The calm amidst the storm...

There was one keyboard warrior who DMed me
but just would not shut up about my last blog on
Flying Monkeys' Sparklepuff. Basically called
me every name in the book but I tell you this.
I'm gonna "miss" him now that he's blocked.

Some interesting reaction following my last one, which looked at the controversial Flying Monkeys' Sparklepuff Triple IPA.

For my friends, Drunk Polkaroo and Linda Beer, it seem to further spur the intensity of their battle against the beer's obvious inconsistencies (some great, some straight-up drain pours), with both being adamant that the beer should have been recalled. Based on the pictures of mine (all great) and the pictures of others (nasty looking), it's impossible to deny that. The pictures in the blog told A Tale Of Two Beers, rather than one.

As a homebrewer, Linda, who got a really bad one, was adamant that the beer never should have been released but since it was, should have been recalled the instant trouble was spotted. Polk, one of Ontario's most respected beer writers and videographers, got two good ones but felt likewise and was abhorred with the brewery's lack of reaction and continued distribution of a beer that he felt is, at best, a 50/50 shot. And they both agreed on one thing. The brewery was now off their radar, if not forever, certainly for a long while to come.

But it was a couple of DMs inboxed to me that caught my attention, more so. One was a woman who asked why I continued to post the beer's picture when I knew there were bad ones out there. Well, because I never got a bad one, I told her.

Fair enough, she said, "But it looked like you were bragging about #30 still being perfect while others were getting horrible ones. Isn't that a little inconsiderate? You were promoting a beer that could be a disaster for someone else."

Just as I was about to answer, I stopped. She was right. Certainly not my intention but, well, we all know that phrase about good intentions and the road to Hell. So I responded, telling her she was absolutely right. While I thought I was posting about my luck, I might have been seen as something of a dickhead to those who got clunkers. I thanked her for pointing that out because I had missed that perception completely. Okay, I now know I can be a clueless dickhead.

What started as a turbulent night took a 180 degree turn when Twitter
friend Leo Roose posted this picture of a 1965 can display pegboard
from the Red Lake Brewers Retail. It stopped all of us cold, turning
Friday evening into a night of nostalgic memories for many of us...

Her response? "Thank you for listening. It feels nice to know I've been heard. Don't beat yourself up. We all make mistakes." I like her. She was calm, reasonable, rational and showed me civilly where my mistake might lay.

As opposed to the man in my DMs who wanted to slay me in my sleep. He started off with me being a corporate stooge, Beer Store moron and the brewery's asshole shill. And that was just the beginning. No idea who he was. He had an anonymous name like XD117 (not that but like that) but we followed each other. That said, I follow over 1,300 people and am followed by over 1,100. Suffice it to say, I don't know most.

It's Leo on the left with a server on Trestle Brewing's
(Parry Sound) Grand Opening Day in June 2018. As a
14-year citizen of Parry Sound with his wife (they just
celebrated their 30th anniversary!!), Leo was pretty
pumped to see a craft brewery opening in his town.

I did try to answer him but he wasn't there to listen. He was there to yell through his keyboard. But just as R2D2 (or whatever) was really getting started, I got instantly sidetracked.

Twitter friend Leo Roose (@leo_rooster) posted a picture of his 1965 can display pegboard from a Brewers Retail (what the Beer Store used to be called) in Red Lake, Ontario. Yes, 1965, as in 54 years old. And he tagged me on the picture, thinking as a Beer Store employee, I might be interested in this piece from past. Uhhh, yeah. I needed a decent distraction from C3PO anyway.

Now before we get into Leo and his 3,000 vintage mostly Canadian beer can collection (Cottage Life filmed a piece on him and I'll include it at the end), lemme travel in a different direction for a minute.

I retweeted it to my Twitter page so friends could see it and holy crap, it stoked a lot of memories from Twitter friends. Now there are only 22 cans on that board because at the time, the cans were made of steel and drinkers believed that left a metallic taste in their mouths. So maybe 5% of sales at that point were cans. Everyone mostly stuck with bottles.

Of all the cans on that pegboard, this was
the one that hit me in ALL the feels. This
is the beer my Bumpa Ernie (my Mom's
father) drank when he lived with us from
1964 to 1968, the year he died. He sure
loved his Labatt's IPA. I really miss him.

Three beers on that pegboard got almost all of the attention on Friday night - the Labatt's IPA, the Labatt's Crystal and the Molson Golden Ale. Let's start with the Labatt's IPA, long since discontinued.

In 1963, we moved into our Oakville home when I was still a pre-schooler. Within a year, my Mom's mother died and it was decided that my Bumpa Ernie would leave Winnipeg to come live with us. My late father was a distant, perhaps even disinterested, parent but it didn't matter because my Mom was great. But when Bumpa arrived, I finally had an adult male to follow around and man, did I ever. If he was out back chopping wood, I was 10 feet away, asking him how he did it. I helped him stack the wood, taking the smaller pieces. I became his little sidekick, never far away. My favourite memory was curling up in his lap, his big arm around me as he smoked his pipe. I loved watching the smoke dance and twist as it rose. I loved the smell. It was Bumpa - so named because my oldest niece as an infant was trying to say Grampa but Bumpa came out. It stuck. His favourite beer was Labatt's IPA. When I saw it on Leo's pegboard, Bumpa was my first thought. He died in 1968 but the imprint of the life lessons he taught me and the affection he showed me were by then firmly entrenched within me, even though I was still a youngster. A great man, a legend to a small boy.

