One Endgame teaser... and Beer Mail

So which beer was Thor drinking in The Avengers'
Compound? Turns out it was a Creature Comforts
Brewing (Athens, Georgia) Athena Berliner Weisse.
Seems the God of Thunder is a big fan of craft beer!

So anyway, I saw Avengers: Endgame on the Sunday of opening weekend with Beer Bro Glenn and, well... holy shit, go see it because Marvel is never gonna top this one. Like... ever!

Just insane and you never see what's coming. And both Marvel and the Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony, who directed Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, The Avengers: Infinity War and now Endgame, basically begged the fans not to offer up any spoilers on social media, launching a gigantic campaign with the #DontSpoilTheEndgame hashtag on Twitter and other social media.

Well, I'm not giving you an Endgame spoiler but rather more of a teaser. Don't worry. It's not really about the movie. Not about who lives and who dies. Also not about who comes back from being a pile of ashes or who doesn't after that Thanos Snappening. Or who can actually make it through a three-hour movie without a washroom break? I didn't. Twice. (But I googled when the best times were during the movie for a pee break.)

No, my teaser is simply: What beer was Thor drinking at the Avengers' Compound in upstate New York during an early part in the movie? Take a look at the picture.

Yeah, yeah, Thanos is the "Mad Titan" and all
that crap but... does he, in fact, make a good
point here? I mean, don't we all get a little
pissed when a brewery we love has a special
release and by the time we get there, all of the
beer is gone? Imagine half the competition...

You can tell it's not a macro. We all know every macro in existence. That's not one. Not a chance. So I tucked that away in my often-befuddled brain as something to check out when I got home.

But, of course, the movie was so awesome I could think of little else for a while. Then on the Monday, I got this nagging feeling I was supposed to look something up. Natch, I couldn't remember so I carried on with my day, knowing at some point, out of the blue, it would hit me. And, of course, it did as I was turning towards my beer fridge and saw a God of Thunder action figure nestled among others. Thor's beer! So I googled "What beer was Thor drinking at the Avenger's Compound" and *poof* up it popped up.

Because the scene was part of a trailer showed on TV before the movie was released - the scene where Thor approaches Captain Marvel for the first time - it seems that beer had also caught the eye of a healthy handful of Athens, Georgia residents who recognized the beer from their hometown craft brewery, Creature Comforts. The beer itself was their 4.5% Athena Berliner Weisse, a wheat-based sour. And yes, the beer is named after the city it is brewed within as a tribute.

The story had been discovered by Jess Baker, the editor-in-chief of CraftBeer.com, herself a former Georgian and self-proclaimed "Marvel fangirl" who dug a little deeper.

You may have guessed its former use but Creature Comforts Brewery
was originally a Chevrolet dealership back in the 1940s before becoming
Snow Tire Company. As a heritage building, the independent brewery
left some historical components to the exterior as you can clearly see
when it was transformed into a craft brewery in April 2014. Excellent!

As it turns out, according to Baker, the Russo brothers are big craft beer fans and since Marvel Film Studios uses Georgia as location in a lot in its filming, they became big fans of Creature Comforts, as well.

So did the brewery know of its eventual inclusion in the movie that is likely to be the biggest blockbuster of all time... until Marvel's next blockbuster? Uh, can we get a Georgia "Hell yeah!"??

That's because the studio would, of course, legally have to approach them to use their product on film. Obviously, the answer was going to be yes. And to the brewery itself, there was some additional symbolism to the beer chosen for the scene.

Chris Herron, who co-founded the brewery with Derek
Imes, Brewmaster Adam Beauchamp and David Stein,
is shown here in their website photos. As it turned out,
all of the Creature Comforts folks were ecstatic with
their beer's cameo appearance in Avengers: Endgame.

As brewery co-founder and CEO Chris Herron happily told Baker, "We think it is fitting that Thor, the God of Thunder, would drink Athena. The Greek Goddess Athena is, of course, the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare."

Added Baker in her entertaining piece published a few weeks before the opening, "At this point, Thor, Cap, Black Widow and the remaining Avengers need a whole lot of wisdom on their side." 

Well, sure, as well as some quality craft beer from Athens, Georgia, the Quantum Realm and a few other key variables such as... oops, I can say no more. But as Baker noted, the beer's appearance in the movie means "No. 1: The fine folks at Creature Comforts survived Thanos' 'Snapture' at the end of 'Infinity War' and they're still making beer. No. 2: Craft beer survives Thanos! No. 3: Thor, the God of freaking Thunder, who has a choice of any beer in the Nine Realms, chooses to drink Athena - a craft beer!" Like I said, her piece was a really fun read and hey, I readily admit I share her enthusiasm for both the MCU and craft beer in general.

This Redline Brewhouse's Signal Boost West Coast
IPA landed in my Beer Mail, courtesy of Hamilton
Craft Beer Couple Paul and Kristal. It seems they
popped into Redline over the weekend and had this
available in their Goodie Grab Box! Hey, I'm down!

The story continued after the release when she saw the movie and by gawd, there was Thor drinking yet another Creature Comforts' beer, as well as a brief glimpse of him in a brewery T-shirt. But I'll attach that as a link at the end as I have told enough of Jess Baker's story already. Time for her to tell the rest of this Asgardian tale. Excelsior, Jess!! Fantastic read for both a Beer Geek and a Comic Geek, such as myself.

I have my own yarn to spin here and it's called Beer Mail: Endgame! No one turned (or got unturned) into a big pile of ash in my story. But rather, it's connected to our big Lake of Bays' IPA Brew Day at the Huntsville Brewhouse in mid-April. (I think I may have mentioned it in passing in this very space. Once or twice, maybe.) But you see, there was a group of us - 13 in total - and within that group was a separate sub-group that sends Beer Mail to each other across the different corners of the province. Since that involved Canada Post getting a whole lot of our coin, we decided to simply do our Beer Mails when we finally met in person. Not that we don't like handing Crown Corporations our cash.

Two of Ottawa Matty's beer were leading the race, neck-
and-neck until I had this Beyond The Pale Brewing Saison
Tropicale. Okay, this saison was insanely juicy to the point
that, if blind-folded, I never would have guessed a saison.

Okay, okay, we don't and would much prefer to spend it on beer.

So what I want to do here is look at some of the Beer Mail I received and since I can't go through it all (we're talking dozens), simply pick my favourite from each of my Beer Mail Buds.

Now Hamilton Craft Beer Couple (as they're known on Twitter) Paul and Kristal suggested since we were all meeting in Huntsville that we should do a Bottle Swap. The others and myself noted that we each would be getting so much beer that day via our unposted Beer Mails, that more wouldn't be necessary. However, I said we'd all be happy to give them some beer and receive exactly zero back. I mean, we got so much beer, it took me five trips from the car to get it all in the house. And I'm that guy who tries to retrieve ALL the groceries in one trip. So anyway, when the time came to do the beer swaps, Paul had a box of beer in front of him and basically insisted that we all take something. Anything! Well, I didn't want to let the pair down so I peeked into the box.

When it came to Ottawa Joel's beers, there could only be one
winner as this Waller St Brewing Black Imperial IPA was so
outstanding that I was practically willing to get into my car and
drive to the Nation's Capitol to buy out their retail. Crazy good!

I, being me, spotted a brightly coloured label and pulled it out of the box. (So yes, marketers, to this guy, catching my eye counts.) Much to my surprise, it was a new release from Barrie's outstanding Redline Brewhouse, their Signal Boost West Coast IPA. A new Redline beer? Suddenly, I didn't feel so guilty about plucking a free beverage from Paul and Kristal's Bottle Swap Box. (To be honest, I can't remember what I brought for them at this late point.)

As for the Signal Boost? Well, every once in a while, a strong west coast IPA comes along, slaps me upside the head and says, "What's with all the haze love, bro? Have you forgotten you started with us?" This was damn good. Grapefruit, orange, apricot (mmm, apricot *Homer Simpson drooling face*) in a neat little 6.3% package. So thanks, Kristal and Paul! It was fantastic!

Okay, Ottawa Matty was, hands down, the toughest from whom to pick a favourite.

Hamilton artist-cartoonist David Buist's cartoon for Dominion
City Brewing's Sunsplit IPA (shown here liberally cropped)
was so good, the brewery itself wanted to know if they could
get prints made to put up on the brewery's wall. The dude's
got some righteous talent. Hopefully, that actually happens!!

Eventually, Ottawa Joel sent me a list of who got what from which breweries between the pair of them. I was never sure but apparently, the guys split up so there's be no duplication (which is very smart.) So Matty got me some beauties from Stray Dog Brewing, Beyond The Pale Brewing, Brasserie Tuque de Broue and Perth Brewing. Stray Dog had a fantastic session stout, Perth had a crazy good Session IPA and Tuque de Broue had a Maple Wheat that was awesome.

But in the end, I had to go with Beyond The Pale's Saison Tropicale, which was just nuts! Being as this is the same brewery that created Aromatherapy Vermont Style IPA, which was one of my first really big NEIPAs a couple of Summers back and Yummy! North East Pale Ale, a little hazemeister which was also part of Matty's package, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that they'd find a way to go crazy with a saison. But this was the juiciest, most flavourful saison I've probably ever had and I have had a few beauties, notably from Whitby's Little Beast Brewing, in the past.

Orange, mango, pineapple all collide with Belgian yeast in this little bomb blast called Saison Tropicale, that's 7.7% and 55 IBUs. Just a fantastic and very different interpretation of the style.

Ottawa Joel, in the meantime, grabbed us beers from Brasserie Etienne Brule, Waller St Brewing, Cassel Brewing and Dominion City Brewing. Now one of the Dominion City beer, Sunsplit IPA, had to be ruled out of this little competition right from the get-go. Why? It was selected as my Best IPA from 2018. So I already knew how great it is!

Given some of the outstanding beers that Danny got
me from Sudbury's Stack Brewing, I suspect my
selection of their Birch Pale Ale as their best will
surprise him a little. It shouldn't. Hugely unique!

Not only that but I have placed two mail orders from Dominion City and half of each delivery was six Sunsplit IPA. So yeah, let's just slide this out.

So while Cassel made a top-notch coffee and milk brunch stout and Brasserie Etienne Brule made a dynamite little black pale ale (my first ever), it was much easier to pick a favorite from Joel the second I opened the Waller St Black Imperial IPA. This is hardly my first Black IPA rodeo. I've been in that saddle many times. But you know what? I think this might be the best I've ever had. Actually, let's just say it definitely is and be done with the guesswork. Huge chocolate and licorice on the dark side, big (and I mean, humongous) pine on the IPA side, all blended into this 8.5%, 90 IBU black magic. Just a phenomenal beer. Take a bow, Waller St brewers! Seriously.

Okay, Danny, who hails from Sudbury, was faced with a different problem when assembling Beer Mail for us all. While Matty and Joel has to split their time between Ottawa breweries and I have access to pretty much any brewery from Toronto to Hamilton, Danny was frustrated because Sudbury only has one brewery, Stack Brewing. He was bemoaning that fact when we all just said, "So what? Bring us a bunch of Stack beers!!"

Among Ottawa Joel's beers was the Dominion City's
Provincial IPA With Centennial (hops). So here I am,
chopping wood with the beer up front. Yeah, right, like
I do physical stuff ever. This is a brewery photograph.

I mean, I'm not sure how accessible Stack's inventory is to the Ottawa guys but I don't see much of it down in the GTA. Okay, dude, we all said, just overwhelm us with Stack!!!

So he did exactly that. While I had enjoyed just one of these previously, we got everything - a Black IPA, an Altbier, a Chocolate Cherry Stout, a sinfully delicious Imperial Stout, a Sour IPA, just some fantastic beers.

But Danny, a Montreal Canadiens fan, became an unwitting part of the Maple Leafs playoffs run when I drank nothing but Stack beers during a crucial Game 5 between Boston and Toronto - a game the Leafs won to take a 3-2 series lead. Well, hockey fans are as superstitious as hockey players so when the series went to Game 7, I took the remaining Stack beers I had, added some more of their Belgian Blonde that I found at the LCBO (on sale for $2.80/can!) and crossed my fingers that the Stack Magic could work twice. Unfortunately, it didn't. Boston won but let's be honest, I was asking a lot of the Sudbury brewery. And I think both Habs' fans Matty and Danny and Ottawa Senators' fan Joel were kinda sorta (very) mildly rooting for my Maple Leafs for one reason. We all hate Boston.

Ahhh, yes, it all comes back to Thor, doesn't it?
Well, as you can tell from this T-Shirt, our noble
God of Thunder doth love his beer. You'll see how
much in Avengers: Endgame. Though at this late
date, if you haven't seen it, you likely never will.

So, anyway, the Stack beer that I enjoyed the most wasn't the best of the bunch. That would be the Helter Smelter Imperial Stout. No, in this case, I picked the most unique. That was their Birch Pale Ale. Why? Because they actually used birch in the brewing process. The brewery said there's hints of mint and wintergreen in the 6.5% pale ale. Yeah, honestly, I didn't get any of that. You know what I got? A crap-ton of wood - pine and apparently birch. And I loved it. It was the most unique beer I've had since... well... the last most unique beer I've had. But I tell you, as I drank it, while watching my Leafs lose Game 7, I thought, "Well, at least this is a very cool beer." When you're losing, any port in a storm, right?

Okay, I'll be back in a bit with some cool beers from Beer Bro Glenn that I'm not including because this is long enough and we exchange beers several times a year. But that second Avengers: Endgame teaser involving Creature Comforts Brewing? Well, you can find it in Jess Baker's uber-cool story that I'll just call: God Of Thunder Or God Of Beer? But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...