Brew-Ha-Ha! gets CYBER-JACKED!!!!

Let's face it... is there any place a guy likes shopping more than the Beer Store? My store is one of those big self-serve outlets where customers can wander up and down the aisles, happily looking at all the products. Our overflow beer is stacked and bound on skids above the shelves (much like a Costco) so basically everywhere you look... BEER!!!

Remember this? Probably not. But your Dad does. And your
Grand-Dad does. Wasn't sexy or sassy... but it worked...

A little more than a year ago, we were a conventional store - the kind your fathers and grandfathers remember where you stood in line, looked at the big chart of beer on the wall and told the guy at the mic what you wanted, paid him and *poof* within seconds it would come sliding down the rollers and appear through the "magic beer hole"... (It was called Brewer's Retail back in the days of yore...)
Customers love the new set-up - well, 95% of our clientele is male, after all. The female clientele spend most of their time in our cooler shivering - a inner-thermostat condition that deftly explains why men never have any blankets in the morning, a.k.a. the Cover Hog Syndrome. Not a guy in the world I have to explain that to.
But guys wander through there like it's a Big Guy Disneyworld. I asked one guy recently who seems to be wandering aimlessly up and down the aisle if he needed help finding anything. "Nah, man," he laughed, "I just love looking at all this beer. This must be what my wife feels like in a shoe store."

Yeah, like everyone else, I've heard a few complaints about the Beer Store. At the moment, a Toronto daily newspaper seems to have us in its sights - and that's fine. Any business should be able to take a couple of shots. The litany of complaints is the usual... "It should be in corner stores", "the system is archaic and an anachronism" and the latest volley in the fray, "it's not under Canadian ownership..."

... and Mother Nature loves us too!!!!

I get those complaints but let's look at them. Anyone who's been to Quebec knows corner-store beer. And the first thing I notice? Man, that's a bit pricey. The second thing I wonder? How strict are they on ID-ing people? (The last available ID stat I could dig up was 2007 where we shot down 111,000 under-agers. I'm gonna claim about 150 of those myself.)

It's an anachronism - something historically out of place and time? Uhhhh, it's been around since 1927 so are we a little long in the tooth? Duh? It's 86 years old. Keeping in mind, I do NOT speak on behalf of the Beer Store - I'm just a beer slinger at one of over 400 stores - but let's be frank. To me, that suggests two things. One, as business models go, that tells me it has always worked well for the Province. (I'm also not a Business Major but rather spent more than a couple of decades as a journalist. But if something works, I can kinda tell...) And two, that's why stores, such as mine, are evolving with the times.
And finally, foreign ownership: this is true. Sleeman's is owned by Japan's Sapporo; Molson's is owned by American giant Coors and Labatt is owned by Inter-brew, a Belgium giant.

To this, I say, "So what?" The beers brewed here by Canadians, distributed here by Canadians and sold here by Canadians. I would ask those journalists what kind of car they drive? A nice Canadian car such as a Ford, GM or Chrysler, maybe? All foreign-owned by our friends to the south. A Hyundai or Nissan? Really? I could go on. In fact, I would love them to show me 12 big-ticket things in their houses, besides the maple syrup in their fridges, that are Canadian.

The Beer Store is as Canadian as this dude!!!

So let's look at a few other pluses we have at the Beer Store! Some 95% of what's sold in Beer Stores come right back to us as a empty return. That's some impressive recycling and it's been going on since 1927. You know what wasn't in our lexicon in 1927? The word "recycling" - wouldn't be invented for another 50-plus years. Since we started the Ontario Return Deposit Program (ODRP) in 2007, well over a billion wine and liquor containers has been returned to us for recycling - put 'em end-to-end, they'd reach three-quarters of the way to the moon. With NASA outta commission, we're the closest thing to "shoot for the moon" these days, baby. Beer bottles are, of course, reused about 15 times.
Frankly, I think the Beer Store's motto should be: "Hey, be nice to us! We're your local landfill's best friend."
And selection? We have over 350 different brands in our store... I'd suggest we're closing in on 400 at my place. Fortunately, that give me and co-worker Saga an excuse to try something new every week. We're good with that.
Over 87 different brewers are represented in our store and much to my delight, we're seeing new craft beers show up every week...

And finally, I think it's important to remember... hey... what's happening to my screen? What the hell is going on her*

Greetings to all you Brew-Ha-Ha readers! I’m “Stevil St. Evil”, Don’s longtime drinking/college pal (mostly in spirit for the last 30-odd years, as our orbits haven’t coincided since I moved away from Ontario). I’ve temporarily seized control of the Brew-Ha-Ha reigns here for a wee bit, because I’ve got a few things to say about the way things are there in Ontario beer-wise … compared to the things I’ve seen (that cannot be UNSEEN!) in my two big moves around the planet, since living in and around Toronto.

When you move to a new place, you naturally start comparing things to where you came from. And if you’re of the ilk of Don and I (hey, do I know you?), these things we immediately start thinking of are pretty much beer-and-fun centric.

I bounced out of Toronto to Vancouver in 1986, just in time for the big World Expo there. This year-long event was a unique thing to experience – as was life in a new city, in a province with distinctly different climate, geography, and especially liquor/beer rules … compared to the ones I’d been lumbered with for most of my life, living in Stodgy Victorian Upper Canada (oops, I mean, Ontario).

For starters: there were different kinds of beer available in Vancouver. Sure, the standard Labatt and Molson products were on hand. But there was also a private little brewery in the heart of the city called Granville Island Brewing Company. The fact it was on a chunk of land designated as an “island” was a bit of a misnomer – it is, in fact, a peninsula (so not island-like at all, which means ‘surrounded by water’). And it was right in the city, along a strange little stretch of water called “False Creek”, which was actually part of the ocean that forked inland a little bit. But I digress.
Granville Island Brewing made a selection of beers that were noticeably different to what Molson’s and Labatt’s had been cranking out. These beers looked, smelled, and tasted different...


The brewers had a bold way of doing things there – they were using just four ingredients (water, hops, malt and yeast). Seems this was a “beer standard” recipe made official some time back in 1516 by Germans keen on making sure no one forgot that it’s JUST four ingredients that comprise beer. They gave it a name, too: The Bavarian Purity Law.

Granville Island Brewery... giving bland the big B.C. BOOT!!!!

This is where my beer education really started to improve … or in fact, start. Seems I knew NOTHING (and my name isn’t even Jon Snow!)  Following the end of Prohibition, the businessmen (not to be confused with actual brewers) raced out of the gates to flood the North American market with some strange concoctions that weren’t really beer … they did this by adding a whole whack of things to that simple, four-ingredient beer recipe to make their … beverages … ferment faster, and last longer on the shelf. I rapidly developed a taste (some might say, an addiction. But that’s such a strong word …) for Granville Island’s “actual, real beer”. I noticed it had nuances, flavours, and aromas not found in the ones I had been drinking.. And an added bonus … with Granville Island beer, the hangovers were pretty much non-existent the next day! 
Then I noticed something magical about how I could obtain this elixir of the gods. The liquor laws in BC back in the late 80s were a fair bit more “drinker friendly” than Ontario’s. Last call in bars was 2 a.m., not the 12:45 a.m. indignity forced down funsters’ throats in Ontario bars. And then I discovered another wondrous thing – if you still felt like having more fun as the bars were closing, yet were out of beer at home? Why, there was this fantastic thing called “Off Sales” – meaning, you could buy beer from the bar, legally, to take home with you.

You could have knocked me over with a feather … sure, a really BIG feather, but a feather. There were limitless possibilities with this concept … let’s say, you and your pals just met some hot ladies, they were keen to keep on partying, and were willing to amass back at someone’s apartment for said activities – why, the bar people were right there, your virtual wingmen! They would gleefully sell you a bunch of beer to take with you, to facilitate said fun!

A pox on your weak-ass middle-of-the-road light
American big name glasses of beer substance! Light???

I lived in Vancouver for 15 years following that move out for Expo ’86. And the ‘micro brewery’ (aka ‘craft brewery’) movement blossomed into a serious, going concern. Suddenly there were a LOT of new little breweries cropping up, selling wonderful, real, interesting, tasty beer. Most of this was only available in pubs at first (via kegs of it on tap). Later on, bottling and canning ensued … now granted, I didn’t know until much later, when I moved to Wellington New Zealand, but the primary style of beer being made in Vancouver in those days was modeled after the English “ESB”, or Extra Special Bitter style. There were of course lagers, pilsners, stouts, pale ales and the like available. And some time around the early 90s, one of the pioneer new brewers, Shaftesbury, fronted up with a kickass, double-strength (9%) Xmas ale that literally blew EVERYONE’S socks off!
Little did I know, however, that my education on how things are different in new places wasn’t quite over with yet. I fell for a lovely Kiwi woman and moved to New Zealand’s capital in 2001 (Wellington) … and once again found myself knee-deep in the hoopla of even BETTER drinking and fun rules … or more precisely, lack of rules.

It was quickly made apparent that Canadian booze laws overall are rather … draconian. You could even call them were-wolfian. Even Frankenstein-ian. Mostly, they were old fashioned, and designed to be no fun at all. They were (and likely still are) an affront to anyone who doesn’t like being treated like a reckless child (sure, we ARE that … but come on. Innocent until proven recklessly guilty!!)

This is where I live. It rocks!!! I mean that literally, as well.
Man, we get a shit-ton of earthquakes. But the calibre
of beer makes up for it. Oh, and the weather. Also rocks!

I instantly discovered the government here in New Zealand is far less invasive than anywhere in Canada. Put simply, they leave you to your own devices for the most part. They don’t fill their every waking moment coming up with rules and laws that make NO sense, like inconveniencing you as to where, when and how you can buy liquor, wine or beer …

The Kiwis are a fantastic folk, too. They’re fun-loving, and cheeky, and will instantly adopt you as a close mate the moment they find out you like to have fun, too.

When I first got here, the beer was much the same as what was on offer in Vancouver. There were the “big boy” brewers with their bland chemical soups … with a smattering of a few local craft brewers.

Then around about 2005, the whole craft brewing thing just lit up and took off like a NASA rocket. Suddenly new craft brewers were cropping up everywhere … and as more great beer became available, places to drink said beer were popping up everywhere too!

At this writing, there are close to 50 craft breweries around the country (most are in, or close to, Wellington) and at least a dozen bars and pubs really, REALLY close to me that ONLY serve craft beer.


The sky’s the limit for styles of beers made here too – while the big trend at the moment is the “IPA” style (India Pale Ale) with butt-loads of hops, there’s every other style imaginable too. Wellington has rapidly become a hotbed of choices for any kind of beer style you can imagine … and now, even some styles that are being invented by these clever, industrious, eagerly keen and fun young guys who have started up all these great new breweries!
The reason so many breweries – and pubs – have taken seed and grown like wildfire is, the lack of stupid rules here (compared to Canada) for getting stuff like this happening. The government here knows a good thing when it sees it. Sure, booze is taxed here like it is in Canada. And of course you need a permit to get brewing – but permits are incredibly easy to obtain. Essentially it’s like any other thing that happens in New Zealand: got a good idea, some money saved, and a good credit rating? Fill your boots! (which means: have at it, go wild!)

Now a few more details about the beer drinking (and obtaining of same) here. Unlike the government hammer-lock on how, where and when you can buy alcohol for home use in Canada, here it’s all privatized. We can buy beer & wine in grocery and corner stores. There are also private “bottle shops” that sell everything, including hard liquor. And it’s all consumer and market driven … no set prices, and sales on things abound. Prices for beer and wine at grocery stores are especially cheap all the time, because those two items are always advertised as super-cheap – on sale as “loss leaders”.

Then there’s the option to buy draft beer! A few of the bigger bottle shops have the marvelous option of filling up “flagons” (large glass or plastic bottles) with draft beer. That’s right – draft taps in the store. The best of the lot, a store called “Regional” here in Welly, has 21 draft taps featuring local craft beers. You can rock up with your own “flagon” or just use one of their 1 or 2-litre plastic bottles.

A few of the crafty beer bars have this option too. Like “off sales” in BC, Canada, you can grab flagons (or bottles) on your way home.

And if that wasn’t enough, most of the new crafty breweries have “cellar doors”, like in the wine trade – a room attached to the brewery where you can rock in, sample all the different beers they have on offer, and then buy some (either in a flagon, or in bottles or cans). They of course also have t-shirts, hats, and such on offer.

Now – all that great stuff would make for a really cool and fun atmosphere for the likes of someone like me, to really enhance the idea of living here. But wait … there’s MORE!

When I first got here, I gleefully announced to my Canadian friends that it appeared they invented a country JUST FOR ME! … because last call in bars on the weekends never happens, you can drink straight through from Friday morning to Sunday night without the bars closing … and the ease of setting up a bar here extended to the point where there are bars in office building lobbies. There was a just such a bar in the lobby of the first job I got here. Talk about convenience plus: For fun, one day I timed myself. It took 46 seconds from leaving my desk, casually going down the elevator, to being in the bar with a drink in my hand. Best of all, the bar owner gave everyone in the office building a discount card for drinking there.

Fast-forward to now, today … and there are discounts galore available at all the crafty beer pubs, thanks to some clever folks who formed an ‘umbrella’ organization here called “SOBA” – the Society Of Beer Advocates... These Folk Right Here!
For a modest yearly subscription of $40, I get a card which gives me discounts on beer in several of the crafty pubs in town. SOBA also organizes beer fests and events (like new beer launches – this happens every Tuesday in one of the best craft bars here, Hashigo Zake... This Bar Right Here!

We elite SOBA members also get first dibs on parties at breweries, tasting events, ‘degustation’ meals where beer and food are matched … and one of the most sensationally fun things I’ve ever seen and been a party to – “Tap Takeovers”.

Simply put, a Tap Takeover is where a single brewery will join forces with one pub, and put ALL their beers exclusively on tap for a night. It sounds like a piratey thing to do, and in a way, it is … but YARRRR it’s all in good fun!

To expand on how much fun this idea is … during the night of a Tap Takeover, there are discounts on the beer, and the owner and staff of the brewery are on hand to meet-and-greet the faithful. You can chat with them and learn about the various beers, the operation, or just generally have a laugh. Like winery people, brewers are really fun, friendly people who really like what they do (they have a lust for life and are positive about all that they do!), and they really want to hear what you think of their products.

The other aspect of the lifestyle here that makes this whole craft brewing/craft pub/super fun stuff even MORE fun is, the attitude of all the people involved.

There is a brotherhood amongst all the brewers and pub owners. They encourage each other, they help out. They talk each other’s products up. There’s NO crazy competitive nature, no one-upmanship. They band together as one because it’s a sensible thing to do – their main goal is to get “real” beer out to people, to educate folks that there’s more to beer drinking than the mass-produced chemical soups offered up by the “big boy” brewers.

So at a Tap Takeover night (or a launch of a new beer), staff from all the other crafty brewers and pubs will be on hand to join the fun and encourage the featured brewers.

One other really cool aspect of the craft brewing/craft pub explosion going on here in New Zealand is the inventiveness of some of the people involved. In particular, Dom Kelly is the owner/operator of Hashigo Zake. Besides totally eschewing any kind of mainstream beer, Dom goes out of his way to contact – and import – craft beer from all over the world. The fridge at Hashigo’s is chock-a-block with fantastic offerings from the USA (yes Virginia, there is more to beer life in the States than Bud, Miller and Coors!), Europe, the UK, and Japan (a country which is hugely infatuated with craft beer!)

I’ll finish up here, because there seems to be some sort of internet interference cutting in from Spain … I’ll quickly just say that there are loads of other reasons why life in NZ is pretty damn fine. The climate is one of the main things … aside from being gleefully happy that the government treats us drinkers like adults and generally leaves us alone … it’s also really nice to discover you don’t have to live in a place with insane temperature extremes, like Canadians suffer through.

Canada can be as crazy-hot and humid in summer as the high 30s to low 40s Celsius, and then savagely cold in winter down to – 40 as well. Those are two extremes I don’t operate well in.

Here in New Zealand, it’s all about the temperate climate. Summers in Welly balance out to the mid to high 20s Celsius, and winters rarely get colder than 10C.

These are easy-going temperatures that make it really conducive (and fun!) for going out to have fun in a crafty brew bar, or at a beer fest, or at an outdoor concert where there’s really good beer and wine on offer.

OK what the hell is happening here now? … the signal is cutting out … ¿que pasa, amigo? ……

Brew-Ha-Ha readers! Escuchadme! (… what? wrong wha…? Oh shit!) Brew-Ha-Ha readers, Hear me! I am not Don's evil twin brother Gary, firstly because I’m younger, and secondly because he's the evil one. No seriously, I grew up with him, he is the evil one, well, I mean of the two of us, he's THE Evil One per se. (Ex-wives' opinions don't count)

In my youth I had an epiphany and it went like this; if a load of people left Europe and went to the Americas in order to live a more staid and puritan lifestyle, then obviously they didn't like to party, (don't look for historical accuracy here, eh?) and if that was the case, it was obvious to me that the place I wanted to be was the place they didn't want to be. That was twenty-eight years ago.
On arriving the first were the British pubs. Ignoring beer entirely, pubs are just such a cool place to partake of fermented beverages. Everything just emanates - This is about drinking and being with friends. - I recall very little of those early days… (and for some reason the few memories I do retain all share an optical perspective akin to reclining on the sidewalk.)
Later the countries were many and all with their own wonderful beers of course, but Belgium, woof! Not a giant in Europe, it's around the size of Lake Superior (look, don't expect geographical accuracy either) and yet, 450 different varieties of beer (since Medieval days apparently), and approximately 178 breweries, ranging from big internationals to microbreweries, says the internet, I didn't know that then. I remember at the time simply thinking - Jeez they've got a lot of different kinds of beer. I seized the opportunity at hand and recall very little of that time period.

Yeah, basically, I just wanted to use a picture of really
pretty Oktoberfest women so I mentioned Germany

Germany of course, a big beer drinking country, Oktoberfest, large breasted women carrying five mammoth mugs of beer in each hand. As would any virile young man, I hefted my mug with one hand, just long enough to get a good slug of beer and the mug back on the table before the sweat broke out on my forehead from the exertion. A few mugs in I discovered a decidedly less virile two-handed approach and it worked so much better. I recall very little after that discovery.

Spain, that's where I am now, admittedly, not famous for their beer, but for a very good reason - they make really good wine. They do however drink a lot of beer as well. San Miguel has kind of made it around a bit. There was an old San Miguel factory or warehouse, I don't know, it had long been in disuse by then, yet there it was, just outside HCMC (a.k.a. Saigon). So go figure, eh?! It was available when I was in Viet Nam, but I drank local. When Stevil checked out the beer I drank with the International Beer Industry Crap to Fantastic Scale (the IBICFS for short), he almost had a fit. In a world where multiple digit beer is greatly smiled upon, it appears mine had but a single, and low, digit. Now in its defence I have to say that it had a super cool, so obviously non-beer name - Zorok - so close to being Zorro that I imagined it's the beer he drinks, and its colours are a wild green and gold combo. But more importantly, given that so few people drank it, and I did explain this to Stevil, I was always ensured icy cold beer. That's a big plus in my book in a place like that.

Zorok: Did it fare well on Don and Steve's Fancy
Schmancy Beer Scale? No. But it's like 28 cents.

Now I can appreciate making oneself better acquainted with anything interesting and fun, but Beer? Well hell yeah, why not?! It's interesting, has a long history, is immensely popular, a shit load of fun and there is a huge variety to be had, (wine's kind of like that too.) The more dedication the more experience the more knowledge and thus, the connoisseur, an expert or, A person with a special knowledge or appreciations of a field, esp in the arts, says one dictionary.

Having read both Don and Stevil's words, and from having known both back in College days, of which I recall very little, I do know that these guys like their beer... a lot. However, I must say that I have only recently become aware of the missionary proportions their zeal has come to acquire.



The beer gods willing, one day Don and Stevil will achieve connoiseurship, but meanwhile we must rally behind them as they "taste" beer after beer. You do understand that in a purely economic sense they are saving us a lot of valuable time and money, don't you? Think of all the crap beer that you can avoid buying and drinking simply because either Don or Stevil has already tried it and denounced it as horrid, undrinkable, unfit to clean the gutter.

They are doing that FOR US people!

The thing is, I'm not a beer connoisseur. (At this point I really should thank Spell-check. Oh come on whadda-ya want?! It's French!) No, I am not a connoisseur, nor am I headed in that direction. I have never troubled myself to develop a palate capable of distinguishing and discovering traces big or small of anything other than beer. In the beer world, I'm the lowest of layman. Hence my ability to withstand copious amounts of Zorok beer without thinking - Man this has got to have a really low single digit on the IBICFS!

I think that perhaps like many people, I just want to kick back in a good situation and have an ice cold one. It's the package I want, the where, the when and the beer. Am I particular about the beer? No, not really. Am I particular about the where and the when? Yeah, somewhat more so. I mean, the where could be a really cool palmed beach, beautifully attired with semi-clad women smoking fun cigarettes and drinking, you got it, ice cold ones. In this particular scenario, the when kinda doesn't matter.

I live in Europe. Screw you. I can use TWO Oktoberfest
photos if I want!! What are you gonna do about it???

Of course, I can certainly appreciate Don and Stevil’s interest in nuances, flavours and aromas, microbreweries and all that. It’s all good in the world of the connoisseur hopeful, BUT! and it’s a BIG but, where I live (Spain in case you've already forgotten) I can go to my local grocery store, literally around the corner and pick up a twelve pack of some faux-German named beer for the equivalent of $3.40 Canadian (I’ll save you the math - $0.28 a can.) Put it in the fridge, let it get nice and cold, et voilà, it tastes just like a frothy cold beer. As I've said, I'm not a connoisseur. I simply want to have my beer where and when I want, and that's what Spain and to a large degree Europe allows me; freedom from poo-pooing. Here in Spain it’s not unusual to have beer with your mid-morning snack (if you can call a Spain style submarine sandwich a snack) at 10 am. No one thinks you're an alcoholic, no one thinks anything. Brandy in your coffee at 7a.m.? Par for the course. The government? Well, just as Pierre Trudeau once said, "there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation", "in the drinking habits of the nation" pretty well sums up the Spanish attitude. 
Even normal people's attitude toward drinking, just so different. 

Canada, the day after: Do you know what you did/said last night?! (Scowling face and condemning tone of voice obligatory – SHAME ON YOU!!!)


Spain, the day after: Man, you were really drunk last night, eh? (Smiling face.)
Which reaction would you prefer? (Remember, you've a massive hangover and have just finished calling God on the Great White Telephone three or four times.)

Okay so obviously, when I’m back in Canada I'm not entirely against taking personal advantage of a favourable situation, so when I'm visiting brother Don and he pulls out all these different kinds of beer I've never even heard of before and gives me a brief rundown on their qualities, I say - Hey, thanks bro. :) (I smile when I say it.)

As for Stevil St. Evil, should I find myself in New Zealand (and there is a far better than remote possibility of that actually occurring), and should Stevil invite me to a beer sampling-fest/free-for-all-knock-down, I will most certainly say - Hey, thanks Stevil. :) (Yeah, I'd smile. My memory has Stevil a good head taller than me in all directions.)

I guess to sum it all up, I’m happy that Don and Stevil are out there sacrificing themselves for the betterment of beer drinkers the world over. Good on them! Please, a hearty round of applause for both of them! But me personally? I’m perfectly happy with my lowly, single digit on the IBICFS beer, coming in at a paltry $0.28 per can. As I've said, stick it in the fridge, let it get nice and cold, et voilà…

What more do you want on a hot day, eh?!