"You gotta call this one Blog 3..."

While my coworker Marie is best identified as our
Beer Store's official foodie, she has also learned a ton
about craft beers in the last two years. So here she is
handling my Q... which just sounds so very wrong...
That's okay. Her man, Ernie, was sitting right there
and said he couldn't believe how well she was working
my Q! Uhh, I'm just making this even worse, aren't I?

"I've already thought of a perfect title for this one," said my co-worker Marie as she presented me with a big old pile of beer from Block 3 Brewing, located in tiny St. Jacobs. "You gotta call it 'Blog 3'!!" Hmmmm, is that copyright infringement or am I skirting around the edge of those laws? Meh, too late now. It's out there.

Okay, let me set the stage here first. After some of her extensive travels this past Summer, Marie and her boy-toy Ernie had just handed me the brewery's Beauty and the Belgian Amber Ale, Cathedral Belgian IPA, Do You Want To Dance Single Hop Citra IPA and their Fickle Mistress (aren't they all? Uhh, so I hear...) Dry-Hopped Sour Ale.

This nicely complemented the Block 3 King Street Saison I had already purchased, as well as the Block 3 Danger Zone Imperial Farmhouse IPA she had earlier gifted to me. Not to mention the Block 3 1-Up Imperial IPA gifted to me from beer writing buddy Drunk Polkaroo.

Now you have to understand, at any given point, the fridge at Donny's Bar and Grill has a top shelf and door shelf literally jammed with dozens of beer from an equal amount of brewers. It was a craft beer shit-show in there. Much to my delight.

The boys in the Block 3 hood. Brewery founders are, from left, Derek
Lebert, Phil Hipkiss, Graham Spence and Bryan Maher. When they
opened in September 2013, all four were 30 years old and under. Of
the quartet, shown here in a Waterloo Region Record photo, only
Maher had any brewing experience, having worked for Wellington
Brewing for three years. The other three founders were accountants.

But at one point this Summer, there was so much Block 3 product in there that I couldn't look in any direction without spotting one. If you had to hashtag that serious situation, I suppose you could either go with #craftbeerdilemma or #shutupwhiner. Both work. And much like myself, not one of those Block 3 beers lifted a finger to clean my fridge.

So lemme get this straight. Rocket scientists can send a rover to Mars and send a space probe to Jupiter. But they've never thought of inventing a self-cleaning fridge? What's up with that, NASA rocket scientists?

Before I continue, a quick lesson in Roman Mythology. Jupiter was the king of the Roman gods, their equivalent of, say, the Greek's Zeus. Back when astronomers first discovered the four largest of Jupiter's moons, they named them after his mistresses, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. So NASA sends this probe up and names it Juno. Who's she? Jupiter's wife. So NASA is sending Jupiter's wife to check up on Jupiter, who been flying solo with all these extra-martial babe moons in his orbit? That's a dick move, NASA!

When Marie and her boy-toy Ernie returned from Block 3, they brought
me, from left, a Beauty and the Belgian Amber Ale, a Cathedral Belgian
IPA, a Fickle Mistress Dry Hopped Sour and a Do You Want To Dance
Single Hop Citra IPA. Holy crap, I made out like a frikkin' bandit here!

Anyway, I thought long and hard about how I was going to get all of these Block 3 beers out of my fridge to make room for other breweries' product. Several minutes of furrowed brow thinking went into this tragic dilemma before I finally came up with a solution. "I must drink these beers to create space for more!" I yelped out loud to no one in particular since I'm flying solo here at Donny's Bar and Grill at the present. While that'll probably change at some point, in the meantime, I'm stuck here doing whatever I want whenever I want. The worst part is the frequent napping and lack of a chore list. It's brutal.

I swiped this picture and given the funky
angle, I'm gonna assume it was taken by
my video buddy, Hago Vanayan. But I'll
tell you this, King Street is a great saison!

A quick check on a nearby wall tells me it's Beer O'Clock here at Donny's Bar and Grill. There's no clock on that wall. I just wrote Beer O'Clock there in indelible magic marker because I couldn't find a delible marker. Without a chore list readily available, I like to leave myself post-it notes but without the actual post-notes. In a completely unrelated note, does anyone have any spare paint they're not using?

Okay, we're gonna start with the milder ones and slowly shift towards the funky and hoppier stuff. That means their King Street Saison is on deck. Well, when the label promises you're gonna get "citrus, coriander, peppercorn and bubble-gum" in the taste, that sounds a whole lot more like a German wheat than a saison. And guess what? It was. On top of what they already promised (minus the bubble-gum), there was also banana on the nose and orange on the tongue with this 4.6% beer. Is this a wheat? Is this a saison? It doesn't really matter because it was damn tasty either way. Turns out they did, in fact, use a wheat malt (as well as Munich II and Pilsner malts) so mystery solved. So, yup, it's a saison loaded with a wheaty goodness.

In fact, Belgian-style seems to be such a reoccurring theme at the brewery, you often wonder if they're located in St Jacob's or Brussels. Case in point, their Beauty and the Belgian Amber Ale, which, as the name clearly announces, goes straight for the spicier Belgian yeast in the brewing process. So how does it all play out in the glass?

Just because a number of their beers have that
Belgian spiciness, it doesn't mean they can't do a
straight-up, west coast, single hop IPA. Their Do
You Want To Dance? is an outstanding Citra hop
IPA. So that's not Molson M in that glass. You can
tell by the colour... and taste... and that it's good.

Well, again, these guys have a strong handle on the style with this 6.3% ale giving it light fruit and distinct spiciness on the nose and breadiness, caramel and a touch more fruit (I noticed grapes and grapefruit) on the tongue. This is a solid Belgian ale. Monks would happily serve this. However, I should note is that while St Jacobs has a huge Mennonite community, actual monks are sadly under-represented in their population-at-large. However, Marie is quick to point out that the Mennonites basically kill it with great food at the town's hugely-popular Farmers' Market so at least you don't have to worry about all those monks lining up early to get all the good cheese and sausages.

Knowing that I have been dipping my toes into the sour beers well, Marie brought me back their Fickle Mistress, a dry-hopped sour. Obviously, these days, most brewers are trying their hands at sours - the big style of 2016. Hell, since most of their regular line production is done at the brewery they share with Collective Arts in Hamilton, our locals, Nickel Brook are cranking tons of sours and "funky beers" that are mostly using Brettanomyces (crazy yeasts) and have come to called the Burlington brewery, the Funk Labs.

Again, these boys just love their Belgian style, this time
cranking out their Cathedral Belgian IPA.  Using their
farmhouse yeast gives this that Belgian touch but past that
it's west coast style all the way. A punchy and tasty pour.

Again, it is a style I am still trying to understand but with which, I am happily experimenting. The Fickle Mistress, to me, is remarkably similar to many I have had thus far, including a couple of lambics and Nickel Brook's Raspberry Uber. I did quite like it but to me, the 5.5% Fickle tastes a lot like sour raspberry pop. Again, I will continue to experiment but might never believe this is the next big style, the one that will knock IPAs off the throne. Because the IPA is mighty and will rule Westeros for all time. Thus it has been written by George RR Martin himself. That said, I'm not a brewer so let them play around with different styles and have some fun. Think of breweries like gigantic game rooms. They wanna play with all the toys. I would, too. Because I'm a child and I don't mean, at heart. I mean, mentally.

Which brings us to the IPAs Marie retrieved for me. (All in the Westeros throne room stands, delivering thunderous applause.) First on deck is the Cathedral Belgian IPA.

This pair came from Marie on the left and my Beer
Writing Bro Drunk Polkaroo on the right. Both IPAs
were outstanding in their different ways and also
positively reviewed in this space. And, hey, free beer!

