The Dragon Queen and Dark Weekends...

Diana Rowland bills herself on Twitter as "Former
cop, former morgue tech. Now I write stories about
cops, morgues, demons and zombies." People
Magazine shortened that to "Sci-Fi Writer" in the
write-up they did about her. But she's pretty cool.

Well, another Christmas is in the books and like many of you I suspect, I'm kinda glad it's over. I mean, yeah, it's great getting together with family (or not... for a handful of you) and certainly, we all love the spirit of Christmas (or don't... for a handful of you.) But working in retail, I am thrilled that the Christmas music at work will finally cease and desist. It can be grating. But hey, that's a wrap on Christmas 2018, right? Well, not so fast, kiddies. There's one more Christmas tale to tell. Sorry but I think you'll like this one. It has dragons!!!

Your see, there's this nice lady named Diana Rowland, who lives in the quiet suburban enclave of Mandeville, Louisiana. Well, I presume she's nice but I know for sure she's fun and the kind of neighbour I would like. That's because for the past four years, she had put up these three inflatable dragons as her Christmas display. Very colourful, she puts seasonal scarves and Christmas hats on them. Very cool, an attraction for families taking pictures and, well, just plain creative and different.

So she's basically The Dragon Queen of Mandeville. Now when most of us think Dragon Queen, naturally we think of the character Daenerys Targaryen from the show, Games of Thrones, the only person ever who could eat a Hot Pocket straight out of the microwave and be just fine.

This was Diana Rowland's Christmas dragon display that fanned the ire
of one neighbour, who sent her a very passive-aggressive note about it.
Not too surprisingly, when the word spread, people jumped on the
Dragon Bandwagon, offering support and even money. Crazy and fun.

So Diana has happily been doing this display since 2015 and everyone loves it. That is until this year. This year, she got an anonymous letter from a neighbour who was not on board.

It read: "Your dragon display is only marginally acceptable at Halloween. It is totally inappropriate at Christmas. It makes your neighbors wonder if you are involved in a demonic cult. Please consider removing the dragons. May God bless you and help you to know the true meaning of Christmas."

Wow, the passive-aggressive is practically oozing off that note. Whatta drag he or she must be at parties. So natch, Diana posted the note to the Internet where the reaction was instantaneous and pretty frikkin hilarious.

When a neighbour asked Diana Rowland to remove her dragon display
and get onboard with the "true meaning of Christmas," there was only
one thing she could do. Add two more dragons. I mean, clearly what
the neighbour meant was "More dragons!" right? That's gotta be it.

One fellow suggested that the issue was probably that while she had set up the three Dragon wise men, there was no Dragon Baby Jesus or Dragon Mary or Joseph. "It is an incomplete dragon nativity." Another seem confounded in that "Everyone knows that Christmas is about celebrating Dragon Jesus."

In the end, Diana did the only thing she could - the right thing. She added two more dragons! She had no intention of letting the neighbour she called Judgy McJudgeFace slow her down.

But something else happened during all of this seasonal fun. She got so much support that people were willing to set up GoFundMe accounts or make donations. As great a dragon ride as it was, that's where she drew the line.

Dragon complaints? Well, Diana, if I were you, I would bring in a
professional when it comes to dragon complaints. I heard of this
lady from Westeros named Daenerys who has some experience...

Instead of sending her cash, she suggested that people donate that cash to local food banks, shelters or program for underprivileged kids. And that is the true meaning of Christmas!!! I hope whoever that idiot neighbour was, they were paying close attention.

And since we're already dabbling in the Dark Arts, (okay, not really black magic because who the hell wouldn't want a dragon?) let's go back a few weeks to an event I called Donny's Dark Weekend.

While that sounds somewhat ominous, it started quite innocently. You see, everyone's beer buddy Drunk Polkaroo went online and said it was high time to clean out his beer fridge. Now, Polk's beer fridge is your typical Canadian one. Big old beast in his garage. The one that most wives no longer want in the kitchen but guys, reluctant to part ways with a working appliance, re-purpose as their own special fridge. For beer!

That bottle looks pretty big but actually it's just 473-ml
(16 ounces) of chocolate-chocolate goodness. I always get
a few of these every year, dating back to the time they
were in big ol' 650-ml (22 ounce) bottles. Believe me, at
10%, Flying Monkeys' The Chocolate Manifesto Triple
Chocolate Milk Stout has enough richness for even the
biggest of cocoa cravings. Definitely a real holiday treat.

A sacred sanctuary that may show a few signs of rust but if done right, is usually plastered with beer stickers and magnetic church keys.

And after Polk said that, I remember thinking, "Actually clean out the beer fridge? What a unique and innovative concept actually cleaning something is! I should do that, too."

Now my fridge is a little different than Polk's. When I moved to Oakville in 2017, I went online to Kijiji and what-have-you to find a cheap used fridge to throw in the basement as my beer fridge. Some were far more than I needed and thus outrageously priced. I needed a beer fridge, not a gleaming silver man-beast machine that makes ice before your very eyes. After hitting appliance places, looking for a cheap, working beer fridge, I was finally told by an employee, "Seriously, just go to Home Depot and get a bar fridge." So I did. It's a beauty. Glass door, very big, holds 172 pop cans, according to the box. So I took a shelf out and made it three levels, instead of four.

What a treat these two were. Clifford Brewing's
(Hamilton) Porter, centre, is a straight-up coffee,
chocolate treat. No bells, no whistles, just a well-
made porter. Oskar Blues Brewing (Longmont,
Colorado) Hotbox Coffee Porter takes the usual
route but amps the coffee up to 11. This could
wake you up at 7 am and keep you going all day.

Bottom two shelves, cans only. Top shelf, everything else.

And it's up on a platform right beside my desk in the Batcave, meaning if I turn to the left, there's the beer. I barely have to reach, much less bend over. Yes, I even drink beer in the laziest manner possible. I am nothing if not true to myself.

Now the bottom shelf is for cans of IPAs, which I often buy in 12s or 24s, due to the price breaks at the Beer Store and the breweries themselves. The middle shelf? All other styles in cans which I pick through now and again, mostly just to post on Twitter to prove I drink more than just IPAs. Oh, also on the middle shelf, overflow IPAs. But the top shelf? That's mostly bottles (and some cans) that need a lot more space. So while I was cleaning out my fridge (which, of course, I assume means drinking its contents to free up space), I concentrated on the top shelf - 95% of which were porters, stouts and dark ales. The black magic shelf that is often neglected because I don't mind if dark beers wait a while longer. For whatever reason, I consider them somehow impervious to time.

Railway City Brewing continues to impress me
and prove there should always be space in my
fridge for their offerings. Their Twice Checked
Chocolate Cherry Porter, available in their
Christmas gift pack, was a tasty little beauty.

So let's look at a few at the beauties that got cleaned out on Donny's Dark Weekend, which, due to high-ABV levels, was extended to the following weekend, as well. It was kind of a running theme. The only running you'll ever see me do.

Okay, if you've never had Flying Monkeys' (Barrie) The Chocolate Manifesto Triple Chocolate Milk Stout, I have only one question: "Is crack that much fun? Really?" Now we all assume that in a good stout, chocolate will be an underlying flavour. In this, it is not. It is ALL the flavours!! Back in the day, it came in these big-ass 750-ml (25 ounce) bottles and believe me, if you drank a whole bottle by yourself as I did on several occasions, trust me, you could feel it. But in that "I've lost all sensation in my lower extremities" way. Since that time, they scaled it down to 473-ml (16 ounce) bottles for the benefit of nitwits like me who may need to use those legs at some point in the day. At 10%, they use raw cocoa nibs, cocoa powder and chocolate malts to create the biggest, tastiest chocolate bomb that's ever detonated in your mouth. (Insert crass Kardashian joke here.)

When All or Nothing Brewing took over the
Trafalgar Ale and Meads a couple of years
back, the Black Creek Rifleman's Ration
Brown Ale went from okay to outstanding.

I think the only Clifford Brewing (Hamilton) beer I've ever had in the past was their Pinball Wizard American Pale Ale, which is a must-try if you haven't. So when I spotted their Porter at the LCBO, I snagged one, knowing it was one of Lady Polkaroo's two favourite brews, along with the Muddy York Porter. Like her hubby, she has exceptional taste when it comes to the ways of the dark elixirs. This is a straight-up, no-nonsense classic porter. No fruit and funky flavouring bells and whistles in this. Because when you're good - and this 5.9% goblet of goodness certainly is - you don't need 'em. Great call, Kat, on a great beer.

Leaving Canada, if only for a second, at the same time I spotted Oskar Blues Brewing (Longmont, Colorado) Hotbox Coffee Porter during the same LCBO outing. (Yo, Oak Park in Oakville, zup?) Okay, when you pour a porter, you expect some coffee and some chocolate, right? But much like the Chocolate Manifesto did with cocoa, this does with coffee. Holy crap, this 6.5% ebony jewel has the caffeine bean cranked up to 11, a la Spinal Tap. After Stone Brewing, these guys are my favourite American brewery.

♫♫♫ I've come to drink with you again. With dark vision
slowly creeping. And chocolate malts fairly seeping. And
the tastes that were planted on my tongue. Still remain.
With the richness of dark beers... ♫♫♫ (Thunderous
applause) Thank you, Ontario, you're a great crowd!

I gotta tell ya, Railway City Brewing out of St Thomas is becoming The Little Engine That Could these days. While we may never (or may someday) hold them up with the same reverence that we bestow upon Great Lakes or Collective Arts, this little caboose is slowly and steadily working themselves in the collective conscious of Ontario craft beer lovers. I grabbed their Christmas collection, primarily to get the glass because I'm a huge fan of their Express India Session Lager and dammit if the other two offerings didn't impress me as well, particularly their Twice Checked Chocolate Cherry Porter. A nice medium weight 5.2% beer, it advertises exactly two flavours - chocolate and cherry. It delivers both of those in equal measure, neither outpowering the other. A little coal-crushed gem. And I should add I had their Festive Cranberry Lager with Christmas dinner instead of cranberry sauce (which is gross) and it washed down the turkey, taters and corn beautifully. Nice job on that gift pack, gang!

The Brock St Brewing (Whitby) Blayne's Tank 5 Series
Chocolate Milk Stout, a gift from young Carpenter of the
Year Josh, was not enjoyed on Donny's Dark Weekend,
Parts 1 and 2 but prior to that, just after (and during)
the Barrie Craft Brewery Invasion. I loved this beer.
Smooth, chocolate and deeply malty, a 5.2% winner...

Okay, with this last beer, I cannot say I wasn't told in advance to expect significant improvement from the previous times I had it. We're talking about Black Creek Brewing's (Oakville now - soon Oshawa) Rifleman's Ration Brown Ale, produced for the brewery by All or Nothing Brewhouse, helmed by brothers Eric and Jeff Dornan.

So who gave me a glimpse that the beer gone up a notch or five after the Dornans purchased Trafalgar Ales and Meads? That would be authors Robin LeBlanc and Jordan St John in their Ontario Craft Beer Guide, Volume 2. In their tome, they noted, "With All Or Nothing's purchase of Trafalgar in June 2006... the beers brewed in Oakville have since undergone a dramatic improvement in quality and consistency as equipment has been updated and methods made more refined. This is excellent news for drinkers of Black Creek Historic Brewery who, for whatever reasons, can't visit the historic brewery and have grown fond of such beers as the Rifleman's Ration, the Pumpkin Ale and their famous Porter." Lemme tell you, I visited the brewery several time when it was owned by Mike Arnold (great guy) but the equipment? Jesus H. Christ.

When my boy, David, and I visited Great
Lakes Brewing earlier this week, some poor
guy named Chad was up on a metal ladder,
shivering his ass off, changing their sign to
this new message. So from GLB, David and
myself... HOPPY NEW YEAR TO US ALL!

There was literally duct tape holding parts together. And, to be honest, not the cleanest of environments.

So when I was visiting Eric, who've I've known since the pair started All of Nothing in 2014, about their move back to Oshawa in 2019, I was blown away by the little brewery. Night and day from what it was. So I grabbed the updated version of Rifleman's Ration Brown Ale to see if there was a marked improvement.

Holy shit, what a difference! They took a brown ale that I thought was okay - or more accurately, probably the best of a weak lot - and turned it into something sensational. A brown ale that I truly and thoroughly enjoyed. At 5.1%, there was bits of chocolate and coffee in the aroma and the medium-bodied, malt-heavy brew went down beautifully. There are only a small handful of Brown Ales that you'll hear me praise - Anderson Craft Ales in London makes a beauty, as well - but this is now among them.

And the name, Rifleman's Ration? Well, back in the early-1800s, Canadian soldiers were paid in beer. Beers made pretty much like this but not nearly as good. War is Hell.

Well, Scooby Doo Gang, that's a wrap on 2018 but I will be back, ahem, next year (hopefully tomorrow) as I run down the Best Beers of 2018. When I looked back and was pulling it together? Holy crap, Ontario craft brewers have got it all going on! But that's it, that's all and I am (briefly) out of here. Until next time, I remain...