When the tail wags the dog

No, gas at the Husky gas station up the street from
my work is not 70 cents a litre. This is just some
picture from Google, However, it does illustrate
my point that this little independent rules the big
boys in my turf and I find that to be enjoyable...

With oil prices hitting the crapper across Canada, there's an interesting situation going on up the street from my Beer Store. You see, as I drive north towards the highway, there's four gas stations all grouped together near one corner - an Esso, a Shell, a Petro-Can (all big corporations) and a lonely little Husky - an independent gas station that has about 500 franchises across Canada. If that seems like a lot, it's not. There's probably that many Shells, Essos and Petro-Cans combined in the Toronto area alone, much less across the country. So Husky is the little guy. The nebbish one who gets picked on in the high school cafeteria.

Except we have something of a "Revenge of the Nerds" thing happening in Gasoline Alley these days. When I come into work in the early morning or early afternoon, the Husky is always a few cents cheaper per litre than the big guys. However, when I leave work either in the early or late evening, all the stations are the same price. Throughout the course of the day, the big boys jockey to match the Husky's gas prices, I assume, under instructions from their corporate overlords. Except the Petro-Can, a government-owned business, which may believe it's superior and stubbornly leaves it a few cents more. That's foolhardy. It's all gasoline. We don't care who sells it. We all burn through at least a tank each week.

When I popped into Rib Eye Jack's Ale House this week, my Muskoka
Brewery rep Vince Cusick was there with his sweet new Mad Tom IPA
wheels. I actually have no idea what kind of vehicle this is because, well,
I didn't look. But that is one sick ride right there. And I have a Ford
Focus, dying to be painted with really cool craft beer stuff! Any takers?

If it was Toothless Bob's Gas and Bait Emporium, all we would ask Bob is this: "Is that actual gas you're pumping there, Bob?" and if he replied, "Well, it's a lot like gas," we'd all be, hey, for 80 cents a litre, close enough. But the other day, I came in and the Husky was at 87 cents a litre while the other three were all hovering at 90 cents/litre. When I left work, all of them were 83 cents/litre. At some point during the day, they had matched the independent so my little Husky went, "Heh, heh, heh, you wanna play price wars, mi amigos?" and dropped it even lower, forcing the big boys to buckle at the knees.

For my American readers, all this litre nonsense calculates out to about $3 a gallon. I know your gas is cheaper but ours is heavily-taxed for roadwork, infrastructure, medicare, group homes for left-handed pipe-welding wayward nuns and penguin habitats. The big stuff.

The evolution of a label. When Great Lakes Brewing
started on February 12, 1989, their labels (top) were
a tad, well, basic. Thanks to the artistic wizardry of
Garnett Gerry and graphic design work of Fabian
Skidmore, the brewery has the country's best labels
so Happy Birthday to the great folks at Great Lakes!

Anyhow, kicking and screaming my way back to the point with the Husky gas station, sometimes the little guy holds sway over the big guns. Sometimes, the tail wags the dog (ironic as the Husky is the only among them that actually is a canine.)

But these days, are the craft brewers the tail that's wagging the humongous mainstream brewers dog? At first blush, no. The big boys are Great Danes; the small crafties are chihuahuas, yapping at their 90% marketshare heels.

However, let's look a little closer. At about this time last year during Super Bowl 49, American giant Anheuser Busch ran a minute-long Budweiser commercial called "Brewed The Hard Way" that was meant to be a kick in the nuts to craft brewers. During the ad, a dude with a handle-bar moustache and beard (because, of course, all craft beer drinkers look like that, notably the women) is shown sniffing his beer while a gravelly voice intones that "macro brewed, beechwood-aged" Budweiser is not made to be "fussed over." Well, sure, being as Bud is brewed primarily with rice, that recipe certainly wasn't "fussed over" so for gawd's sake, don't smell it. But there's some nice consistency there on A-B's end.

Of course, it kept going with Gravel Voice saying, "Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale. We'll be brewing us some golden suds." Yeah, while I do agree with Bud on the pumpkin part (foul things) in beer, I recently had Nickel Brook's Peach Berliner Weisse and quite liked it. (I am softening on sour beers - more on that soon.) But as explained in my last column, I am colourblind. Does pale thin yellowish now qualify as golden? Seriously, I don't know. Of course, the ad caused what I like to call a Twitter-Shitstorm with craft brewers and associations slamming it loudly and frequently within seconds. From the sidelines, all this craft beer lover could think was: "It's Bud. Who cares what they think?"

Yes, why sip your pumpkin peach ale when
you can shotgun 17 Buds, put your head clean
through the drywall at a Frat Boys Toga Party
and then wake up in a bathtub hours later??
The obvious preferred activity is the latter!

But let's be honest about it. It's not like craft beer drinkers are gonna be wooed to Bud by the commercial so I honestly believe it was actually aimed at their American arch-rival, SAB-Miller. I mean, craft drinkers aren't going to defect to The Pale Side... but Miller drinkers might. And lo and behold, by Autumn 2015, A-B InBev decided to try and buy out SAB-Miller for 1,000 kajillion dollars (I rounded up.) It's being dragged out in front of the Anti-Trust Commission and will be for some time.

Again, that's not the interesting thing in Beer World about last year. No, it's this. After running that Super Bowl commercial, Anheuser Busch-InBev then went out and bought five notable craft breweries before the year was done!!! First up was Seattle's Elysian Brewing which brews an *ahem* pecan pumpkin peach amber ale. If irony was ice cream, we'd all have brain freeze right now. Next to fall to the AB-InBev's Brinks Truck Approach To Business was LA's Golden Road Brewery and then all was quiet until one week in December when they snapped up Arizona's Four Peaks Brewing, London, England's Camden Town Brewery and Colorado's Breckenridge Brewing. On top of this, they already owned my beloved Goose Island Brewing from Chicago, purchased in 2011 and then in 2014, plucked up New York's Blue Point Brewing and Oregon's 10 Barrel Brewing.

RateBeer recently informed us that my Nickel Brook's
Kentucky Bastard was the best beer in Ontario for 2015,
based on ratings. As you know, Bastard is created by aging
the Bolshevik Bastard Imperial Stout in a bourbon barrel
for a year. The result? A delicious beer becomes decadent!

I maintain this is the tail wagging the dog. Why? Because now the big boys are in the corner, being forced to acknowledge the craft breweries have value! So much value, it involves a dollar sign followed by a shitload of numbers. I say 10 years ago, no way! Hell, they probably pretended the little crafties didn't even exist. Now the tail is wagging with such strength, it's stinging the dog's eyes. That's the tail owning that ugly inbred mutt's ass!

Okay, enough on AB-InBev and especially Bud because it is making me crave Chinese food (stupid rice) and I have a lasagna cooking. Let's look at which tails are wagging the big dogs in Donny's Dawg Pound!

Gotta start with my homeys at Nickel Brook whose Kentucky Bastard Imperial Stout was recently ranked 2015's number one beer in Ontario by RateBeer. Not only that, the most recent vat of my beloved Headstock IPA out of their bigger Hamilton facility was bang-on to its former hoppy goodness. Oh happy days!

Say, who's that on the Hellwoods label?
Could it be, I dunno, maybe Satan?!?!?! 

The brewers struggled at first with the five-time-larger vats but patiently kept tinkering with it until my favourite IPA was returned to its former glory. A slow process, to be sure but I continued to buy growlers of it from my Burlington retail outlet through the year to monitor its progress and each time, it got a little closer. Now, it's there!

And of course, Bellwoods Brewing out of Toronto (another favourite) won RateBeer's Best Ontario Brewery for 2015. Well deserved as these guys continually crank out phenomenal beers! Recently, I had their Hellwoods Imperial Stout at Rib Eye Jack's Ale House and lemme tell you, it was sinfully delicious. Nothing but rich, thick, boozy aroma on the nose, the 10% treat was all chocolate and plum on the tongue. It tasted as if it may have been barrel-aged to boot. If I had sold my soul to try this, Satan would be begging me to take it back. "Please, it burns, it burns!" Sorry, loser, no refunds. I stated that clearly on Kajiji and Craigslist when I sold it to you. (Hey, 50 bucks is 50 bucks.) Also has nothing to do with this beer so...

Moving to Oakville, just down the street from the house I grew up in (well, got older) is the gang at Cameron's Brewing who had a pretty big announcement last week.

Okay, I am digging the new look Cameron's Core Three!
Aside from finally being in 473-ml (16 ounce cans), the
designs are sleek and modern. In the craft beer industry
where image plays a large role, Cameron's wisely ditched
its 20 year old look, exchanging it for this superior one.

Entering their 19th year, the brewery had a top-flight Toronto design firm re-do their three core beers with some flashy new looks and new names. Gone soon are the Cameron's Cream Ale, Lager and Auburn Ale which are being replaced with the Cosmic Cream Ale, Captain's Log Lager and Ambear Red Ale.

Brewery President and co-owner Bill Coleman said in a media release, "The packaging design for the launch of our new cans offered a great opportunity to dive deeper into the soul of Cameron's brands and add a few layers of discovery." So they're not just slick new cans? No, says Coleman, "Our Captain's Log Lager features a lighthouse and unveils the true story that the first lighthouse keeper in Oakville was also the first tavern owner in the 1830's."

Under Cameron President Bill Coleman's glass
is the old-style Cameron's label that adorned all
of their Core Three beers. It was certainly nice
enough but the new look is a guaranteed winner!

"With Ambear Ale, we pay homage to the complex and intelligent Canadian black bear." Well, truthfully, black bears are not really all that complex - if you meet one face-to-face, it will disembowel you on the spot, though intelligently and with merciful haste.

The media release made no mention of the Cosmic Cream Ale but doesn't really have to because hey, it's outer space. We all like that as it is the final frontier. That's something I learned watching a documentary where anyone wearing a red ensign shirt was destined to die. They're all good beers but if I was to recommend one of the Core Three, it's the Auburn... uh, Ambear Red Ale. It is one tasty red ale. But the cream in Cameron's coffee to me will always be their Rye Pale Ale, a sexy bastard that once took gold at the Ontario Brewing Awards for specialty grain beers. I have always liked these guys, even when I was a mainstream beer drinker because one day, as a Labatt Blue drinker, I decided to try a Cameron's Lager, instead. (The actual story: I was at a party and finished all my Blue so this was in the fridge, as well.) It was like Blue but had something... more. Later, I discovered that "more" was taste and thus began my craft beer journey that even that 1830's lighthouse keeper/tavern owner could not accurately track. Because he's dead. ("He's dead, Jim!") Anyway, these beers, these cans - this week debuting in the LCBO!! If you want the Ambear, show up before I do.

When you are born on Valentine's Day, such
as I was, and go out drinking on Valentine's
Day, such as I did, this is how your beer laces
the glass. It's very sweet and special. Like me.

Two quick shout-outs to a couple more tails that wag the dog around these parts. Happy 29th Birthday to Etobicoke's Great Lake Brewing as they celebrated the big day on Friday. When I was selecting the Best IPA for my "Best of 2015" column, all four finalists were creations of brewmaster Mike Lackey.

And, of course, a quick "say hey" to my Bracebridge friends at Muskoka Brewery. When I caught up to sales rep, Vince Cusick, at Rib Eye Jack's Ale House last week, he was driving the sickest ever Mad Tom IPA vehicle. That's it in the top picture. When I posted the pic, Beer Bro Stevil St Evil, who enjoyed many a Mad Tom and Twice As Mad Tom at my place during his June visit, noted simply, "Seeing good ol' Mad Tom really big there. Yup, he's got the crazy eyes." Not said? Mad Tom also gave the pair of us some pretty crazy eyes, too.

Next up, an interview with Trafalgar Brewing and Distillery owner, Mike Arnold, who recently revamped his retail section, installing 16 growler stations!! Sketchy details about my Valentine's birthday at Rib Eye Jack's!! And thanks to Rib Eye Steve, my first ever Russian River Brewing Pliny The Elder IPA. During my birthday drink-a-thon, I somberly thought about all the money I have spent on beer in my life. I honestly wish I had it all back. Because can you imagine how much beer I could buy now with that money??? But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...