The Barrie Craft Brewery Invasion, Part 2

My first ever viewing of the famous Sawdust City
Brewing facility. I'll just let you drink this in for a
quick moment, the same as I did on December 8th.
Ignore that skinny dude, bottom right. That's my
parole officer. He likes to check up on me. Bastard.

When we last left off in the Barrie Craft Brewery Invasion 2018 (Part One), seven brave and noble craft beer lovers advanced upon the barren and untamed Northern Ontario terrain to seek out new beers, new worlds and new civilizations... to boldly go where no Brew Crue has gone before.

Armed with little more than our wits, such as they are, a sober driver named Dan and a big-ass rented-for-the-occasion GMC Yukon XL, the brave soldiers, known as Hago, Donny, Joe, Josh, Paul, Candice and my Uncle Glenn, sought out new Craft Beer Life in northern (sort of - northern to us) Ontario. Okay, it was Barrie and kinda just above Barrie. We're not talking the Arctic Circle here. Seriously, maybe an hour away from us tops. Actually, it was pretty much the same as the GTA, except with a little more snow.

Okay, so recently, I chronicled our adventures at the first two breweries - Barnstormer Brewing and Distilling in Barrie and Muskoka Brewing in Bracebridge. Now it's time to walk you through the final three. Let's start with Destination #3 - Sawdust City Brewing in Gravenhurst. And, as mentioned before, Hago organized this so he gets the credit. All the credit. Remember that, officers, when you're writing up the inevitable citations...

I often tease my Uncle Glenn about his age (79) but I
gotta be honest, he still has the vigour and enthusiasm
of a 66-year-old. Anyway, here he is standing in front
of the humourously-oversized yellow Muskoka chair
out in front of Gravenhurst's Sawdust City Brewing.

Now, if you've ever been to Sawdust City, obviously the first thing you notice is that humongous, bright yellow (it's so yellow that even I can tell it's yellow) Muskoka chair out front. Despite being covered in snow, the two of our youngest members, Josh and Candice, were up there in seconds. I would have gone up myself but I looked at Hago's military schedule for the day and realized we didn't have two hours to kill, waiting for me to break my neck trying. Gravity is no longer my friend so I would have had to rent a crane or something. But it is very cool. I believe it was young Kaitlyn behind the bar that told me it was the world's largest Muskoka chair.

As with the previous two breweries, Sawdust City had employed the use of a guardian watching over us to make sure we don't wreck anything important friendly and fun tour guide there to teach us about the brewery and we pretty much lucked out with Adam. I said we lucked out, not that he did. Anyway, most of us know him better as @SawdustCityAdam on Twitter so he's already something of a social media celebrity, although he readily admits he does not play one in real life. But he hosts the brewery's Trivia Nights and other events there so there you go, he's a local Man About Gravenhurst.

Where Durham's Carpenter of the Year, Josh, is involved,
there's always wood. Oh, dammit... PHRASING!!! So Adam
took us on a full tour of the place, including the basement,
which had literally dozens of barrels there. aging their beer.
Anyway, this is Josh's calendar shot. I'm his agent. Call me.

Once inside, I was immediately blown away by the size of their retail fridge. It ran the length of the front room with a huge selection of choices. It is, easily, the biggest retail fridge I've ever seen in a craft brewery. At this point, I'm thinking northern Ontario (again, not that far north) is a little like Texas. Big-ass chairs, big-ass fridges, big-ass everythang. It's all bigger in northern Ontario.

After that, the 18-tap bar, which looked to be also about 25-30 feet long, was also pretty gnarly. Somewhere in my travels I was told it was crafted out of a 100-year-old pine tree... that simply gave up one day and fell over. Being as I was ordering their Lone Pine IPA (what else?), I gave it a little knock and said, "Good job, my tree friend." Hey man, he sacrificed himself to become something better. A long bar in a great brewery.

Adam collected us all up together, which, at this point, was somewhat akin to herding up feral cats, and gave us all the VIP Tour. (I recall from last year, by the time we hit the third craft brewery, we scatter like buckshot coming out of a sawed-off shotgun.)

Adam from Sawdust City Brewing holds up two corked
and caged beers. There have no labels and no one at the
brewery is 100% sure what they are. Our only clues?
They taste good and they're clear, as in golden. Hmmm.

He walked us through the place, told us safe-to-tell secrets and eventually took us down to the basement. They were - no joke - dozens of barrels filled with beer. Closing in on 50 or more. They were everywhere. A Barrel-Filled Basement, if you will. A Cellar of Sinfully Good. A Lower Level of... uhhh, yeah, I got nothin'.

But when we got back upstairs, Adam had a special surprise for us. Two unlabeled bottles from the deepest recesses of the brewery. Single bottles, corked and caged, of who knows what? It seems head brewer Sam Corbeil had told him to pass them along to us. According to Adam, even the brewers aren't sure what the beers are, other than "they taste good." We do know they're golden so rule out stouts, porters, dark ales, etc. They're corked and caged, which tells me likely barrel-aged. Brewers are far less likely to barrel-age a lager, pilsner, blonde ale or Kolsch, I would think, because that's almost pointless. But here's the thing. There were seven of us and only two bottles. I knocked on Uncle Glenn's door to wake him up early in the morning and when he hit the washroom, I swiped the bottle from his room. Hago got the other. Not sure how but that'll probably be a cool "Heads-up, I snagged one, too" story. He's military. He knows evasive manoeuvres and skull-duggery.

If you don't love Redline's Kaitlyn K, then you don't
like boxes of puppies, the very first snowfall or great
Ontario craft beer. Still not convinced? OK, try this
on for size. She's a damn good hockey player to boot.

Regardless, I will crack that puppy this weekend and give you my best guess. My money is seriously on a Saison. Could be a Belgian. We'll see.

But back to the business at hand, Adam, you were awesome. You gave us the history of the place, the lay of the land and a real sense of the fun that goes on there. Fantastic Craft Beer Ambassador, my man. We had a great time! I'm back this summer, for sure because I promised Lake of Bays Brewing I'd go there, too, so you're on the way.

And that brings us back onto Highway 11 and south to Destination #4 - our good friends at Redline Brewhouse in Barrie. Which brings us to an extra-special good friend, Kaitlyn K. While I only met Kaitlyn in April 2017 when my boy, David and I went to visit Hago for the first time, I had known her for years prior. You see, way back in the day, she was my inside sales rep for Flying Monkeys. And when craft brewery reps called, my coworkers, including my manager, used to simply say, "Hold on" and pass the phone to me. So Kaitlyn and I are old phone buddies from probably 2014 or so. But as you can see, she shifted to Redline a year and a half ago and was on hand to greet us at the brewery.

As you can see, Kaitlyn had a couple of brewers on
hand to discuss the beer with the Barrie Brew Crue
with Candice and Uncle Glenn shown here. This
brewer had to speak up so Glenn could hear him.

And man, was she ready. We didn't even have to walk through the front door. Hago did some kind of super-secret knock on the back door and the next thing you know, Kaitlyn is letting us in. The VIP Back Entrance deal. She had a little taster table set up with all sorts of goodies on it - barrel-aged specialty saisons, their fantastic Double Clutch Double IPA, a couple of Clutch Pale Ale off-shoots and their Leather Interior Brown Ale. I don't drink a lot of brown ales but that Leather Interior with the addition of both vanilla and almonds. Lemme tell you this for free... it was bloody tasty. Probably one of the best brown ales I've ever had though in truth, it's a brown ale with a few modern-day tweaks. This ain't your Grand-Pappy's brown ale.

And she had brewers on hand, waiting to talk to us - I think, two or three of them, actually. I should have cracked open that Sawdust City Mystery Beer and asked them, "Okay, what is this? Make me look like a damn craft beer genius here!"

Now, apparently, Hago and Kaitlyn had this all set up well in advance so man, it was a pretty sweet set-up. I think a few of the Brew Crue, notably Joe and Josh, were a little blown away by the VIP Treatment we were getting at the breweries.

With a Leather Interior Brown Ale (with vanilla and
almonds) in my hand, an environment where I am
surrounded by mash-tuns and fermenting vats, it
would appear I found the true Mothership when we
landed at Redline Brewhouse on December 8th. And
Cameron's Brewing? I showed my hometown love...

Truth to tell, so was I. Even though I've been writing this for over five years now, I'm still a bit surprised, almost taken aback even, when a brewery puts in that extra effort. It's not that I don't appreciate it because I very much do. It's more that I don't expect it. I mean, to me, just showing up at a craft brewery, especially new ones to me (Sawdust City and Muskoka), is the adventure and the fun in and of itself. The extra bells and whistles thrown towards the Barrie Brew Crue by all the breweries over the course of the day? I'm not sure what to say other than man, you guys rock.

Well, except my Uncle Glenn, who just kept saying over and over, "Why don't any of your fancy breweries sell Export?" Ahhh, my sweet uncle. You can take him out of the nursing home but you're damn lucky if they take him back. Even as we were eating dinner, Josh looked around Redline, amazed at the set-up, the ambiance, the beer and the VIP treatment and noted, "This is my favourite stop of the day."

So Kaitlyn, even though you are a Boston Bruins fan (which is just wrong) and your damn Bruins spanked my Leafs 6-3 on that very night, everything you did for us was wonderful and we all appreciate it so much.

Josh posted this selfie of he and Hago after tasting the
18.4% barrel-aged Invictus Imperial Stout during the
Brew Crue's stop at Flying Monkeys Brewing on our
swing through Barrie, Bracebridge and Gravenhurst.
Hago's face pretty much says it all - strong medicine!

Yes, you may follow the teachings of the Evil Empire Dark Side (again, the stupid Bruins) but even the best of us have that one fatal flaw. That face-licking nitwit Brad Marchand is yours. (Seriously, dafuq is that?) Still, that is but a slight gray smudge on your shiny silver soul. I know I will be back up to visit Hago this Summer and we hope to see you again. You are always the best of company and a good friend.

Now after our Redline stop, driver Dan dropped us off at the Four Points Sheraton, where we were all staying, for a little rest before our final stop - Ontario craft beer legend, Flying Monkeys Brewing. 

Alas, three of us wouldn't make the final leg of our five-brewery whistle-stop day as Joe, Paul and myself called it a day. I mean, we'd been drinking since 12 noon and it was about 9 pm at this point.

It's like that scene in DC's movie, The Dark Knight, where District Attorney Harvey Dent (Two Face) says to Bruce Wayne (Batman), "Either you go to sleep a hero or you drink long enough to become the villain." I'm paraphrasing. It was something like that except I think he may have been talking about heroes and villains in a different context, minus the drinking.

This is the beer that killed the four remaining warriors
from the Barrie Brew Crue - Flying Monkeys' Invictus
Russian Imperial Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Stout. Again,
picture courtesy of Josh, this one was the final nail to it.

What I was unaware of at that point is that Flying Monkeys owners Andrea and Peter Chiodo were waiting for us. Had I known that, I would have had a quick shower and been back in the game. I've talked to Andrea dozens of time in private messages and she's helped me out with countless blogs but I've never actually met either her or Peter. And I gotta be honest, that would have been great. Think about it. I have spoken at length over how we were spoiled with attention on this outing. But brewery owners waiting until 9:30 on a Saturday night to join us? Oh, you don't think 9:30 pm on a Saturday is late? Own a business for, oh say, even a year and then get back to me. You'll be begging for sleep, hotshot.

So I was pretty impressed when I heard that the next day. And more than a little gutted, I'll admit. And when Andrea reached out to me on Twitter, well, as sweet as she was, all I could think was, opportunity missed.

The last known shot of the Barrie Brew Crue, once
again, courtesy of Josh. I was on the highway home at
this point and Candice was sleeping off that Invictus.
A great day with a great crew and great breweries!!

"Dude, you didn't make it to the bitter end," she tweeted. "We waited here for ya... but no worries. (Hago and the others) managed to help us finish a bottle of Invictus to end the night. We loved meeting the gang! But we missed you..."

Well... damn. That seriously bums me out. However, it just means another trip to Barrie to visit Hago and get it right this time! If this trip was any indication, our soldier friend knows how to organize a field trip. And when we talked afterwards, it sounded like he had an okay time. "It was such a great day, man! We had a freaking blast! It was everything I thought it would be! I had so much fun! I can't wait to do the next one! I like the idea of Niagara!" So, okay, he was good with it, I guess. After all, he was in charge...

And with that, I had Josh promise me he'd get Uncle Glenn safely back to the nursing home. Apparently, there was some initial resistance on their part but Josh found a side-door open and pushed him back in. Thanks, brother, he's a good, though somewhat addled, uncle. But Scooby Doo Gang, that's a wrap on the Barrie Craft Brewery Invasion 2018 so that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain...