Welcome to The 2-4 Beers of Christmas

Phew... We made it.

What an awful year!

I mean... Seriously...

Seriously. Did any musicians or celebrities survive this year? I remember vividly how this year started, being awoken from a sound sleep to learn that David Bowie had passed away. And things have gone downhill from there. After the Thin White Duke, 2016 decided to take a stroll through some absolutely beloved people and trim their lives short... with a friggin' chainsaw...(Screw you 2016!!!). Alan Rickman, Leonard Cohen, Gene Wilder, Prince, Kenny Baker, Anton Yelchin, Ronnie Corbett, Ron Glass (BRING BACK FIREFLY!), and Frank Kelly (He Played Father Jack on the AMAZING!!! British comedy "Father Ted..." Look it up... you won't be disappointed). And this is FAR from a comprehensive list. I started to read through the 2016 Deaths entry in Wikipedia... and got depressed. And I won't even get into the politics of the year (oh and King Bhumibol of Thailand, the longest reigning monarch, and Fidel Castro)... ugh. 2017 is 30 Days away, I'm holding my breath...

Merry Kiss-my-Ass 2016!

So onto good news... as we all desperately need some. It is time for the 3rd Annual #2-4 Beers of Christmas! I have selected 24 glorious Christmas-esque themey beers for the next three weeks, and plan to sit down once a night with everybody and spew my beer-barrel wisdom. So pull up a comfy chair in front of the fire, let the snow fall. Grab a glass and let's share a beer, or 24... This year, we've earned it.

Cheers 

CJT


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It's S.B.D. In Ontario!

With apologies to my readers from outside of the province of Ontario, I will be talking about a provincial issue today that has been ongoing for quite some time.

It's S.B.D! That's Supermarket Beer Day! Today, December 15 2015, at 9:00am the first supermarkets allowed to sell six packs and singles of beer in Ontario opened their doors. In all, 58 Locations across the province are set to open today or very shortly.

An epic battle has raged on in Ontario for quite some time over the monopoly of The LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) and the 100% foreign-owned Beer Store. Many interested parties, including the 100 plus wineries in Ontario and the 220 plus Craft brewers want changes to the stranglehold the government and the foreign beer store owner have on the distribution of alcohol in Ontario. Ontario's liquor laws are archaic at best and some of the most inane in the country. Recently, British Columbia opened up their liquor laws to the public for suggestions on improvement. The bar owners, venue operators and manufacturers all had a say in how to improve the laws. In the end the Government agreed to 73 drastic changes to the liquor laws and they were put into effect almost immediately. Not long after than and shortly after Premier Kathleen Wynne took over here in Ontario a similar debate broke out. asking the province to privatise the liquor distribution in Ontario and break up the monopoly of the Beer Store. The Beer Store is currently licenced to sell beer at their own outlets across the province and are owned by the three largest brewers in Canada: Molson, Labatt, and Sleeman. (American owned, Dutch owned, and Japanese owned respectively). The LCBO is wholly government owned and they distribute wine, spirits, and beer. Breweries are allowed to sell their beer in their own pubs and bottle shops, and directly to licensees (bar owners, venue operators, restaurants). The Ontario government commissioned a report on changes that should be made to the Liquor laws however only one recommendation seemed to gain traction and that was beer sales in supermarkets. While it was not exactly a victory for the privatisation lobby, is was not a set back either. Let's call it a baby step. The government is testing the waters of the 21st century. There is room for improvement, but we will take what we can get right now.

Corrigan: From Toronto Star

Over the next 2 years a total of 450 supermarkets across the province will be permitted to sell six packs of beer or singles on their shelves. A minimum of 20 % craft beer must be maintained. (Loblaws has already committed to 50% Craft beer sales in all of their stores)

Is it what I wanted to see, well yes and no. The positives are that there will be double the amount of locations to buy beer in the province. However there is a lot of shady back room dealings going on around the whole thing. One of them that will become an issue, just as it has in the States, is the definition of "craft." Molson Has a "craft beer division" called Six Pints, it's a separate business unit that owns Creemore Springs and Granville Island breweries. But all of their money heads south of the border. Labatt bought Mill Street Brewery. Are these places still craft beer? Especially when large scale operations come in and buy them and then quintuple their production capacities, Like Creemore did, or GIB, or Keith's or Kokanee. What little protection that has been put into place to protect the guy down the street working 18 hour days to brew, package, and market his small craft beer, could turn into the rope used to hang him.

