Millennials and Gen-X and Boomers, oh my...

So a Baby Boomer and a Millennial walk into a
bar... stop me if you've heard this one. No, actually
this is just me and Jay-Dawg ripping it up at a
Beer Store Christmas Party a few years back. I
can assure you that Jay no longer drinks Bud...

"So what am I anyway?" my coworker, Jay-Dawg, asked me when the idea of different generations and their names came up last week.

Well, I wasn't entirely sure. You see, while I was born towards the tail end of the Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1963), I wasn't sure when the subsequent Generation X (starting in 1964) ended and when the following Generation Y, now more commonly referred to as Millennials, began.

So I told him I would find out. "Just don't tell me I'm a Millennial, okay?" he requested. So I checked it out. Uh-oh. Gen-X ran from 1964 to 1981 while the Millenials were born between 1982 and 2001. Jay was born in '83. He was a Millennial.

When I caught up to him at Rib Eye Jack's Ale House after work, downing a couple with the restaurant's staff, I gave him the generational breakdown by years. "How can I be a Millennial?" he asked, "I'm all about NWA..." whereas the later Millennials, now in their teens, would be all about, well, Taylor Swift. NWA, of course, was one of the first rap groups (considered by most to be the best) whose initials stood for, I believe, Nigerians With Attitude. And therein lies the problem with generational gaps. The front end of it feels like it has nothing in common with the back end.

Well, these all look like nice fellows. You see, Jay relates to
the "Straight Outta Compton" gang more than recent pop
singers favoured by the tail end of the Millennials. That's
because Jay, like me, is "Straight Outta Oakville," the
whitest suburban enclave ever in the history of suburbia.

So we went around the table as to who was what. Tiny sweetheart spitfire Cara was also a Millennial while the more worldly Tiffers was Gen-X. Though both absent during the conversation, my favourite beer technician Kylie is a Millennial while my buddy and bar manager Steve is Gen-X. And I get Jay's concerns. I mean, the front end of the Boomers are turning 70 this year. Not feeling like I have tons in common with them, either and when they look at me, they're likely thinking exactly what I think when I look at anyone younger than me. Which is, "Shut up! You're like 14 years old."

While each end of a generation doesn't feel like it has anything in common with those on the other end or other generations at all, turns out we all have that one bad thing in common. Bad fashion choices. In fact, some truly horrific fashion choices.

This, my friends, is a Millennial travesty of fashion.
Yes, it started in black urban areas but it wasn't long
before it came to white suburban neighbourhoods.

With the Boomers, it was something I illustrated in the first picture - tie-died T-Shirts. You see someone wearing a tie-died T-Shirt, they're a Boomer. We're also very partial to the equally-ugly Hawaiian shirt.

Then Gen-X came along and decided to wear their baseball caps backwards. Every once in a while, you could see a Gen-Xer wearing a cap and yet shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. Which lead us Boomers to wonder, "If only there was a way for his baseball cap to do that for him!"

But the Millennials outdid us all with the ultimate fashion faux-pas that was the pants below the ass, underwear around the waist trend. Aside from waddling around like penguins, we all saw more underwear choices than we cared to. Happily, Jay never fell to this trend. When I came into work one day, he told me about some dummy with the droopy drawers, mumbling away when he got to the cash where Jay was. "This kid was a total marble-mouth. I had no idea what he was saying."

Okay, my first Lambic came courtesy of
Kylie, who suggested that I try the Mort
Subite Kriek Lambic, a very cherry sour.

Neither did the guy, probably closer to my age, behind him in line, who eventually piped up loudly, "For gawd's sake, speak clearly and pull up your damn pants!"

Okay, let's get Beer O'Clock happening here at Donny's Bar and Grill. In this outing, we are going to look primarily at recent suggestions from my favourite Millennial beer technician Kylie or actual gifts from what I have come to call Kylie's Kraft Kollection. Now here's the thing about Kylie. We first met in November 2014 when I stumbled ass-backwards into Rib Eye Jacks and she was working the bar. Seeing that her name-tag said "Beer Technician" on it, she and I started talking about beer. Good beer. Craft beer. We haven't stopped talking about it since. If we were forced to talk about something other than beer, I think we'd be stumped after the weather. Well, not really... we've actually talked about a lot of other stuff but believe me, it always begins and ends with beer.

So when Kylie suggests something, I tend to listen. Traditionally, it's a beer that's heavily-handed on the hops, which is a brew train I will always gladly board. But knowing I have been dipping my toes in the sour beers pool, she asked if I wanted to try a Lambic. I have only tried Berliner Weisses made by my lads at Nickel Brook, so sure, why not? (If it was a disaster, I was sitting not five feet from a tap of Great Lakes Brewing's Thrust, an IPA. It would be a quick recovery.)

Next up on the Sour Beer Tour was Monk's
Cafe Brewing's Flemish Sour Ale. Okay, this
was a very nice beer in a style that's growing
on both me and brewers alike. Tart and fun.

When she walked over with the beer, I chuckled because it was corked. The previous week, I had struggled mightily with a corked bottle from Trafalgar Ales and Meads, using both my teeth and vice-grips to pop it. This was not gonna be dignified. Kylie looked at the bottle, calmly grabbed a corkscrew and popped it off with ease. Good gawd, I'm stupid. That approach - you know, the easy way - never even dawned on me.

So my first ever Lambic was a Mort Subite (Koobegem, Belgium) Kriek Lambic. How did it taste? Very cherry and not overly sour. Rib Eye Steve explained to me that any sourness from the beer is connected to the sour cherries that it is barrel-aged with for a year. As it turns out, the Kriek Lambic is precisely that - a very specific style of lambic that is intentionally aged with sour Morello cherries. The 4.5% sour was an interesting and honestly tasty diversion. The same brewery makes another Kriek called a Framboise which is aged with raspberries so I am on the hunt.

But Kylie followed it up with a little take-home four-pack for me, featuring a Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale and then *praise be to Odin* some hoppy goodness - a Prairie Artisan Ales' Tulsa Rugby Ale, as well as two from the Alpine Beer Company, their Duet IPA and Pure Hoppiness Double IPA.

A pale ale, an IPA and an Imperial IPA?
Now we're talking Donny's language. Let's
get our hops on! Say, can I trademark that?

Okay, let's start with the Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale. I'm not entirely sure what style of sour this is. Definitely not a berliner weisse, perhaps a lambic? Brewed in Ertvelde, Belgium, this was similar to the Mort Subite offering, though the fruitiness in the 5.5% brew was dialed way down. Bits of apple and cherry, this again was more tart than sour so clearly what qualifies as a sour is given a wide berth. Sweet and sour in the finish and again, enjoyable and refreshing... but let's be honest, it was the next three that I was lusting after.

Ah yes, whether she realized it or not, Kylie had pulled off what's known as "The Donny Triple Play", which consists of a pale ale, an IPA and a Double IPA. That's some excellent fielding there, my Millennial friend! And, as taught to me by Rib Eye Steve, they are to be consumed in order of strength - that way, you're not trashing your palate with the big hops first but rather working your way up. Steve's a lot like my Beer Yoda that way. For starters, he talks backwards a lot - "Drink good beer, you must" and a personal favourite, "An idiot, you are." Also he's only two feet tall. I chalk up the fact that he appears to be taller than me mostly to robotics.

It's baaaaaack! Once called "the best beer in
Ontario" by me (and probably other people - I
haven't really asked around), Nickel Brook's
Immodest Imperial IPA has hit the shelves at
the Burlington brewery again. Before I could
even go and grab some, Cara gifted me with
one. "Don't tell anyone," she whispered. Don't
worry - no one reads this thing. You're safe...

So following the strict Steve's Rules Of Beer Engagement, I cracked open the Prairie Artisan Ales' (Tulsa, Oklahoma) Tulsa Rugby Ale first. Brewed with Chinook and Summit hops, this is nothing but citrus on the nose, more on the tongue with hints of added pine, I was genuinely surprised to find out this dynamite little 5.4% pale ale was only 30 IBUs (international bitterness units). Honestly, like Nickel Brooks' Naughty Neighbour APA (38 IBUs), it tastes hoppier than it is.

Okay, the next two from Alpine Beer Company (Alpine, California) caused no small amount of research on my end. At first, I thought they were contract-brewed out of San Diego's Green Flash Brewing. No, it turns out Green Flash bought them in 2014. So a craft brewer buying another craft brewer? Here's a trend I can finally get onboard with. Regardless, I assumed I'd like the Double IPA more than the IPA. Folks, this was a dead heat, like, say, Superman versus The Flash in a foot race. (DC Comics has done this a number of times. The Flash usually wins but not always.) According to RateBeer, both the Duet IPA and Pure Hoppiness Double IPA are brewed out of Green Flash. No idea if that's still the case (or ever was) as RateBeer has mislead me in the past. But the bottles for both said brewed out of San Diego so that's telling me Green Flash. I also don't care.

On Leap Day, my Millennial friend Mel finished
her first cross-stitch. As the reigning Craft Beer
Queen of Toronto, Mel used it to emphasize a
point I have been trying to make for years now.
Please shop locally to support your craft brewers

Using Simcoe and Amarillo hops (two of my favourites), I was stunned to see the 7% Duet was just 45 IBUs but that said, it was beautifully balanced with the malts and hops. Tropical fruit on the nose, citrus and pine on the tongue, this was a strong single IPA. Likewise, the 8% Pure Hoppiness (IBUs withheld but I'd guess around 80) was pine and hops on the nose, grapefruit on the tongue. Couldn't find the hops used but guessing Centennial is among those in the mix. Smooth as silk. The fact is I could recommend either happily.

Okay, before we part ways, I would like to point out that every generation can learn something from the others. For instance, when a Millennial suggested to me that he was going to take his "date to Pound Town", I assumed he meant a British Dollar Store. Turns out it's something else. Huh. As well, when my Millennial store manager was instructing customers to tap their debit and credit cards (one beep means processing, two means you have to insert your card), if she heard one beep, she told customers that was the "money shot." After seeing a few male customers smirking, I took her aside and told her to Google it as that was a common porn term. But she didn't Google it. She Google Imaged it. Even as fair-skinned as she is, I'm not sure I've ever seen that shade of white in a face before. I doubt it scarred her for life but she was pretty shaky for the rest of the shift. So you see? We all learn from each other. Also to my American readers in the midst of a federal election campaign. Your left has promised to eliminate homelessness. Your right is promising to eliminate ISIS. Odin promised to rid your land of Frost Giants. I still see the homeless and ISIS but has anyone seen a Frost Giant lately? I think not. #VoteOdin. Just sayin'... But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here!!! Until next time, I remain...