The National Six-Pack

As I walk through this troubled world hunched over starting at my feet I sometimes wonder things. Things like why do the Red Ensign bloggers let me hang out when we don’t believe in too much in common. Things like why golf is. Things like why can’t Canada make good beer like the British and Americans do. Then I stand up straight and say out loud – “did I really think that?!?”

Through this summer’s examinations of all things aley, I have realized that I am not being much of a homer. Now, to be fair, no one is as attractive as the foreign girl at the party and when you travel it is nice to try different things so it is some what natural that you might pass the familiar confines of the Beer Store and trip down to the LCBO for a daring fling now and then…and who can blame you if you drag some friends news home after shopping. No one can – but now I’m coming home because for the next while, every couple of weeks or so, I am going to buy a six-pack and test it out. And I am going to try them pale (not necessarily my first pick on a trip to the power house) and see if there are any good Canadian ales that I can call my own again. Requests for test drives will be entertained.

The first guinea pig is McAuslan’s St. Ambrose Pale Ale from Quebec available at the LCBO and I think the Beer Store as well. This beer advocatonian hit the nail on the head:

Taste: Biscuity malt goodness with a nice smack of peppery/grassy hops on the finish.

When I think Canadian pale ale, I think pepper and grass thing that a certain type of our barley must add. This has it big time. Tastes like the beer your Dad drank in the 70s…no better as I think that is what I am going to say about Brick Red Cap. No big floral hoop-la over hops either, just a jaggedy bitter edge. The kind of beer that goes with a shot of rye. Grain as much as malt flavoured. Not sweet either. Both English and American pales are sweeter generally. The brewer says:

St-Ambroise Pale Ale is the brewery’s flagship beer. Introduced in February 1989, it is a hoppy, amber, full-flavoured ale. In The Simon and Schuster Pocket Guide To Beer , beer critic Michael Jackson gave it three stars and described it as: “An outstanding ale… amber-red, clean and appetizing, with a very good hop character, from its bouquet to its long finish. Hoppy, fruity, and tasty all the way through.”

Only available in half the Canadian provinces and apparently in Switzerland, too.

National Six-Pack I: St. Ambrose Pale Ale, Quebec

 

As I walk through this troubled world hunched over starting at my feet I sometimes wonder things. Things like why do the Red Ensign bloggers let me hang out when we don’t believe in too much in common. Things like why golf is. Things like why can’t Canada make good beer like the British and Americans do. Then I stand up straight and say out loud – “did I really think that?!?”

Through this summer’s examinations of all things aley, I have realized that I am not being much of a homer. Now, to be fair, no one is as attractive as the foreign girl at the party and when you travel it is nice to try different things so it is some what natural that you might pass the familiar confines of the Beer Store and trip down to the LCBO for a daring fling now and then…and who can blame you if you drag some friends news home after shopping. No one can – but now I’m coming home because for the next while, every couple of weeks or so, I am going to buy a six-pack and test it out. And I am going to try them pale (not necessarily my first pick on a trip to the power house) and see if there are any good Canadian ales that I can call my own again. Requests for test drives will be entertained.

The first guinea pig is McAuslan’s St. Ambrose Pale Ale from Quebec available at the LCBO and I think the Beer Store as well. This beer advocatonian hit the nail on the head:

Taste: Biscuity malt goodness with a nice smack of peppery/grassy hops on the finish.

When I think Canadian pale ale, I think pepper and grass thing that a certain type of our barley must add. This has it big time. Tastes like the beer your Dad drank in the 70s…no better as I think that is what I am going to say about Brick Red Cap. No big floral hoop-la over hops either, just a jaggedy bitter edge. The kind of beer that goes with a shot of rye. Grain as much as malt flavoured. Not sweet either. Both English and American pales are sweeter generally. The brewer says:

St-Ambroise Pale Ale is the brewery’s flagship beer. Introduced in February 1989, it is a hoppy, amber, full-flavoured ale. In The Simon and Schuster Pocket Guide To Beer , beer critic Michael Jackson gave it three stars and described it as: “An outstanding ale… amber-red, clean and appetizing, with a very good hop character, from its bouquet to its long finish. Hoppy, fruity, and tasty all the way through.”

Only available in half the Canadian provinces and apparently in Switzerland, too.

Dryden Explained

I like to read Living in Dryden but had thought it was the work of a crazy old guy sitting on a sofa screaming at the authorities alone in the room dressed in what he is comfortable calling his pajamas. I have found I was wrong as I have come across this explanation of its focus on a small community east of Ithaca, New York:

A blog about Dryden has a naturally limited audience, but at the same time, the people who are in that audience likely have a thorough knowledge of the place. They drive its roads, pay its taxes, and hear its stories. Because of Cornell, there’s a large population just passing through, but even some of those people are likely interested in figuring out where they are at the moment.

The blog I started has a definite political angle (“One Democrat’s perspective”), and I started it after an election that didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I don’t think there’s any reason that focusing a blog locally should condemn it to being less opinionated than blogs which look out on a larger world. Local politics is tricky, though – simple platitudes about “those who deserve work will find it” or “everyone deserves to get a good start in life” are hard to sustain when you’re writing at this level. People don’t necessarily know everyone, but alliances shift, ideology is frequently less important than communications, and the flow of news is irregular at best, making it hard to pick and choose stories.

It’s been difficult staying inside the town borders, and I’ve occasionally strayed elsewhere in the county when it seemed relevant, though I’ve tried hard not to discuss issues outside of Dryden unless they had a direct impact here. “Think global, but stick to local” might well be the motto for this kind of blogging.

This is good. Too much activity in Pajamastan is about what you do not know, blabbosity about someone else’s belief systems of politics and corporate consumerism abstracted from the author by many degrees. In my current hunt for good Upstate New York bloggers, having exhausted my eastern Ontario searching perhaps too quickly, Living in Dryden joins NYCO, Brian (who is away in Iraq) and Linda as do-ers, observers and reporters. For me that is the best sort of writing. For all the hype, they are few. Any recommendations for other first person writers of quality would be gratefully received.

This Universe

I am sure what this means yet but it is cool. If you load your URL into the TouchGraph widget, it creates a graphical representation of your links universe. It is also dynamic so if you click on your link, more pings go out, adding to the complexity of information represented. If you click on the link for another blog, the whole graph moves to rearrange the universe to that blog’s perspective.

Large neato factor.

I Get Questions

In the email this evening was this crisis of the soul:

I’m participating in a disc golf tournament tomorrow at Jacques
Cartier Park in Gatineau and one of the side contests is a closest to the pin contest. Since disc golf is for hippies and hooligans who don’t like the cost and snobbery of “real golf” (refered to by disc golfers as”‘whiteball” whereas disc golf is “flatball”) the closest to the pin contest involes beer. Basically, everyone who wants to participate chips in a can or bottle of decent beer (it can’t be anything from a twelve pack or a domestic 6 pack) and the person who lands the closest shot to the designated hole/basket during the day takes home all the beer. There are 72 people playing and I suspect at least half will donating beer for the cause.

This is the long way of saying that when I was at the LCBO this evening I was looking for a beer to donate and a couple to try and couldn’t recall any of your reviews. I wanted something novel for the contest so I grabbed something I hadn’t seen before: Monty Python’s Holy Grail which is “tempered over burning witches.” Have you ever heard of it? It’s approved by Monty Python and friends and is brewed by the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, Yorkshire. My second choice was fairly safe because I’ve heard a friend describe it as his favourite European beer- Czechvar. Any thoughts? My third was based on packaging as much as anything and I had a vague feeling you’d reviewed it recently, or at least something by the company. I grabbed a bottle of St Peter’s Summer Ale (strong ale, 6.5%). the flask shaped bottle and simple label sold me. Have you had it?

I suppose the most important question is, which are worth sipping this evening and which should be given away. The Monty Python beer is a great novelty contribution but I’m tempted to try it myself. Of course if I win the whole lot of beer tomorrow it won’t matter.

I am honoured to be asked and advised to move on the St. Peter’s. Quality. I am a little less than a fan of the Monty Python – balance lacking as I recall. I also recommended the Fuller’s 1845 and got this response right back:

The 1845 was right beside the St Peter’s. I almost got it instead.
I’ll put it on my list for next time. Thanks. Go Sox!

I am verklempt. Helping others is what I do. Helping others with beer decisions is what I was born to do. Three university degrees and 24 years of schooling and I know my strengths, my bliss. Go Sox indeed.

At the ICU

Things seen and heard in the ICU:

  • Visitor:”How will it be when he wakes”
    Nurse: “Is he a smoker?”
    Visitor: “No”
    Nurse: “Then he’ll be fine.“
  • It is a little odd to see your Dad happily snoozing on morphine. All non-emerg and going well, thanks.
  • After seeing cops and corrections guys sitting around drinking coffee, I figure pretty much every day must land some prisoner in ICU after getting the hell beaten out of him given our nine or so Federal penitentiaries.
  • It is nice to see a crap restaurant in a hospital where there are very good medical resources. Priorities.
  • Queen’s has got the best designed multi-story car park I have ever seen. It is under a sports field and you wouldn’t know it is there if you were not within 50 feet of the entrance.