The system needs a re-boot. From the ground up. It's going to be time consuming and expensive, but it has to be done. I personally like the LCBO, despite its flaws In my mind I see the LCBO and the Beer Store merging into one entity and continuing to regulate alcohol sales province wide. However, I also see a larger private distribution system that can purchase from Ontario manufacturers directly or out of province manufacturers directly, or private importers, or the LCBO. I also see breweries able to sell beer from other brewers as well as beer wine and spirits in supermarkets. And I also see room for electronic purchases and home shipping (especially for beer bloggers like me!)

Well as I said, baby steps. Any forward momentum can be seen as something good.

Below is a list as of today of the stores licenced to sell beer. From CBC Full article here )

Head out and show them some support so them government can see more change is necessary.


Cheers

CJT

Greater Toronto Area

Aurora

• Sobeys —15500 Bayview Ave.

Etobicoke

• Loblaws — 380 The East Mall.

Georgetown

• Real Canadian Superstore — 171 Guelph St.

Milton

• Metro — 1050 Kennedy Cir. 

Mississauga

• Michael-Angelo's — 4099 Erin Mills Pkwy.
• Loblaws — 5010 Glen Erin Dr.

Newmarket

• Real Canadian Superstore — 18120 Yonge St.
• Metro — 16640 Yonge St.

Oakville

• Longo's​ — 3455 Wyecroft Rd.
• Longo's​ — 2501 Third Line.
• FreshCo — 469 Cornwall Rd.

Oshawa

• Real Canadian Superstore — 1385 Harmony Rd. N.

Pickering

• Metro — 1822 Whites Rd.

Richmond Hill

• Sobeys — 11700 Yonge St.

Toronto

• Coppa's Fresh Market — 4750 Dufferin St.
• Galleria Supermarket — 865 York Mills Rd.
• Real Canadian Superstore — 51 Gerry Fitzgerald Dr.
• Real Canadian Superstore — 2549 Weston Rd.
• Loblaws — 17 Leslie St.
• Loblaws — 50 Musgrave St.

Vaughan

• Coppa's Fresh Market — 3300 Rutherford Rd.
• Galleria Supermarket — 7040 Yonge St.
• FreshCo — 800 Steeles Ave W.

Whitby

• Farm Boy — 360 Taunton Rd.

West Ontario

Cambridge

• Zehrs — 400 Conestoga Blvd.

Guelph

• Metro — 500 Edinburgh Rd. S.

Hamilton (Ancaster)

• Sobeys — 977 Golf Links Rd.

Hamilton

• FreshCo​ — 700 Queenston Rd.
• Fortinos — 65 Mall Rd.
• Food Basics — 505 Rymal Rd. E.
• Starsky Fine Foods — 685 Queenston Rd.

Kitchener

• Real Canadian Superstore — 875 Highland Rd. W.

London

• Farm Boy — 1415 Beaverbrook Ave.
• Walmart Supercentre — 1280 Fanshawe Park Rd.
• Real Canadian Superstore — 1205 Oxford St.
• Food Basics — 509 Commissioners Road W.

Niagara Falls

• Food Basics — 3770 Montrose Rd.

Paris

• Sobeys — 307 Grand River St. N.

Windsor

• Real Canadian Superstore — 4371 Walker Rd. 

East Ontario

Kanata

• Sobeys​ — 700 Terry Fox Dr. 
• Sobeys — 840 March Rd.

Kingston

• Loblaws — 1100 Princess St. 

Lindsay

• La Mantia's Country Market — 50 William St. S.

Nepean

• Metro — 3201 Strandherd Dr.

Orillia

• Food Basics — 975 West Ridge Blvd

Ottawa (Orleans)

• Farm Boy — 2030 Tenth Line.

Ottawa

• Loblaws — 1980 Baseline Rd.
• Real Canadian Superstore — 760 Eagleson Rd.
• Sobeys — 193 Metcalfe St.

Peterborough

• Sobeys​ — 1200 Lansdowne St W.
• Sobeys — 501 Towerhill Rd.

Stittsville

• Brown's Your Independent Grocer — 1251 Main St.

North Ontario

Sault Ste. Marie

• Pino's Get Fresh — 219 Trunk Rd.

Sudbury

• Walmart Supercentre​ — 2416 Long Lake Rd.
• Walmart Supercentre — 1349 Lasalle Blvd.

Thunder Bay

• Real Canadian Superstore — 971 Carrick St.
• Safeway​ — 115 Arthur Street W.
• Safeway — 1015 Dawson Rd.

The Shandy

A Mixed up History

The Lamb and Flag Glynneath

Well no tasting this time around. I want instead to set up for a few tastings I will be doing after this post. Shandies. For the uninitiated a Shandy is a beer mixed with a non-alcoholic drink to reduce the alcohol content, often served to children. I first got a taste of a shandy when I was spending the summer in Wales with my cousins. I was in Glynneath West Glam. and the regular family outing for dinner was always at the pub. Attitudes towards drinking are very different in Wales and England. The afternoon pint is a ritual, and Pubs often are community gathering places where families come to eat and catch up on gossip. I was there at the Lamb and Flag  with my aunt and my cousin. I think we had been shopping and were on our way home. The picture on the left shows the patio where we were sitting. My cousin came out with a pint for himself a gin for my Aunt and a Shandy for me. It was in a pint glass cold but no ice. I imagine it would have been made with a Mild Ale, probably 3.5% ABV or there abouts, and bottled carbonated lemonade (bringing the alcohol content down to 1.5 or 1.75% ABV). It was really good. I can still remember the way it tasted, bready and lemony, like a dessert. The next time I can across a shandy was the first commercial issue of one that I remember. Labatt's Twist Shandy. It was introduced in 1985 and had a fairly long run (Until the mid ninties?). There is so little information on it on the net so I cannot see when it was discontinued. It was a very low alcohol, 2.3% I believe, so it was higher than the shandy I had in Wales. It was quite good for a commercially made product and my family kept some in the fridge as we renovated the old 

Labatt Twist Shandy (1985- 199?)

farmhouse. 


So recently a very large beer corporation decided to 
release a very questionable product. When I first saw it I honestly thought it was a joke, as it came out just before April Fool's Day. But, it was an actual product and one they have spent millions on marketing. I was eventually given one by a beer supplier at the restaurant and I took it home, with plans to rip into it and generally deride it online. However, I started to research, as I always do, before I talk about a beer. What I discovered was That MY definition of "Shandy" was too small, it was actually a world wide phenomenon, and the product I was going to deride, didn't seem so out of place anymore. I had actually posted about a "Shandy" without giving it a lot of thought. See Beer # 63 Radlermass brewed by Brick out of Kitchener/Waterloo, and Formosa. So for my own sake I thought it was time to educate myself, so when I do post about this beer, I can take a more scientific slant, instead of the beery-snobby slant, I was going to take.

History

The History of the shandy is as mixed up and muddled up as much as the drink itself. Pinpointing an origin seems as impossible as defining the drink. As far back as humans have made alcohol, they have put stuff in it. Herbs to make it taste better and last longer, honey and fruit to sweeten it, water to weaken it so it could be drunk throughout the day. The Greeks were a good example of this. They only drank full strength wine at Breakfast (talk about getting the day started with a bang!) They would then drink wine through out the day cut with water. How much water depended on the circumstances and custom. In fact the term "Symposium" come from a Greek dinner party where a group of men would gather eat first in silence and then drink voluminous amounts of wine and discuss philosophy, religion, science, politics, while getting increasingly more intoxicated. The Symposium Master would dictate when everyone would drink, how much, and how much water to put in the glass. How civilised! 