But I wasn't the only one with a grandfather who loved the beer. Beer blogger-vlogger Adam Kemp (@thebrewhead) jumped in to say he remembered his "Papa" drinking it.

Molson's big switcheroo on the Golden fans was changing
it from an ale to a lager. According the Stephen Beaumont,
it happened in 1983-84 and a lot of people were not happy.

As did my college buddy, Steve, now living in New Zealand. "That's the IPA me ol' Grand-dad drank, too. He always said it was the only beer among the Brewers Retail swill at the time that had any flavour."

Next on deck, let's look at the Molson Golden. Seeing the beer created a lively talk between myself and Chris, (@IcemanFTW) who remembered the Golden cans from his Summers at his aunt and uncle's cottage. We talking about how the brewery switched it from an ale to a lager, much to the chagrin of Golden fans. Lagers were by far the favourite style at the time of the switch so Molson, already having Export as a huge-selling ale, revamped Golden into a lager, hoping to follow in the huge sales footprint of Canadian. It was a mistake. I said to Chris, "All the original Golden fans were going WTF?" He remembered that all too well.

Leo says this pristine Labatt's Blue can, then
called Pilsener, can get about $200 on ebay
since less than 2% of beer was canned back
in the late-1950s. That makes this a super
rare find, especially in such good condition.

"I want to say that was when my family switched to drinking Export. Mid-80's, right?"

At this point, the Dean of Canadian Beer Writing and multi-published author Stephen Beaumont (Mr. @beaumontdrinks - I always preface it with Mr out of deference) stepped in. "Yeah, it was the mid-1980s. Maybe 1983, '84 or so. I had a friend who was one of the WTF people. Switched brands immediately." 

And finally, Labatt's Crystal garnered some attention. I asked if Labatt's even still made it as I haven't seen in in the GTA for maybe four or five years.

My friend, Raeci Jane, (@raeraegck), who works at a Beer Store in Thunder Bay, was quick with the answer. "Fun fact: A couple of years ago, Labatt's planned on pulling Crystal from its line-up. Thunder Bay threw a 'Save Labatt's Crystal' Party and singlehandedly kept it around. The Beer Store here still brings in pallets every week and it is one of our most popular value brands." It's beautiful when a town can pull together like that. And the cause is beer.

Added Brayden, (@braydenmoore1) also from the Thunder Bay area, "I'm stunned that Crystal ISN'T popular in other places. It's ubiquitous up here." Even as a dedicated craft drinker, he noted, "I'm not ashamed to say that I've bought a case or two over my lifetime."

The Beer That Thunder Bay Saved! Here's
an old-school Labatt's Crystal, circa 1967 or
so. Labatt's was ready to lay it to rest but
Thunder Bay was having none of that bull.

So those were the main topics on conversation on Friday night but I would be remiss if I didn't mention a comment from Steve of South Ontario Beer Boys (@SOBeerBoys) who spotted a Black Label can on that pegboard. "Black Label... first beer consumed at 14... errr, 16... I mean 19. Yeah, that's when it was." I suspect we can all relate.

So how about Leo Roose, the guy that kicked off a great and lively night of conversation and memories with a photo of a Brewers Retail pegboard display from 1965 while TMX465 was busy burning up my inbox with an angry diatribe?

First up? How did he get a 1965 can display pegboard from the Red Lake Brewers Retail in the first place?

"It was Eugene Drominski, who was then the retired Beer Store Manager in Red Lake." (Red Lake is in north-west Ontario - think halfway between Thunder Bay and Kenora.) "It was he who saved it from the dumpster. I heard he might have it so I went and knocked on his door."

Okay, Pop Quiz, hotshots. This is the Molson Canadian
5-litre bubba from around 2000 or so. The LCBO was
upset with a part of Step 3 where it says, "Turn the keg
over..." And? Well, Molson employees had to cross the
words out with black magic marker. What was the rest
of Part 3? "...and you're ready to party." Whoa. Leo
says they felt it encouraged drunkenness. But he got a
very rare bubba here. Subsequent ones omitted the
"ready to party." Because bubba's were meant to sip.

And did he just give it to you? "No, I paid $100 for it but a few cans on there are quite rare so it was a bargain price. All of those cans were attached. I didn't alter or change them. The Beer Store did as labels changed over the years. I sure wish I had all the original cans."

As the guy who is basically the Stephen Beaumont of Canadian beer cans with well over 3,000 in his collection, Leo knows what cans changed during that pegboard's life and which remained.

"I'm guessing it hung on the wall for about six to seven years. In that time, the Crystal, IPA, Holiday, Cincinnati and Blended changed their designs." Seriously? He knows that? Yes, he does. But there's an awesome seven minute video at the end that you have to watch. This dude loves his beer... cans.

Anyway, Friday night was a blast with more than two dozen of us weighing in on beers that were on that 1965 Red Lake Brewers Retail can display pegboard. And believe me, Leo was in the thick of things.

"I enjoyed the feedback that followed. I could talk beer cans forever." A simple Twitter post to a stranger and it was the best Friday night I have had in quite some time.

As for STD1707? Well, I went back and read it eventually. It was quite lengthy and he demanded to know why I wasn't responding. Because I was having fun, PDQ548. My favourite insult, though? That I'm a Douche Nozzle. I'm afraid to Google it to see if it's a real thing. But I loved that one. Anyway, I unfollowed and blocked FLQ1908. Turns out the guy was something of a douche nozzle. Such a shame. But here's that video of our man Leo Roose which I have entitled: I Love Beer Cans, Man... Watch it. There's a test. But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain...