David's Star Turn & Daddy's Beer Tour

David reads the small chalkboard on the counter at Toronto's
Indie Alehouse. He helped Daddy pick out his beer with one
condition. They had to end with the letter I-P-A. Hey, no
problem as we walked out with three of them. Great work!

My son, David, got a pretty cool opportunity a couple weeks back when a Toronto casting company contacted his Mom about the possibility of him having his picture taken for a print media campaign.

Now David's happy persona was available on tape to the casting agency because he has auditioned for a couple of things in the past, notably a cereal ad that celebrated diversity, showing images like a gay couple having breakfast, a family with a special needs child enjoying the product and so on. (My pitch for a cave-family with a pet dinosaur went unheeded. Brilliance is never recognized until long after its time.)

David's Mom was busy preparing for a trip to Germany so she didn't have time to travel to the photo shoot. Asking my boss, Allison, if she could fix it so I had that Wednesday off did involve some major shuffling of shifts on her end but she made it happen which was very much appreciated by both me and my boy.

When I got the itinerary for the day, I saw that David's photo shoot was slated for 3:45 pm, likely the last of the day. I smelled opportunity.

Great Lake Brewing had a huge pumpkin and hay
bale scene set up out front of their Queen Elizabeth
Boulevard Brewery in Etobicoke. My boy got pretty
happy about the scenery as it reminded him more
of Halloween than beer. Granted, he doesn't drink.

And for me, opportunity is pronounced "brewery stops." Of course, it was David's big day, not mine, so I asked if he wanted to go into Toronto early and check out some breweries with Daddy since we had all day. He was extremely game as he loves a good road trip, as well as visiting these places and talking to new people. So as I was taught by Beer Bro Stevil St Evil, "Use Google and chart your course first, Beer Captain!"

And I did, pulling up a map of craft breweries in Toronto's west end near the studio and drawing up a rudimentary tour. Our stops would include Great Lakes Brewing in Etobicoke, the Indie Alehouse in the Junction area of Toronto and Junction Craft Brewing in the same neighbourhood. I made sure the last two were less than 10 minutes away from the studio, if we had to cut our little brewery jaunt short. Not an issue. We landed in all three places and were still an hour early. That actually worked out well as he had to be fitted for clothes, get his hair and make-up done before the shoot... you know, all the stuff that stars must endure. So he was more than ready to go and happily waiting when the young lady having her photo-shoot ahead of him was just finishing up. For once, being early was a good thing. But the studio was the last start so let's take a look at the first three before we come back to it at the end.

As this was just a handful of days before Halloween, the taps
at Great Lake Brewing were covered with faux cobwebs and
caution tape was plastered through the place. The only thing
I was in danger of was buying some really good craft beer...

You know, considering Great Lakes Brewing is literally 25 minutes down the road from Donny's Bar and Grill, I'm stunned I've never been there. But then again, I'm at the seasoned age where none of the stupid things I have done or smart things I haven't done really surprise me anymore.

Going into their retail shop, I was impressed with both the huge patio out front, the fridge with product inside and the taps at the ready. Seeing their outstanding Karma Citra IPA in the fridge, I told David I would be buying some of that but asked him to pick me another. He surveyed the lot, which included their Pompous Ass Pale Ale, Devil's Pale Ale 666 before pointing to their Canuck Pale Ale. "I like that one because it has a lumberjack," he noted of the label created by artist Garnett Gerry and GLB graphic designer Fabian Skidmore. He doesn't even drink beer but picked the exact one I wanted. Excuse me while I go weep fatherly tears of pride.

So we collected our swag and off we went to the Indie Alehouse in the Junction about 15 minutes away.

My boy poses with Indie Alehouse worker Jason
who was quite interested in David's upcoming
photo adventure. The two of them chatted away
and when I set up this picture, Jason made sure
my boy was wearing an Indie Alehouse ballcap.

No problems finding it at all as I followed my roughly-drawn map. Parking along Dundas Street West in Toronto, however, was a different issue so I opted for a side street and parked not exactly legally. But hey now, here was a really good set-up. Next to their retail shop was a huge dining and bar area - I mean, really big - so this place must see tons of foot traffic, especially on the weekend. This is good news as Tiffers, aka Tiffany from Rib Eye Jacks, is organizing a "We Take You To Beer" Bus Tour at the end of the month and GLB is Stop #1 while Indie Alehouse is Stop #2. It finishes with a full brewery tour at Steam Whistle (lots of fun and super-informative - I've done it before) but I'm glad Indie Alehouse has this kind of space as our halfway stop. More on this bus trip to come.