S. Cerevisiae Beer Yeast

When one looks back on the history of civilisation, one finds that the advance of man is tied directly to alcohol. If you ask any anthropologist why this is, the answer will be simple: People who drank water died; people that drank alcohol lived. In the unsanitary times of the past water was almost always teeming with pathogens as yet unknown to our lesser advanced relatives. In fact, it was noted in the cholera epidemics of the 1600's in London. That anyone who worked in the breweries, did not get sick. Cholera is a water borne pathogen, and those in the breweries drank beer as it was freely available. It wasn't until Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria in the 1800's that this began to make sense to people. As a side note, Louis Pasteur work on microbiology is grounded in his study of fermentation. In fact the yeast sample that Carlsberg Brewing company preserves in Denmark and is used in all of it's lagers still bears Pasteur's name: Saccharomyces pastorianus. 

So, how does this bring us back to shandies? For saftey's sake people have had to drink alcohol mixed with water to prevent disease. So, did it always have to be water? No. So obviously people had, over time, come to mix different things with their beer to make their experience more enjoyable.

A World of Difference

The variations of shandies would take more than one blog to deal with, in fact I could probably run a sister blog to this one and not run out of material for quite some time. However I am going to list a few of the more interesting shandy variations here before I log off to go sample some.

Regionality is the key to shandy variation. In the U.K. The two most prevalent Shandies are the Ale and Lemonade variety, and lager and Cider. The later is called a snakebite or if it is Guinness and cider it is called a Balck and Tan, a priest collar, or black velvet (also called a poor man's black velvet as there is a cocktail of the same name that contains Guinness and Champagne). The former variety is also called a Shandygaff, although this name is not as common anymore. It also can be made with ginger ale or ginger beer (N.B. try mixing a good lager of your choice with Beer # 72 Crabbie's Ginger Beer. you're welcome).

In North America, especially Canada, Although we have most of the U.K. versions here,we also have a variety of shandies called "drop shots." Dr. Pepper is the most recognizable  A mixture of beer and Cola that half fills a pint glass, and then a shot of amaretto dropped in just before the entire mixture is drank (best if done in one drink). As well there is the Irish Car Bomb: a shot of Irish Liqueur dropped into a half pint of Guinness. The is also a Black Shandy which is also common in Australia which is Guinness and lemonade. This can also be called a Portagaff in Australia. Lager and lime is another one you will hear frequently, which is a pint of lager with a shot of Rose's Lime cordial in it. Another frequent one is a Red Eye, which is beer and varying amounts of Clamato or tomato juice.


Beer mixed with Fanta Orange Soda is called: Quianti in Argentina, Fan-schop in Chile, or if it is plain orange juice it is called a Brass Monkey in the US.


Cola and Beer, other than the Dr. Pepper is called: a Mazout in Belguim, Rafejo in Columbia, or Shandygaff in Japan (can also refer to beer and gingerale in Japan).


Beer and 7-up is call a Sneeuwwijte (Snow White) in The Netherlands.


Lastly Radlermass from Germany, Bici, Bicicletta, or Ciclista in Italy or Panache in France all refer to beer mixed with a sparkling lemonade. Radler and Ciclista both give reference to the fact that it is a cyclist's drink.

Commercial Production

A number of companies have, over the years, produced a commercially available product, as opposed to it being available in bars only. Lately we have seen this trend again in North America. Bud Light Lime burst onto the scene a few years back, another variation of the shandy. Now almost every major brand has tried out some sort of shandy like beverage. Even craft brewers are stretching their pallets and producing more flavoured beers and concoctions. Next I am going to try a few of the beers I believe fall under the category of a Shandy (whether strictly or liberally up to you to decide). I will also include the beer I have been hesitant to even try...




Cheers
CJT