When Beau's All Natural Brewing delivered their Farm Table IPA to our Beer Store this past Summer, coworker Jay Dawg and myself were thrilled. (Sales-wise, Beau's Lug Tread Lagered Ale is almost on par with our two biggest craft sellers - Steam Whistle Pilsner and Mill Street Organic Lager.) Once again, with Cathedral (as well as Farm Table), it's all in the yeast.

With the Cathedral, there was a light note of spice in the aroma, as well as grapefruit while on the tongue, it was west coast fun. Some citrus and more grapefruit on the tongue, this 6.2% IPA is listed as having just 25 IBUs (international bitterness units) which is staggeringly hard to believe. It tasted much hoppier than that low IBU would imply. IPAs usually start at about 55 IBUs. I'm not sure how they pulled this one off. Hell, I'm not sure David Copperfield could have.

Which brings us to the star of the show - the Do You Want To Dance Single Hop Citra IPA (or as the label maker erroneously named it "singe hop.")

Believe it or not, I had to deal with these
Marie-delivered Block 3 offerings today
because she and her boy-toy Ernie are back
on the road, heading to Windsor with stops
at craft beer breweries the entire way. As
you can see, from this photo texted to me
last night, more goodies are coming to me.

Breweries are really nailing these single hop beers these day, though decidedly less so with the singe-hopped ones.

Again, I was staggered to see this 6.5% beer had just 40 IBUs until I checked the malts used: UK Pale, Abbey, CaraRed and finally... Wheat. Ahhh, there you go. Once again, the wheat infusion gives this a certain Belgian Wit note. However, what the hell, it works! This is some serious Mad Scientist tinkering going on in their fermentation vat. So on the nose, again, we get some grassiness and pine while on the tongue, it's nicely citrus with a touch of lager-like graininess. I like what these guys are doing in their brewery, which is far more experimental than many craft lovers realize.

Marie and Ernie report back that the atmosphere in the brewery is friendly and fun, not to mention that they are usually served by one of the four owners (Derek Lebert, Phil Hipkiss, Graham Spence and Bryan Maher) themselves. "They're all really friendly, helping out with free samples and just happy to talk about their brewery," Marie noted. By my count, the pair have visited Block 3 about four or five times in the last three years and they always stay long enough to get a paddle of goodies and enjoy the fun.

When Nickel Brook's Funk Labs Head Brewer Patrick
turned 30 on Monday, owner John Romano (centre) and
helper Megan, right, were on hand with birthday cake.
No word on the yeast used in that cake but frankly, let's
not rule our some form of Brettanomyces as his Funk
Lab really likes that style. Hey, all cake is good cake...

But I had to report on these beers now because the two drove to Windsor this weekend for a weekend of shenanigans at Caesars Windsor and I supplied Marie with a map from the Ontario Beverage Network that shows all the breweries along or near Highway 401 between here and Windsor. So more Marie beers coming my way.

That's it for today but lots more coming up. My son David and I drove into Toronto for a photo shoot last Wednesday and there were stops at Great Lakes Brewing, the Indie Alehouse and Junction Craft Brewing along the way. Not to mention some Yankee Doodle Dandies dropped off at Donny's Bar and Grill recently by Beer Bro Glenn and some delicious Stone City Ales' brews, courtesy of Jay-Dawg and the lovely Cara. I really have to yet my nose to the grindstone here because, well, beer drinking is involved and that demands a certain level of dedication on my end. But finally, one more note. Because she lives in the same neighbourhood as our Beer Store (right behind it, actually), Marie seems to know 90% of our clientele by name. Ironically, the same number seem to know my first name and in a bizarre turn, it seems like all of them are known as "Hey you!" on my end. I'm so good with names. And hey, with Halloween over, that's the end of pumpkin ales. Now I won't drink them but many do so I have to make some acknowledgment to them. That's where my Beer Writing Buddy Drunk Polkaroo comes in as he ranked them a couple of weeks back. The fact that two Nickel Brook beers top the list makes it even more appealing to link to: Polk Rates The Pumpkin Beers!  But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...