Leaving Las Vegas... eventually

Night One in Vegas and I had to pay homage to my
hometown homeys at Cameron's Brewing with the
classic "Beer Geek" t-shirt. In my hand is the 10
Barrels Brewing's Apocalypse IPA, 6.5% and 70
IBUs of tasty-ass beer. I am standing at my usual
starting place - New York New York's Pour 24 bar!

Okay, so here's the short story, the Reader's Digest version if you will, on how I missed The Great Ice Storm of 2018. I'll put it in quotation marks so you know it's the story part.

"I wasn't here. I was in Las Vegas. Sin City. The Mecca Of The Decadent (and also me, a virtually sin-free lad.) The only ice I saw was in drinks and on the actual ice surface as the NHL Playoffs were now in full swing."

But that's leaving a sizable chunk out of the real story. And that's because I was supposed to be back here in Ontario for that gawd-awful shit-storm.

You see, my trip was from Monday, April 9th to Friday, April 13th. And believe me, five days in Vegas is a long time, even for me. And I love the place. But Monday was the cheapest flight in and Friday was the cheapest flight home so five days it is.

But something weird happened on Thursday. My phone started tweeting and buzzing throughout the afternoon - or evening in Toronto time. So much so that I heard it even in a loud casino. It seems pretty much all of my friends wanted to warn me that a humongous ice-storm was about to hit Southern Ontario (as well as northern Michigan, New York and Minnesota) and that it was entirely possible my home-bound plane would not be able to land.

Some dark night after the Las Vegas Golden Knights' first playoff win on
April 11, some clever people managed to get a humongous hockey jersey
on Lady Liberty outside of New York New York Resort and Casino. So
keep in mind, this is a YUGE statue so that's a lot of fabric. Eventually,
I noticed who ponied up for it. Some chap named Bud Weiser was the
name on the back. Yeah, yeah, they're macro but hey, this was very cool.

I was getting countless messages from old high school friends and much newer ones on Facebook. More messages from Twitter friends that I have never even met in real life. Pretty much everyone.

And with regards to the impending ice storm, they all said basically the same thing. "Stay put!!" So off to my room I went to check my laptop for a cheap, later flight home.

I found one on Monday night (April 16) that would allow me to sidestep the ice storm altogether. So, as tough as it was, I hung in Vegas for another three days, enduring sunshine and 25C (77F) temperatures while Ontario became encased in ice.

Yeah, I blew off my original airfare home but no way I was coming home to that.

While I was wandering the Las Vegas strip in Summer-
like temperatures, this is apparently what all of my
friends in Southern Ontario were dealing with. Ice,
ice and more ice! Not to mention power outages. So I
checked in on my Mom, who was fine, and on I went.

You see, an airplane ride entails three factors: Going up into the air very high above the clouds, flying forward to where you're going and then landing at your destination. You take any one of those three things out of the equation, it does not work. And it didn't sound like I would be able to land in Hamilton, due to a slick icy covering top to bottom.

So instead of five days in Vegas, I spent eight days. Which doesn't suck but to be honest? By the end, it was basically, "How would you like to feel really, really exhausted... but not at your actual home like you usually are?" So if I'm gonna be "stranded" somewhere, I can't think of a place better than Las Vegas and the Excalibur Resort and Casino. My home for the last four of nine trips to Vegas, I stick the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door on Night One and never take it off until I leave so that my room is the same comfy mess all week. Hey, man, that feels like home to me. And I don't believe life is meant to be lived in one place so you have to at least have two. Vegas is mine. Granted, I had brought enough money to last until Friday, not the following Monday, so my credit cards got a helluva work-out over that extended weekend. Oddly, I can live with that over frikkin' ice.

I'm pretty sure this was Photoshopped because
the flag pole looks, well, fake but hey, who cares?
Even Caesars Palace got into the Golden Knights
Lovefest on their Twitter, posting this photo after
their hometown team swept the LA Kings. Nice.

But because the NHL playoffs started on April 11th, I ended up seeing the first three Las Vegas Golden Knights games against the LA Kings (all close Vegas victories), as well as the first three Toronto Maple Leafs game against Boston (two very lop-sided losses before a Leaf win in Game Three.) So I was in Hockey Heaven, especially since those Leafs-Bruins games started at 3 pm, primo craft beer beverage hours!

Now the Knights are in the Western Conference Finals, just one step removed from the Stanley Cup Finals! The next round will be tough but hey, they're an expansion team. I didn't think they'd even make the playoffs at the beginning of the season. Their own fans probably didn't, either. A real Cinderella Story!

The beauty of Sin City is that even if you need a post-game nap - and I pretty much did after every game due to craft beer reasons - when you wake back up at 10 or 11 pm, you can head back out onto the strip and it's still as hoppin' as it was mid-afternoon. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, head back out. No need to adjust your wardrobe because you likely fell asleep in your clothes. Well, maybe put your pants back on. This city truly does not sleep. If you want to know what time it is, check the alarm clock in your room or have your phone on you because I've never seen a clock anywhere on the strip in my nine visits since 2007.

It's roughly 11 am on the Las Vegas Strip. That means
Starbucks gets the bench and Stone IPA is on the field
now. Coffee did its job but the time's arrived for beer!

But that's enough about ice... and ice hockey... and other things that aren't beer. Time to talk about the beer here in a little segment I like to call: "Hey, Redmond, You Asshat, Talk About The Damn  Beer Already!" That Redmond icehole. Amirite?

After my New Years Eve visit to watch the Leafs play the Knights, I talked all about the beers. But I've been back to Vegas twice since and written nada. Drank tons. Wrote zero. Not the way this is supposed to work. So here's some of the highlight-reel beers from my Birthday Week mid-February and this most recent visit in April.

The most accessible craft IPA on the strip is easily Samuel Adams Rebel IPA. That's a good thing because it's a solid brew. The first time I had it was up here in Canada when it popped into LCBOs in late 2015. It was a solid beer then. But it's gotten even better since. It seems the Boston Beer Company wanted to up its game.

Joshua at my favourite craft beer establishment in Las
Vegas, The Yard House on the LINQ Esplanade, holds
up a Uinta Brewing (Salt Lake City, Utah) Hop Nosh
IPA that I mightily enjoyed on my birthday. Nothing
but pine, citrus and grapefruit on this 7.3%, 82.4 IBU
bad boy. A sidenote? Yard House won't serve IPAs
above 7.5% in the half-yard glass show here and they
have some heavy duty Double IPAs on their menu.
The reason? High ABV plus this glass means death!

While it was a solid grapefruit-pine combo when it was first brewed in 2014, last year Sam Adams brewers decided to really Pump Up The Hop Jam, working with a hop farmer-breeder in Yakima Valley, Washington last year. They created a proprietary hop called HBC-566. No idea what it is but man, did it add some pop to that puppy. When I returned this year to Vegas, the Rebel IPA, while still a lowish 45 IBUs (international bitterness units) and a reasonable 6.5%, now has a lot more citrus and tropical fruit than the original version four years ago. It's a great up-and-down-the-Strip traveler brew and very drinkable straight from the can. In fact, it you can just look past the Buds and Miller Lites, Rebel IPA is pretty much available everywhere on the strip. Some clever sales rep at Sam Adams has done his or her job very, very well.

Another American classic that sees a good deal of exposure on the strip is one of North America's best-respected beers - Stone IPA. Our Stone Brewing friends in Escondido, California see their beer occasionally available at Ontario LCBOs but in Sin City? It's in a lot of places. I don't know what I can say about this one that I haven't said before but quick notes? Created 21 years ago, it's 6.9%, 71 IBUs, eight different hop, pine, citrus, beautiful aroma, outstanding. It not only lead the charge towards IPA's increasing popularity in North America, it may actually be the beer that initially created that thirst, that demand for the style.

Basking in the sun on some bushes along the strip,
Stone's Ripper San Diego Pale Ale was supposed to
be my session beer to start the day. Uhh, nope, it's
a little more hefty than any session beer, for sure.

And while I had my fair share of Stone IPA on my recent trips, I found a newer Stone brew on my most recent trip - their Ripper San Diego Pale Ale. Okay, when I first saw it, I thought, "Cool, a pale ale. Something milder and sessionable to start my drinking day." Uhhh, not so fast, Kid Canuck! At 5.7% and 40 IBUs, that's a pale ale that packs a wee punch. First brewed in late 2016, they source Cascade hops from both Washington State and... Australia? (Whatever works, man.) So this is not a sessioner. Full flavoured, grapefruit and in case you missed it the first time around, more grapefruit. My favourite new Strip Walkin' Brew from my last trip, hands down. Little 355-ml (12 ounce) cans, too. Less likely to go warm in the heat. I did mention it was hot down there during the ice storm up here, right? Good. I'm glad I didn't leave that part out.

But, of course, Stone already does have an outstanding sessioner - their Go To IPA, also available on the strip. With the motto "The Hop-Heavy IPA for every day" (the "every day in Vegas" is implied), this is a lower 4.8% but still hefty 65 IBU whack of pine and fruit. But it's the 4.8% that truly appeals to you at 11 am. You gotta start lighter.

When I went into the casino washroom at New York
New York Resort and Casino to do, uh, washroom
stuff, some dude had left his full Corona right on the
urinal. So I put my Stone Go To IPA on the top to
establish dominance and then gave that poor beer the
proper burial that its purchaser had not. Poor guy...

And this nifty tallboy was available in all those ABC (convenience-souvenir) Stores along the strip. I don't believe that starting to drink high-ABV beers a hour or more before the crack of noon makes you a swash-buckling pirate, a suave playboy, a roguish devil-may-care card shark or even an alcoholic. In Las Vegas, what it makes you is back in your room sound asleep in front of Seinfeld reruns on the TV at roughly 3:30 pm. Especially if it's a sunny, hot day.

So you don't start with a Double IPA!!! You could miss some playoff hockey from the eastern teams because with the time change, that's about when they start. I was very judicious on Leafs Game Days, padding my stomach with a three-pound Shrimp Burrito from Baja Fresh Mexican Grill right within Excalibur at about 10 am. This top-flight Mexican place is open 24 hours a day - I love this city! It takes hours to get light-headed with one of those bad boys padding your stomach. And if you can't eat a big-ass burrito for Breakfast, then you shouldn't eat burritos at all. Ever.

Okay, let's move on from Escondido, California (that would be our Stone buds) to San Clemente, California and our friends at Left Coast Brewing Company. I'm not sure how to tell you this but Lost Coast nearly killed me on my birthday in Vegas. You see, that birthday, because it was a significant one... well, that was the day I was gonna get my picture in front of the world-famous "Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. And I did. In several ridiculous poses and everything. That was really all I wanted for that particular birthday. Me and that beautiful, elusive sign that I had never seen in all my times there.

So there's this tram (like an above-ground subway) that goes from Excalibur to Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort further south on the strip, putting you that much closer to the sign.

Hmmm, this could take a while. Actually, not really.
I was at the front in 20 minutes. The Tourism Board
has a guy at the sign taking your pictures and he
uses your phone, digital camera or whatever. And
man, he sure knew how to take a picture or five...

And as I was leaving Mandalay Bay, I asked the door-guy how far a walk it was to the sign. "About 20 minutes," he assured me. And this is why they are no clocks in Vegas. No one there understands the concept of actual time.

Some 45 to 50 minutes later in "I'm Not Usain Bolt" Time, I was there. And then spent less than 20 minutes in a very long line-up. The Las Vegas Tourism Board (I assume) has very wisely put a person on the site to take pictures and this dude was really good at his job. Multiple poses for anyone or any group but he was fast, fast, fast! Everyone leaves happy and the line moves quickly. Phones, digital cameras, actual film cameras - I saw him use them all. "Stand back there!" "Now come closer to me!" "Arms in the air!" "Kiss her!" "Hug!" "Okay, jump!" 

So you know, I cleared at least five, six inches in my vertical leap. He had to take that one a second time to even get me in the air. The first shot, he wasn't expecting my jump to be so "lame old white dude" and I was on the ground before he caught it. He nailed it on the second take. He was ready for me. But what a great idea having a pro there to do it, rather than having people clumsily futz about with their own camera. He had that line moving quickly!

I have been to Vegas nine times and this Left Coast
Brewing Hop-Juice is by FAR the biggest beer I've
ever had enjoyed there. It knocked me on my ass.

But on my way back, I passed one of those booze superstores called Super Liquor in the same little strip plaza as a McDonald's. For the record, that's where I ate my birthday lunch because obviously, class oozes out of my pores. So I went and holy shit, did they have a lot of craft beers. Like fridges full. And I grabbed a bunch. Some big bottles and a healthy handful of cans because glass isn't allowed on the strip. And this is where our friends at Left Coast Brewing come in. One of the big bottles was their Hop-Juice Triple IPA. At 10% and 100 IBUs, that seemed like a reasonable birthday gift to myself. I had a couple of other beers first on my way back to the room before heading back out. Or at least, that was the plan. Decided to crack the Hop-Juice because "It's my damn birthday, blah, blah, blah" reasons.

Holy shit, this thing floored me! Or at least grounded me in my room for a while. I drifted in and out of four episodes of Jerry asking me, "Did you ever notice..." Well, Jerry, here's what I did notice. The brewery uses five premium hops in both the boil and later in the dry-hopping according to the stats on the label. I know they use American 2-Row for the malt base but there's also wheat in there. I'm sure of it.

At the Super Liquor, this was just the single
bottle craft beer fridge. There was another
with six packs and a third with single cans.
Yeah, sure, the rest were filled with macros
but this is still a lot of different craft choices.

But on the nose? Whoa, one big boozy bastard, as Drunk Polkaroo would say. Alcohol, heavy orange rind, every possible citrus combo, grapefruit... everything! Tons of pine, resin and a sturdy malt backbone on the tongue. This is one of the biggest beers I have ever consumed. But alas, a Big Mac and fries does not give you the same stomach padding as a three-pound burrito so the Birthday Boy had to rest beer-free for a while as he was seriously buzzed! (Fret not, I bounced back later and more birthday beers were definitely consumed.) 

Okay, I still have tons of Vegas and Nevada craft beers to talk about but I'll leave those for some Summer filler columns to help beat the heat. Also I need my passport renewed and the second I've got the new one in my hands, I think you know I'll be plotting a course back to Sin City sooner rather than later. If you listen on a quiet night, you can hear it call my name on the breeze, singing, "Hey, get the hell back here. You suck at gambling and we could use the dough."

So we're bouncing back to Ontario matters, breweries and delicious craft beers for the foreseeable future and upcoming are a catch-all of all the brewery news from the last month, as well as a look at Ontario's best craft lagers. (That one is a request from a Twitter buddy.) But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...