... and now for something a lot less hoppy...

... for this is Groundhog Day, an annual
event where we pay tribute to Bill Murray

Well now, isn't February 2nd, 2014 a big day for two reasons! The first reason, of course, is that this is Groundhog Day - the annual 24-hour stretch we all set aside because this is the day we celebrate Bill Murray's classic 1993 comedy, Groundhog Day.

Yeah, there's also something about huge North American rodents and their shadows predicting the future weather but seriously, how drunk/high do you have to be to believe that?

And secondly, of course, it's Super Bowl Sunday - which if you're unfamiliar with it (yeah, right) is an annual event that sees millions of North Americans hunker down in front of the big-screen to drink beer and watch some hilarious commercials that are occasionally interrupted by what is usually a very one-sided football game. This year's title tilt is between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos, two teams I like pretty much equally... as does Las Vegas which has basically called this affair a "pick 'em".

Scott Norwood is the reason I drink...
Okay, not really. That's far too heavy a
burden to place on one man's shoulders

You see, I am a long-time die-hard Buffalo Bills fan, dating back to my childhood. Back in ye olden days, we relied on TV antennas to watch the boob-tube. Where I grew up that meant you could watch TV stations from just two cities - Toronto and Buffalo. So I became a Bills fan. Some of you might remember the early-1990s when the Bills appeared in four consecutive Super Bowls (a record that still stands)... and lost every single one of them (a far-less auspicious record that also still stands). While Dallas (twice) and Washington had no problem beating my Bills in three of those Super Bowls, the Bills' best chance came in the first one against the New York Giants where with time running out and the Bills down 20-19, kicker Scott Norwood lined up for a very do-able 47-yard field goal. The always-reliable Norwood basically had the Super Bowl in his hands. Except on this day...

The words haunt me. "The kick is up and it's... wide right!" Wide right... wide right. Not since "I do" have two words so punished me. Actually, this was worse. In failed marriages, you can only lose a house. On the Bills, I had bet the whole damn farm. Wasn't my farm, mind you, but my Uncle Ed still won't talk to me to this day...

Old Milwaukee: for those who like
their beer with a 1940s pin-up lady

But it's Super Bowl Day and two teams I quite like are going at it in a matter of hours. On one hand, I kinda want Seattle to win it, just because they never have and this is actually their first appearance in the Big Game. But Denver? Man, they have Peyton Manning and that dude rocks so I think the bigger part of me is rooting for him. In the end, I just want a good game... (and possibly a Broncos' win.)

But to matters of beer, good quaffers... for beer is what Super Bowl Sunday is truly all about! And for Super Bowl Sunday, which usually begins in the early afternoon for most of us, that means the football fans need a session - or sessionable - beer, meaning something low alcohol. You see, the problem with the high-alcohol, high-IBU (international bitterness units) IPAs that I favour is that they are not marathon beers. They are sprint beers. And Super Bowl Sunday is a marathon. So the other problem with the high-octane, high-IBU suds is simply this: while both myself and my New Zealand beer-bro Steve St Evil prefer them to most others, we have determined that they have an effect that we very scientifically called "Sleepy-Makey."  Granted, I love a good nap - not sure why I fought so hard against them as a child. And it doesn't take very many of them. They're stealth-mode beers - they sneak up on you. It is fair to say high-octane IPAs are the ninjas of beers.

The other (other, other) problem is that while I go on at great lengths about IPAs in this blog (no, seriously, I do...), many beer drinkers, both craft beer lovers and commercial beer sluggers alike, can't take the IPAs. They're simply too hoppy for a majority of beer drinking palates.

Great Lakes Brewery's Crazy Canuck Pale Ale
is a great example of how a pale ale can be a
somewhat hoppier, which appeals to me, but
lightly so, thus appealing to everyone else...

Take my coworker, Saga... (please, take him... he's free to a good home and mostly house-trained...) He casts his net just as wide as me when it comes to discovering new beers but where I go hop-nuts, he goes malt-mad. Says beers that are too hoppy give him gas (like I said... mostly house-trained.) Having worked with him a fair few years, I can confirm there are a lot more things than an aggressively-hopped beer that give this lad gas. But in the end, he's loved as many newly-discovered beers as I have, just in a different malt-driven direction. And to be frank, when it comes to super-wide malt selection versus super-high hop hunting, I suspect Saga's tastes are far more wide-spread and representative of (a large number of) craft and (the great majority of) commercial beer drinkers than mine.

So today, I am looking to very lightly hopped IPAs and a couple of medium-hopped, regular-alcohol pale ales as the best sessionable beers for this, the holiest of days - Super Bowl Sunday. Or as I shall call them: SFS (safe for Saga) IPAs. Because we all want to see the game and not nod off on the couch by half-time.

Hops and Bolts IPL, made by Mad and Noisy
Brewing, which is actually Creemore Springs
Brewing, which in turn is owned by Molson's

My buddy, Kevin, has already stumbled onto one of the best out there - Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion Not Quite Pale Ale, a 5% offering that seems punchier than it is due to its use of Amarillo hops. It's long been my go-to session beer. Kevin, a long-time Blue Light and Old Milwaukee (brewed here under licence by Sleeman) drinker, likens it to a British bitter. As for Old Milwaukee, he always liked, as do I, the illustrations of the 1940s sexy (when sexy was still innocent) pin-up models on the cans and bottles of Old Milwaukee. But Kevin is also a pretty big fan of Creemore Springs Lager, which brings me to my next one...

Molson's is a gigantic Canadian commercial brewer and damn, if they aren't an incredibly clever one, to boot. While many American giants have been trying to sneak craft beers onto the market under different brewery names (and getting caught by eagle-eyed craft drinkers), Molson's hasn't bothered. Why? They don't have to. They own an actual craft brewery, Creemore Springs Brewery, founded in 1987 and bought out by Molson's in 2005.

Double Trouble Brewing out of Guelph has
thrown its Hops and Robbers IPA into the
session IPA pond. One of their three beers.

And - this is my favourite part of the story - the big corporate brewery did something unheard of... they let Creemore Springs carry on, business as usual. Even under Molson's eye, Creemore beers continue to have no preservatives and remain unpasteurized, just as they always were. They still get their spring water from artesian wells on the founder's property, just as they always have. Full marks, man - Molson's did everything right on this call.

So when it came time to slide something onto the craft market, Molson's simply said to Creemore, "Yeah, we're kinda busy, what with the selling of a million litres of Coors Light and Canadian every 12 minutes. Ooops, latest sales figures in... now it's every 11.87 minutes. Why don't you pick up the ball?" So Creemore did, creating their own separate wing, Mad and Noisy Brewery, which in turn cranked out Hops and Bolts India Pale Lager last summer. The beer, meant to be a combo of an English IPA with some Czech Pilsner leanings, is more hoppy in aroma than taste but still a pretty strong and tasty sessionable at 5.3%. It won't clean your clock... but then that's the point of session beers - to stay awake before the Red Hot Chili Peppers perform at Super Bowl half-time. The point of my high-test IPAs is to fall asleep just before Bruno Mars performs, also at Super Bowl half-time... and then wake up immediately afterwards.  Like, within seconds... maybe a couple of minutes, just to be sure.

One of the three new hop ales created by Alexander Keith's,
the Galaxy Hop Ale trumps the Hallertauer and the Cascade

Double Trouble Brewing, a two-buddy outfit which contract-brews out of Wellington Brewery in Guelph, has but three beers: their Break-Out Pilsner (a decent outing), their Fire In The Rye RPA (stay tuned to another blog - hands-down their best) and their sessionable 5.7% Hops and Robbers IPA. This beer is listed as 55 IBU, which is a little difficult to believe. Quite a bit lower, I'd guess. It's not a bad beer at all. Mostly citrus and floral in aroma and taste, not over-powering in the least. Definitely a Safe-For-Saga IPA, which makes it a solid choice for many looking to try something slightly hoppier. Because that's precisely what this is. Oh-so-slightly...

Okay, while Molson's lets Creemore Springs do that craft thing, Labatts lets Maritime brewer, Alexander Keith's do it for them. When Labatt scooped up Oland Breweries in 1971, they bought the Canadian east coast's oldest brewer and it's now Keith's job to come up with the new, hip-hoppy ales. They haven't done a bad job with it, creating the Cascade Ale, Hallertauer Ale and the best of the bunch, the Galaxy Hop Ale, all named after the hops they used. The irony is the three are in a 12-pack with Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, the least hoppy of the bunch but the only one named as an IPA. For more on that confusing bit of business, read my previous blog: When is an IPA not an IPA??? Regardless, all three are decent sessionable hop beers, totally Safe-For-Saga. And I do actually like Keith's. It's just not an IPA.

Muskoka is not identifying this as an IPA on the
packaging but make no mistake. Detour IPA is
definitely a "sessionable" IPA and a great one!

Which bring us down to the gold medal. Well, after Mad Tom IPA and Twice As Mad Tom Double IPA - two of my personal favourites, especially the latter, I figured Muskoka Brewing has done pretty much all they could in the whole, y'know, IPA genre. Muskoka, you sly, beautiful brewing bastards, with your new Detour beer, you have created a low-alcohol (4.3%), low-IBU (What? Forty, 45, even 50 maybe?) IPA that ACTUALLY tastes like an IPA. Okay, not quite as biting as their big hitters or the other big craftie IPAs. But dammit, this is really really good. This is the perfect starter IPA and thus the perfect session IPA for Super Bowl viewing. It's got the citrus, it's got the grapefruit and the mango... Now when someone comes into my store and wants something a bit bolder than the average fare, among a couple others, I can hand them this and say, "Try a light-style IPA." This is the best - and coolest - surprise of 2014 so far. I will be drinking this again. And again. And again. If IPAs scare you, please try this one.

On behalf of the "beer fanatic" grouping, I apologize to those in the
pre-marital sex grouping, the affair grouping, the gay community, the
marijuana and OxyContin users and the ravers that you were lumped
in with us beer fanatics. That's unfair. Liars? You can all go to Hell...

Okay, shout-outs: Up at bat, Stevil St Evil is ready for the HSBS Sevens World Rugby Tournament in Wellington, New Zealand which includes a Team Canada so we're gonna call this blog of his: GO CANADA!

Okay, like I said, Super Bowl Sunday which is chockful of awesome commercials. So is actress Anna Kendricks' Newcastle Brown ad a Super Bowl contender or not? We won't know just yet. But in the meantime, enjoy this maybe-it-is-a-Super-Bowl-commercial- but-maybe-it's-not here at Will I Air During The Super Bowl?

And finally you may notice my sign-off is a tad different. The new social media policy came down at work, which frankly is really smart on their end and it dealt with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and any number of social media things. (Being ANY company's policy maker, particularly regarding social media these days, must be brutal. How do you keep up?) Do I work at a Beer Store? Yeah. Great gig. Do I represent them online? Hellz no. I'm just a dude who loves beer and writes about it. When I have the uniform on, 40 hours a week, yes, I do represent them and happily so... Best job ever. Hell, I'm surrounded by beer. When Brew Ha Ha comes out to play? That's after-hours Donny drinking beer and shooting the breeze... after all, there's 168 hours in the week. So I have lots of play-time...

And that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...