But it was at Indie Alehouse that we met Jason, who would be helping us on this fine day. After Jason introduced himself, David cheerfully piped up, "I'm David and this is my father, Don. We're in Toronto because I'm getting my picture taken today!" Jason perked up and asked why. So I explained the photo session to him and he then looked at David and boldly told him, "They'll pick your pictures for sure! You're a pretty good-looking guy!" When David beamed and responded, "I sure am!", Jason looked over at me and laughed, "You gotta love that confidence!" To paraphrase my lad, I sure do!

So then, it was beer buying time. They had a little chalkboard in a stand on the counter so I make it easy for my boy. "Show Daddy every beer that ends with I, P and A." He looked at the board and start pointing. "Hmmm, that's this one... and this one... and this one."

The final stop on the Father And Son Beer
Tour was Junction Craft Brewing where I
picked up four beauties. This one was the
most real of the three as you have to walk
past more than a few fermenting vats to get
 to the retail counter. It really doesn't come
much more authentic than that, does it?

There's a little Parenting 101 right there. It's about guiding your kids in the direction you want them to go. And that's how I walked out of the Indie Alehouse with a Love Triangle IPA, a Couchsurfer IPA and an Instigator IPA. One stop, three IPAs, it doesn't get more efficiently-tasty than that. We'll get to all this beer in a minute but first, let's go to the final stop, Junction Craft Brewing.

Where Indie Alehouse was on a nice strip of Dundas Street West with an unique combo of antique places, nice deli's, book shops and some fine dining, Junction Craft Brewing was tucked away on a backstreet five minutes east amidst a sea of industrial factories, complete with an abundance of spray-painted graffiti as outer decor. This would not be a "chic boutique" little stretch of Toronto land. Gritty would be underselling it. That said, as always, I was suitably dressed for the location as the only thing I know about Armani is that it's not short for either army or manicure.

Since it was a long stretch of attached factories, we accidentally walked through the wrong door and were in some sort of distilled alcohol distribution centre. It was nice but again, wrong place. So as per instruction, we went one over, climbed the metal staircase and landed inside Junction Craft Brewing. But when I opened the door and saw nothing but fermentation vats and liquid-covered floors, I said to a nearby worker, "We've come in the wrong way, haven't we? I wanted your retail." No, she assured me, gesturing toward the retail counter just past all the vats. "It's right over there." Well, alrighty then... let's play.

Okay, from the Indie Alehouse, we have, from left, their
Love Triangle IPA, their Instigator IPA and finally, their
Couchsurfer IPA. All three were really good but in the
end, the one with the lowest ABV was the one that made
me go, "Whoa!" That said, three dynamite beers here. 

I grabbed David's hand because I didn't want him slipping on the floor just before his big photo-shoot. But at the same time, I noticed he was looking around in wide-eyed marvel. He was not used to this at all as it wasn't just the cool shiny machinery he's seen in our previous brewery visits. Oh, they were there but this also had troughs of spent barley malt, grated drains on the floor funneling liquid and it smelled accordingly. Yeah, this was the exposed raw guts of a brewery and David was totally fascinated. It was pretty cool that these guys basically usher you in through inner-workings to get to the retail counter. I've never seen that before and I have been to a lot of breweries. I loved it. It was like those old MTV: Unplugged shows but, you know, a craft brewery. Raw and bare, baby. After buying my beer, I walked David over to the trough of used-up malt and told him, "You know what they do with all this old grain at Nickel Brook? A farmer comes in, takes it all for free and feeds it to his pigs in the country."

There's not much more I can tell you about this
Karma Citra IPA that I haven't already said. It's
simply one of Ontario's best IPAs. But I wanna
show off the cool inverted tulip glass I bought at
GLB during our visit. A glass of tasty right there!

The lady there (whose name I missed) told him that Junction Craft did precisely the same with theirs. This new connection between a brewery and what would eventually become tasty bacon was not lost on my boy.

Okay, time to talk beers! Let's start with Great Lakes as it was Stop #1. Well, I don't know what more I could tell you about Karma Citra that I haven't already said in this space. One of Ontario's juiciest single-hop IPAs, it's a limited run that will sell out quickly so get your ass over to either the brewery or an LCBO and grab it now. For my money, Canuck Pale Ale deserves all the praise it gets and then some. It's one of those great beers that always been there and sometimes we forget about it. My coworker Jay-Dawg and I were talking about that recently. He noted that sometimes when he hits the LCBO, if he doesn't see any new stuff he's interested in, he'll grab a few knowns, including Canuck. "I always forget how good of a beer it is until I try it again," he noted. Pale ales were Jay's cross-over into the world of craft beer and hey, it's good to revisit the ones from the beginning of the journey. Much like him, I enjoyed the reminder of how good this brew is.

I love a good red ale and I love a good wheat. So how do the
styles combined taste? Pretty damn good. One of four beers
bought at Junction Craft Brewing, this had tons of flavour.

At 5.2% and 35 IBUs (international bitterness units), there's grapefruit on the nose with a taste of pine and citrus on the tongue. It's ABV safe, it's damn tasty and it's your all-purpose, watching-hockey beer.

The three IPAs from Indie Alehouse were all solid performers so good choices there, David. At 6.5% and roughly 80 IBUs, the Instigator IPA had some big grapefruit on the nose with bitter orange peel on the tongue. This is the one that's really popular among the Indie patrons. The Love Triangle IPA weighed in at 6% and about 70 IBUs and had some nice pine on the tongue with fresh citrus on the nose. Again, another solid candidate but let's look at the Couchsurfer IPA. Okay, at just 5%, you expect this to be a malty British-style IPA. It most definitely was not as it kicks it full west-coast style. Herb and mango on the nose and while it had a thinner body, it still held a full-bodied taste. Because I expected the least from this one, it actually blew me away.

When I posted this on Instagram, beer lovers were all
commenting on its beautiful colour for a Galaxy Hop beer.
I hadn't really noticed but instantly worried that I might
have gimmicked it too much, using the filters. There are
some things colourblind people should avoid. Like filters.

Not for being the best of the bunch. No, for exceeding my expectations by a large margin.

Now onto the gang at Junction Craft Brewing where I really mixed my choices up. This was kid in a candy shop time. Let's start with their Olympia Looping Red Wheat because while I have enjoyed many Summer wheats and darker Dunkel Weisses in the Winter, I've never had a red one. That's pretty apropos for the colourful Autumn landscape, I'd say. As you can see, it's a beautiful deep red pour. At 5% and 18 IBUs, the nose is banana with a brief whiff of bubblegum. Some tangy, dry, apple and fruit on the tongue. As it's the only red wheat I've ever had, it's easy to declare this one the winner!

Their Hop Burst Galaxy was a damn good one for a session ale. Using just Galaxy hops (they also made an Amarillo hop one I wish was there as it is my favourite), this clocks in at just 3.5% but has a staggering 58 IBUs. I have never seen a combination of low ABV to high IBU quite like that in my time.

Junction Craft's Engineer IPA is the pretty example of why
you need a whole beer, not just a small Beer Fest sample, to
properly talk about it. At first, it's nothing but malts but
slowly, about halfway through, the hops start to surface...

Very light-bodied as sessioners tend to be but lots of citrus on the nose and some light orange and lemon on the tongue. Just an excellent job with this one, gang!

Their Engineer's IPA is a bit of a sneak attack. On first sip (and several afterwards) all you get is malts. I mean, you do get citrus on the nose but it's caramel maltiness on the tongue. Then the 6.2%, 59 IBU beer starts to slide in a different direction about halfway through. Suddenly, the more you have, the more the hoppy grapefruit comes to the forefront. If you're expected a hop bomb, this ain't it. But it is one beautifully balanced beer.

And finally, let's look at their Bahnhofzoo Berliner Weisse, a sour offering from the Junction crew. (The Bahnhof Zoo is an actual tourist attraction in Berlin.) This is the first non-fruit-infused Berliner Weisse I've had in quite some time. At just 3.5% and 5 IBUs, this is a nice light sour that won't offend any sensibilities.

David stands happily in front of the fermentation vats
at Junction Craft Brewing. Yeah, it was definitely an
eye-opener to walk into a brewery and be right in the
middle of the brewing area. But then again, it's not
an area that we usually see. So new adventure for us!!

Pouring with a thin head and looking like a pale lager, it's tarty citrus on the nose with more of the same on the tongue. Meant to be a Summer drink, I had mine on an warm Autumn day so close enough.

And that's a wrap from the beers on this Toronto road trip but a couple more cute moments from the photo-shoot and beyond. At one point, David was posing on the kitchen set and photographer Mark called me over because David wanted to talk to me. Turns out he was posing with a plate full of fruit and he wanted me to take a picture of him "eating healthy" to show his Mom. The crew sent him back to Daddy's with that fruit, some chicken wings and vegetarian lasagna, all of which he loved.

On the way home, David decided that this photo-shoot was destined to make him famous. Once he was a star, he told me he was moving to Hollywood where he would have four girlfriends - Emma Watson, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens. He didn't have his fourth picked yet so I asked if I could use that extra spot and get Halle Berry as my girlfriend. He thought about it for a few seconds and then said flatly, "I don't think so, Daddy." Damn, that was my only real shot at Halle, using David as a lure. Oh well. But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain...