 years and the interior is all original wood panel and tin ceiling with a deep patina of most of those 90 years worth of smoking. gpr7Warning: the angle of the backs in the wooden booths is particularly Presbyterian. Best diner coffee ever anywhere ever. Great smoky bacon and my hot pork sandwich was as creamy bland as the dish demands. The only way you can get me to eat canned peas is on a hot chicken or pork sandwich. A solid finale to a weekend of onion rings, too. The place is also a little quirky, enhanced to a certain degree by the young soldier, an assistant chaplain no less, who was talking on his cell phone in too loud a voice about how he was going to marry someone just to get an increase in his army pay. He seemed to have it all figured out even though the girl, astonishingly, seemed (according to the tale to which all were subject) to actually get wed to the heel.

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The pre-school girls of one family in their church clothes asked to help the waitress clear the table and they carried their own glasses and plates to the kitchen wearing big excited smiles, maybe like they did every weekend. Anyway, even though the place serves a solid all day breakfast and burgers and such, the bar was a stream of cocktails on a Sunday noon. Manhattans and whiskey on ice were the main drinks. Apparently the Crystal makes an old style hot egg nog or flip sort of thing at Christmas that the locals swear by. Here is an archived NCPR report on the place.

Session 9: When Beer And Music Shaped My Life

sessionlogosmA bit like Greg, when I thought about the topic for this month’s edition of “The Session”, hosted and proposed by Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey, I was initially disappointed as this one’s generality seems to be taking us another notch farther and farther away from the beer and nearer and nearer to a free for all, allowing for a drift towards that glaring lack of attention to detail that any good beer blogger should fear.

Yet the posts so far today have dispelled my fear as has just wallowing in a bit of recollecting. I have to go quite a ways back to a time when music and beer were more closely associated for me. Not as background music either – when one older brother came back from a trip to family in the early ’80’s, his most telling remark was that the British pubs he had visited all seems to have jukeboxes compared to our last trip, the summer of punk in 1977. And they were all playing “Born in the USA”. That’s not music. That’s music in a can.

hfx1-1Stephen Beaumont’s post for the session – or one of them – makes a very good point about the music in a bar being a huge part of the
experience but it is also important to note that canned music is a fairly recent introduction into a lot of bars – a reality of only the last 35-25 years. Even in my youth of the early 80s many Halifax taverns were still only either loud with conversation or had live music. And it was that live music we sought out because we sang, too. Maritime Canadians like me have a capacity for shout-singing a good shanty with the best of them and we sang them in the taverns like the Lower Deck with certain songs being somewhat obligatory like “Barrett’s Privateers” by Stan Rogers and, of course, the cultural anthem “Farewell to Nova Scotia” which usually brought the house down in pubs like the Lower Deck with the long tables being hammered and dimpled by beer glasses keeping the beat, students and guys in the navy sharing their benches and trying to out do each other on the chorus:

God damn them all
I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier,
The last of Barrett’s Privateers

hfx2The music was real and I was making it, the tavern was on a Halifax pier and the beer was then, for the most part, locally brewered draft by regionals Keiths and Moosehead even if a few imports were popping up like Newcastle Brown and the oddly present but welcomed Frydenlund lager from Norway – both also coastal brews. Stephen shares a bit of the flavour of Halifax that from that time, too, in his post:

Then there are times when beer trumps music, as it does in this story told to me many years ago by Kevin Keefe, founder of eastern Canada’s first brewpub, the Granite Brewery in Halifax. Winning Maritimers over to British-style ales wasn’t the easiest of tasks for Kevin, but in doing so he recognized that he would create for himself a sort of captive audience. And so, one by one, he convinced the locals to switch from the regional lagers and bland, blonde ales to his unique dark ales and best bitters, including, eventually, one long-time hold-out we’ll call Alan. Alan was for many months skeptical about the appeal of the Granite’s ales, Kevin told me, but after numerous tastes and talks, finally came around and began to drink the Best Bitter on a regular basis. This continued for some time, up to and including the evening when a hugely popular band was playing in a rival bar, attracting away the bulk of Kevin’s clientele.

Funny. The Alan I knew in the mid-80s of Halifax (me), the one hunting out the best place to belt out the best song at closing time, was starting to enjoy craft beer in a Halifax brewpub that actually pre-dated the one that came to be called the Granite Brewery. As I went on about back here, their equipment was originally at a sort of down at the heels place called Ginger’s which was a few blocks, a few rougher blocks nearer the train station and the docks, south of where the places now called the Granite and Ginger’s sits today. We’d also another source for early craft beer from a southern New Brunswick brewery, Hans House, that I do not think made it into the 90s.

But Kevin Keefe is right. It was the place as much as anything that made learning about his early efforts at craft beer so attractive and so different – whether that first harbour town tavern or later, at the Henry House, the new sort of upscale pub that he introduced into the scene that made for the setting. And those places of his had, for much of the time, something hard to find these day of mainly canned tunes or those days of table thumping massed messed choirage – the peace of no music at all.