Ottawa Part Tres: The Mob Moves Along...

Okay, top photo. That's us, taking over the bar - and I mean, the entire
bar - at Beyond The Pale Brewing. From right to left, Ben, Glenn, Josh,
Joel (face obscured by beer), Matty, Curtis and Danny. Bunch of guys at
the bar, right? We thought so. Thus, one sent the picture to his wife. What
we saw and what she saw were two different things. She somehow noticed
a young lady in shorts bent over in the distance. You can't even see it in
the original. Except she did. So she sent her cropped photo back to him
with two words. "Oh, really?" We zoomed in on my photo in my phone
and yeah, she wasn't wrong. But look at the top picture!! Who could see
that? I took the damn photo and didn't see that! None of us did. Whoa...
As Danny sagely noted, "Wives. They don't miss anything." You think??

Okay, moving along with Day Two of the 613 Ottawa Craft Brewery Invasion in mid-August...

Quick recap of the events thus far: Three things. 1) Visited Orleans Brewing Company on the Friday night. Had two other potential stops but owners Celia and Yann Lemieux make us all feel so at home and damn, just so welcome that we decide, yeah, let's just stay here. And, not gonna lie, their Juicy McHazy IPA, well, that certainly helped.

2) First stop on Saturday and one of my fondest memories of the trip, organized by Nepean Beer Store Bro Ben, was Kichesippi Brewing, a sweet set-up in an old car dealership. Great beers, great tour, great fun and actually, the first time we had the whole gang there. The 613 Beer Avengers assembled, ready to take on the craft beer world.

3) My secret mission. Adam from Beau's All Natural Brewing told me he had worked for Josh Hayter, the co-owner of Spearhead Brewing and that he'd never seen Josh laugh. Period. End of story. So I had a secret mission. Make Josh laugh! Did I succeed? Well, read on.

Oh, before I continue, a lost soldier. Ottawa friend Kev (aka @deadsquid) joined us at Kichesippi for a quick pint but his wife just had major back surgery so he had to be back soon as she obviously needs a lot of TLC. And pain medication. Someone to hold the fort.

Okay, the huge mural at Beyond The Pale Brewing. Who
are they supposed to be? Glenn says Matt Murdock and
Karen Page from the comic book Daredevil. I can see that.
But she looks like Sandy from Grease, much more than
Karen Page. The real answer? We don't know. We never
asked. We were far too busy drinking tasty BTP beers...

But Kev, being the solid hubby that he is (I should really get her opinion on that pronouncement), seemed to have a pretty good handle on his wife's recovery and joined us for the one stop while she was resting. He seemed to love Kichesippi Brewing as much as us (I think he lives fairly close) but it's good he wasn't there while Carlin was giving us the tour. The poor guy was intimidated enough and Kev? Dude's the size of a freakin' mountain. Great to meet him, wish he could have continued to tag along further but given the circumstances, glad he caught up with us for one stop. But then I'd say that about any guy who's basically two of me put together.

Okay, next stop? Beyond The Pale Brewing, closer to downtown Ottawa. This was not a scheduled stop but I'm glad we threw it in. Of course, with nine of us, tough to get a table together, Except for one thing. The bar was wide-open. No one sitting at it. So, hey, we owned the bar! (As befits our regal nature.) But this is a sizable place in a sort of back alley industrial plaza kind of way. Loading docks all around us. I dig that. A real diamond-in-the-rough kinda vibe. Reminded me of the old Junction Craft Brewing in Toronto and its weird back alley access before they moved a few miles north-west a Summer or so ago.

The taps at Beyond The Pale Brewing. As you can see, there was really
no shortage of selection. And yet, our group gravitated to just two beers:
their Cloud Town Azacca and Lemondrop Hazy IPA and my personal
favourite, their Yummy! North East Pale Ale. Enjoyed both but walked
out with a few more Yummy! than Cloud Town. One damn fine brew.

But this is one impressive tap-room, as well as the one with the most washrooms. Didn't count them or anything but they have at least seven or eight. So yeah, they can handle those big Friday-Saturday night crowds. Hell, we were there about 1:30 pm on Saturday and the place was packed. Super well-stocked retail fridges, from which I plucked several Cloud Town Azacca and Lemondrop Hazy IPAs (at 4.5%, actually a sessioner) and even more Yummy! North East Pale Ales, one of the best pale ales I've had this year.  Long story short, this was probably the most popular place we visited, based on crowd size alone. It was hoppin' and boppin' while we were drinkin' with no thinkin'.

Thugs Life: This group of reprobates looks more like a police line-up
than a buncha guys checking out Ottawa breweries but hey, we do us
pretty good. It's all we know. From left, that's Glennn, Curtis, Ben, Joel,
Josh, Paul, Matty and Danny all lined up out front of Waller St Brewing
near the downtown Ottawa core. (I think. I honestly don't know at all.)

The next stop was one I was kinda insistent on - Waller St. Brewing. The reason was two-fold. In one of my many Matty-Joel Beer Mails, they had included a Waller St. Black Imperial IPA. I drank it and was blown away. I've had many solid Black IPAs - Great Lakes and Nickel Brook have both released fantastic ones. But this was a step-up from even the best I've had. In fact, I raved about it so much that the next time Beer Store Bro Paul, the Big Peezy himself, was swinging through Ottawa, he made a point of grabbing me one.

The second reason was the description the guys gave me of the place. They made it sound like a Prohibition-Era speakeasy.

April pours us a barrel-aged sour that they had been
hanging onto for us at Waller St Brewing. This place
was crazy small. Nine of us being in the place didn't
leave much room for many more, believe me. But hey,
good things come in small packages and all that jazz.

Well, to be honest, there was good reason for their description. As it turns out, Waller St actually brands themselves as "Ottawa's tiny, little Prohibition Craft Brewery." 

So when you get there, you basically go down the stairwell and through this basement door. And when you get in there... it's not large. Tiny? Cozy? Intimate? Pick your word. Wanna know what my word was when I walked in and looked around? "Cool."

We were greeted warmly by April and Chuck Thibert, who do not own the brewery (that's apparently a couple of guy who I can't name due to Prohibition secrecy restraints but if I could, I'd probably say something like Marc-Andre Chainey and Elie Dagher.) What April and Chuck are, I suspect, is the public face of the place. They co-host the local @613beercast so they are pretty well known in their little corner of the universe.

But, of course, like everyone else in the Ontario Craft Beer industry seems to, they knew Josh very well and were pretty damn happy to see him. I meant to ask him if he preferred visiting breweries where he was known - Orleans Brewing and Waller St - or the ones where he was an anonymous schmuck like the rest of us.

It is it. The entire bar at Waller St Brewing. Our group basically filled it.
And beyond the bar, there was some seating but not a lot. A handful of
high-chair tables and that was about it. But lemme tell you this for free.
This is the personal feeling that I seek out at a craft brewery. That is not
to disparage the larger places. They've earned their place in the sun. But
to me, yeah, this is the real deal. Keep your friends close so there's no
room for your enemies. What? That's how the phrase goes! Sure of it.

April started our tour by explaining that she was the social media person for the brewery. So if you talked about them on, say, Twitter, "I'm the one you're talking to." She was looking directly at me when she was finishing her sentence but I suspected I knew why. For once, it wasn't an "Oh shit, what did I do?" moment. Which is what it usually is. But we'll get to that in a second.

Okay, she went into the history lesson. The place was built in 1866 - that is, both the upstairs, which is now the Loft Board Game Lounge and downstairs, which is Waller St. It started as the Ottawa Marble & Granite Works back then and as such, Ottawa has stamped it a Designated Heritage Property.

In so many ways, this was my favourite stop. For one,
the history. For two, the ambiance. For three, April is
really cool. And four, there's that Black Imperial IPA.
It's the only Ottawa brewery that I insisted we visit.

Meaning, work with the space you have because you can't change anything or you'll get fined so hard, you won't be able to sit for a month.

But the Waller St space used to be a livery, which is, granted, a word that city folk and suburbanites don't really know. That's where the horseys were kept back in the late-1800 and early-1900s. As I went outside for smokes, I kept looking at the building and trying to figure out how that worked, often glancing in the large windows at that game lounge upstairs. (We were having a way better time downstairs - just sayin'.) I figured, okay, there had to be a trodden dirt path up and down to the basement for the horses since they suck at stairs. But then, given enough Waller St Black Imperial IPA, so do I. Okay, so based on the lay-out and the likelihood that Waller Street was actually a street back then, it had to be the back-end of the building, given the incline would have been more gradual. The horses likely came out to the street through the alley you see us posing in up above. Still, the Ottawa Historical Society is welcome to come at me and refute my conclusions but to them, I say, "Hey, were you there? That's what I thought!" And yes, these are the things I think about when I'm having a smoke. I'm a freak.

Yeah, sure, I'll grab 12 can of, say, Nickel Brook Wicked Awesome IPA
on occasion but this? This was a different kind of 12-pack. If this was
more accessible and available year-round (it is neither), this would be my
2019 Beer of the Year. That said, oh my yes, it will get its praise in that
Year-End blog. A beer like this does not happen often to me. Gorgeous.

So back in the bar. Had a great chat with April, who told me that people came into the place, asking specifically about the Black Imperial IPA. She believes it's just because I had praised it so highly on Twitter. Not sure I agree but nonetheless, that kinda threw me because I had talked about it a few times. The praise was high, to be sure. Of course, others responded so the web of social interaction and exposure goes out further to many more. That's the part of social media that has always thrown me a little bit. Your voice echoes a little farther than you realize. Like you're yelling from the top of the Grand Canyon and there's a bunch of people on the other side hearing you that you don't even know are there.

As I said, it is not a big space but it is a very cool one.
And Waller St Brewing, which you MUST visit if you
are in Ottawa, just reeks of history. And great beer!

But my much-proclaimed Twitter-announced love of their Black Imperial IPA meant the brewery bottled some up especially for me, April said, simply because they knew I would be there. I bought a dozen on my way out the door. I still have four in the Batcave fridge. It was a pricey purchase, yes. But worth every nickel (because we don't have pennies so that phrase no longer makes sense.)

I'm not certain how others rationalize a big purchase but whenever I'm having a "should I or shouldn't I?" moment, I just remind myself that I'm closer to being a millionaire than Bill Gates is. And then there is no "shouldn't." Yes, I'll die a poor man but I won't need money then so...

I continued to talk to Chuck and April after our tour was over. I mean, they know stuff from their corner of the craft beer world, I know stuff from mine but there is overlap. I told them about a brewer down here who had a very serious health scare (he's on the mend now) and they knew him from way back. When he was just starting. So really, a fantastic stop. As I said, the only one I insisted on and I know I'll be back.

A photo on the wall of Waller St Brewing from August 2015 that conveys
that whole old school gangster speakeasy vibe of the place. The staff all
dress up in Prohibition-era clothing to give the place that ambiance, too.

I give you sufficient warning, April, so that Black Imperial IPA can be bottled up for its #1 Fan.

Okay, that's Orleans Brewing, Kichesippi Brewing, Beyond That Pale Brewing and Waller St Brewing all in the books now. That just leaves Bicycle Craft Brewing and the big gun, Dominion City Brewing for the last installment of our Ottawa adventure.

So far in this two-day mid-August excursion (that it has taken me this long to finish and I still haven't), I have NOT made Spearhead Brewing owner Josh Hayter laugh out loud. Would I succeed?? Well, you'll have to come back for Part 4, I guess. Because I pride myself on that ability and laughter is the best medicine. (Horseshit! It's morphine. Everyone knows that.) But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...