Christine, where's my car?

Yes, it looks like a harmless Keg restaurant but it
would soon become the scene of the crime back
in June where I could no longer find my car...

My high school sweetheart, Christine, made the journey from Santa Barbara, California to up here back in June and because of that, I lost my car.

Now, it certainly wasn't her fault. I mean, she is neither a car thief nor a tow-truck driver. She's a total sweetie who smuggles me some of California's best IPAs in her luggage. So there's a long stretch between beer mule and car thief.

But after getting together for some beers with her family on a Saturday night and then a Sunday night at the Burlington Keg with her, myself and my oldest friend, Dave, Chris and I made plans for a lunch on Tuesday. One problem. When I walked out to my parking lot at 11 a.m. on Tuesday to drive to our lunch get-together, my car was nowhere in sight.

Hmmmm, as I presently (at this exact, precise moment) have no warrants for my arrest or car seizure, I was a bit puzzled. Where the hell was my car? I mean, it's a 2007 Ford Focus hatchback and in a city filled with BMWs, Mercedes and Audis, I gotta think a 10-year-old Ford Focus is pretty low on a car thief's "Must Steal" List. It's probably just above a 1972 Lada or a 2015 Smart Car somewhere near the bottom of that list.

Last year's get-together with Christine and Dave involved
many glasses of bubbly beverages from wine to beer. That
is why you take the photos early in the evening while you
are still able. Even idiot-proof cameras have their limits.

Frankly, if you stole my car, you'd likely get laughed out of the Car Thief Community.

So, like all lost items, it was a matter of retracing my steps. On Saturday night, I drove up to Christine's sister's place in Milton to greet her. When I arrived at her sister Annalie's apartment, Christine beckoned me from the railing of the deck, one floor up. "Welcome to the rave," she quipped of the quiet get-together. I spent a great night there with her, Doris, her other sister Doris and their hubbies, talking about the old high school days and the insane parties the teenage sisters had at their quiet country home back in the days. In fact, that's why the parties got so loud - there were no neighbours for miles.

But I think the hubbies were not even a little bit surprised to hear what teenage hellions these wives of theirs were back in the good old days. I mean, all those girls jammed into one home? I remember when Chris and I dated, I always felt so bad for her father. All that estrogen under one roof? He was a brave and strong man. After daughter #4, I'll wager he just gave up on ever having another man in the house and came to the realization he had to get up at 5 a.m. if he ever needed 10 minutes of peace in the washroom.

At the end of the night at the Keg in Burlington,
Dave needed Christine's glasses to even read the
bill. But of course, they didn't fit so he had them
on exactly like this. I was laughing so hard that I
didn't take a picture but this llama re-enacts the
moment perfectly. Long night of fun and drinks!

Okay, back to the missing car. At this point, I still have it as I drove home with six big bombers of California IPAs, courtesy of Christine. And I obviously had it the next night when Dave, Christine and I all met at The Keg in Burlington because I wheeled on over there.

Now since both Dave and Christine are white wine drinkers (Sauvignon Blanc, if that means anything to you as it means zero to me), that left me curious as to what The Keg might have on tap for me. I asked our young waitress (who was the spitting image of a 20-year-old Ivanka Trump - take that as you will but she was quite pretty) if they had any local craft beers behind that bar. They only had a few (which is better than most chain restaurants) but one was Collective Arts' (Hamilton) Ransack The Universe IPA. Yes, they had my Brew Ha Ha 2016 Beer of the Year available. Until I left... at which point, they had none. I'm very thorough that way. And if you are curious as to how Ransack The Universe IPA pairs with The Keg's prime rib dinner... well, pretty damn good. (Granted, it would do just as well with a ballpark hotdog.)

And that's how the booze flowed that night as we reminisced of great and more often than not very funny days long since passed. The stupid things we did. The even more stupid things we did. And, of course, let's not forget the ridiculous things we did. At the end of the night, we all took off in three directions, using cabs or Uber.

Well, holy crap, that's a whole lot of California on my table back in June
and all of it was delicious Cali Cali IPAs. When Christine smuggles beers
back across the border, her motto is clearly: "Go big... when I go home!"

When I shook off the fuzzies the following morning with my coffee, I checked in with Christine to make sure she had gotten back to her sister's place okay. Yup, she said she had as she then marveled about the previous night's wine consumption. "Dave and I must have split about three bottles of wine last night," she laughed. When I suggested she might want to double that number, she then remembered getting home and having to crawl on all fours to get up her sister's steps. Now granted, Christine is probably 90 pounds soaking wet whereas Dave is a big strappin' lad so we can safely assume he had a wee bit more.

From El Segundo, California, comes the El
Segundo Brewing's Mayberry IPA, a 7.1%
little hop-blast. Checking their products on
RateBeer since I couldn't find their website
at first, I saw these guys brew a crazy number
of IPAs, pale ales and Imperial IPAs. Yeah,
they have other styles but they're hop-crazy!

That said, I know the dude all too well. He was topping her glass up all night long. I can guarantee it.

But, once again, back to the missing car. When I went to hop into it on Tuesday morning, it was gone. So I thought back. Turns out I had never returned on Monday to retrieve it from The Keg parking lot. I guess I hadn't needed it on the Monday, never retrieved it and simply forgot where it was. Well, shit...

Since I was meeting Christine for lunch before I went into work, all I can say in my favour is that at least my car was along the way... that is, if it was still there. As the cab rounded the corner, I was relieved to see my little black junk-box still parked safely in the restaurant's lot two days later. I suspect our bar tab alone was enough to grant us some sort of special parking dispensation from the staff. ("Leave the little black Ford alone - that guy drank every bottle of Ransack The Universe we had. Let's put his picture up on the wall, instead.")

So Christine and I did eventually meet for lunch at Fionn MacCools in Oakville where we were served by the exact same waitress from a year prior and the freaky thing is she remembered us. A year later. "You two were high school sweethearts, right?" she asked. Yup. "And you live in California now, right?" she asked Christine. Geezuz, on the money again. How does a server remember customers, who are not even regulars, this well? I couldn't even remember where my car was!!

Okay, here's the two coolest labels from the Christine IPA Haul. That's
the Cigar City Brewing and Coronado Brewing collaboration Conquista
IPA on the left and the Smog City Brewing Amarilla Gorilla IPA on the
right. Which one is in the glass? Like I have a clue four months later...

So anyways, almost four months later, it's time to stop talking missing cars and high time to start talking tasty California IPAs!

Let's start with El Segundo Brewing in, hey now, El Segundo, California, a brewery started up by former aerospace financial man, Rob Croxall, who ditched his high-paying gig to start a brewery in 2011 because of "why the hell not?" reasons. Okay, whether Christine realizes it or not, she might have been fortunate to even come across their Mayberry IPA. And why is that? Well, the 7.1%, 51 IBUs (international bitterness units) IPA is brewed with Mosaic hops which were rarely available in those parts, making this beer only occasionally on the shelves.

This collaboration Beginner's Luck Double IPA
by El Segundo Brewing and Green Cheek Beer
Company packed one helluva whallop at 8.8%
and roughly 90 IBUs. A silent and deadly killer.

At first, that is. Yes, it's also goosed with Cascade and Chinook hops but the brewers waited for the availability of all three to make this. That is, until 2015 when they managed to move this up to a year-round release. Some nice tropical fruit on the nose with lots of pineapple on the tongue and a touch of blueberry, I think. A solid lovely brew.

Next up is a collaboration between Cigar City Brewing (Tampa, Florida) and Coronado Brewing (Coronado, California) called Conquista IPA with the very cool label that harkens back to Spanish ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The 6.5%, roughly 70 IBUs brew has some nice tropical fruit on the nose with a sturdy malt backbone on the tongue with some plum in the mix. Very refreshing. A good lunch beer.

