Monday Wrap-up, November 12th 2012, Great Lakes and The Only Cafe

The silicone chip inside her head/ gets flipped to overload.

Hey, how was your weekend?  Mine was great thanks.  Pretty full, but we’ll deal with that in a moment. I know it seems strange, given that November is normally a down month, but my golly, there was a lot going on last week.

Home-brewer of the Year?

Don’t know if you heard about this or not, but a home-brewer was just re-elected President of the United States.  I predict Obama will celebrate by brewing an APA called “Magic Underpants Pale”.  It will be 6%, feature Liberty hops, and have a picture of a newlywed gay couple lighting a joint on the label.  You heard it first here.

The Difficult Sophomore Record

You might remember that I did a video podcast during Toronto Beer Week, with three of Toronto’s best brewers.  It was so much fun, I decided to make it a regular thing.  But then I kind of didn’t.  It takes a lot of orchestration, and I just wasn’t prepared to do it.  So when I made plans to revamp my content presentation a bit, I thought it was good timing to try to get it off the ground.  And I did!  As Great Lakes is celebrating their 25th Anniversary, and had just released their newest beer in celebration, they seemed like the perfect choice.  So I sat down with Peter, Mike and Troy from Great Lakes and talked history, what they’re doing right now, and stuff coming down the pipe.  It was a heap of fun, and if you didn’t catch it yet, you can see it here: http://www.torontobeerblog.com/podcasts/podcast-thursday-november-8th-2012-great-lakes-brewery/. Keep watching here for more, on Thursdays.  The live recording time might vary a bit (not to show my hand, but I’m working with timezones….), but I’ll try to give lots of notice when it will be.

Speaking of Which

Great Lakes Project X line-up at WVRST

Great Lakes Project X line-up at WVRST — Photo: Troy Burch, Great Lakes.

Thursday, aside from participating in a really excellent local beer podcast, the Great Lakes crew did a tap takeover at WVRST for this month’s Project X in support of Movember.  If you’re not familiar with Project X, they are monthly parties thrown by Great Lakes.  Often thrown at the brewery, recently they’ve hosted them in conjunction with great craft beer spots around the city.  Each event features regular and seasonal brews, as well as various one-off and collaborative beers.  Thursday night at WVRST was another successful party: 13 beers available, great sausages from the kitchen and the usual crowd of beer-loving people.  I was super impressed by the Dr Phil’s Milk Moustache Stout.  I’m also always happy to drink Audrey Hopburn, Great Lakes’ occasionally available Belgian IPA.  If you haven’t been to a Project X, make plans to get to one soon.

It’s Always Beer Fest Season

Most crafty-thinking beerfest’ers consider Cask Days to be the wrap-up to the beer fest season.  I mean, Cask Days is in the fall to keep the beer cold, right?  Pretty well everybody who wrote a guide to Cask Days mentioned dressing warmly (I was sad to not see anybody dressed as George Mallory, though).  Who likes to drink beer in the cold weather?  Aside from the English?  Well, it turns out, the answer is a lot of people.  Like, enough to jam a bar.  Specifically, The Only Cafe, that east-end haven to craft beer.  I was actually there Friday night as a vendor, supplying pulled-pork sandwiches from my smoker.  As has happened in the past, I actually sold out fairly quickly, and was able to take in a lot of the festival.  And there was plenty to take in.  In addition to a lot of the usual suspects at smaller craft beer events, I was stoked to see Silversmith Brewery there serving their excellent black lager, and Kensington Brewing Co. pouring their newly released Fish-eye.P.A.  Wellington brought a cask of their new Chocolate Milk Stout (it’s like we all discovered milk stouts at the same time) and it was quite nice, and presented excellently on cask.  Amsterdam was pouring Vicar’s Vice Old Ale, which I really dug.  It was Iain’s attempt at a totally traditional English Old Ale: all British ingredients, historic technique, and aged for three months.  A perfect choice for the cool fall evening.  The Only hosts these fests seasonally, and they’re totally worth checking out: http://www.theonlycafe.com/theonly/index.html

Nothing To Do With Beer

Saturday was full for me, not so much with a beer event, but with a fund-raiser of my own. I’m leading a group of teens on a trip to Nicaragua in the spring, and we hosted a meal at our church, featuring Nicaraguan food and salsa dancing.  The kids did all the cooking and set-up and generally impressed the heck out of me.  Like I said, nothing to do with beer, but I felt like I had better explain what was keeping me busy, or risk getting called soft…. After the event, me and some older friends headed to Ceili Cottage for a celebratory drink and I was excited to find they had Great Lakes 25th Anniversary Black IPA on cask.

Beer of the week

Great Lakes 25th Anniversary Black IPA. I had it in bottle, on draught and on cask, and it was amazing all three ways. I reviewed the bottle before the podcast, and it’s posted on the podcast page: http://www.torontobeerblog.com/podcasts/podcast-thursday-november-8th-2012-great-lakes-brewery/. Mike Warner did as well, at A Year Of Beer: http://ayearofbeer.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/week-of-reviews-great-lakes-25th-anniversary-imperial-black-ipa/ (he thought it was swell too).

25th Anniversary Imperial Black IPA — Great Lakes Brewery

25th Anniversary Imperial Black IPA — Great Lakes Brewery

 

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