Okay, from our friends at Smog City Brewing in Torrance, California, I was fortunate enough to see an Amarilla Gorilla IPA in my prize package - happy, happy, happy! As the cheeky name implies, the reckless use of Amarillo hops (which, along with Idaho 7, are my favourite) in this 7.8%, roughly 85 IBU ale give it tons of mango on the nose with a super bitter pine finish. I really liked this one but, hey, we have three real bombs coming up. That said, hands down, the best label in the entire stash!

Two big-ass beers need a big-ass glass and my Muskoka tulip is huge!
When Christine and her sister, Ingrid, visited Barrelhouse Brewing in
Paso Robles, California, they not only walked out with two top-notch
IPAs but I also scored a T-Shirt from the place! Pretty frikkin' sweet!!

We have another collaboration in the group and that was the El Segundo Brewing and Green Cheek Beer Company's (Orange County, California) Beginner's Luck Double IPA, a silent but deadly killer from the tandem. Using a solid Pils malt base, the two breweries threw El Dorado, Chinook, Simcoe, Bitter Gold, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin hops into the fermenting vat... and then simply walked away for lunch. Or drinks. Or maybe a hot date and a movie. Hell, I don't know. But what came out was this 8.8%, roughly 90 IBU beast of a beer!! With tropical fruit, pine and orange peel on the nose, this was bitter, tasty and dank on the tongue. When Christine gave it to me at the beginning of June, I saw it was bottled on May 19, just two weeks prior. That, my friends, is a very fresh brew that traveled a long, long way to Ontario!

This picture of Barrelhouse Brewing, posted in Templeton
Community Guide, shows a crowd watching me drink
two of the brewery's beers via closed-circuit TV. (That's
not even remotely true.) But if you look carefully, you can
see Christine and her sister Ingrid in the crowd. (That's
also a lie.) But hey, look at all the happy people there!!

I'm finishing up with two offerings from Barrelhouse Brewing in Paso Robles, California because Christine and her sister, Ingrid, who also lives in California, actually made the trip into the brewery themselves to find me goodies! The two wine lovers then proceeded to dip their toes for the first time ever into the craft beer pool and upon landing up here, Christine enthusiastically told me how good some of the beers they sampled were. "I don't know why I don't drink more beer?" she said. "I am German, after all." I certainly remember her drinking more than her fair share of beer back in the teenage years. For the sake of her virtue, let's just assume (probably accurately) that I was a bad influence on her.

Okay, the Sisters Godt (their maiden name) no doubt had to heavily rely on the expertise of the Barrelhouse staff but man, they walked out with a couple of beauts... which works nicely as they themselves are a couple of beauties. (Heads turned - I guarantee it.) Let's start with the unusually-plainly-named IPA, shall we? (Oh yes... we shall.) At 7.5% and 76 IBUs, the Barrelhouse boys plunked Cascade, Simcoe and Mosaic hops into the ol' vat and out came a damn solid IPA.

Even though this picture was taken during her 2016
visit, it's not all that different from when we were high
school sweethearts. Big smiles and lots of love and hugs.
And, of course, me holding a beer because let's be real.

Melon, melon and then some... oh, yes, melon on the nose, there was some tangy orange and pine on the tongue. A dandy taste explosion that is actually better likened to a firecracker compared to what's next...

... and that would be their Big Sur Double IPA! Shazam, baby! At 9.6% and 95 IBUs, this is not a beer for the faint of heart. As my pal Drunk Polkaroo would say, this is "a big, boozy bastard." Or even "A slow Sunday sipper!" In actual fact, the booziness does sneak through a little but you don't care because there is so much resin and pine on the nose, it practically overwhelms you. A solid caramel and malt backbone here on the tongue, this one will clean your pipes! If I ever get down that way, I would definitely make a point of stopping at Barrelhouse because they also have a New England style IPA named Juicy that calls to me. It yells to me from a distance. Tis a beautiful siren song! Verily, I am weeping...

Okay, I got this one out just in time as Christine is back this week and she, Dave and I will be revisiting that same Burlington Keg on Friday. I expect the result will be similar. Many bottles of wine, many Ransack The Universe IPAs and likely some crawling up staircases on all fours. It is the way of our people! But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...