Another Taproom (Part 9)

 

It wasn't a taproom he had been in before, but he still felt familiar inside the industrial open concept warehouse that this much hyped Brewery was to be found. Those ridiculous steel stools that gave no comfort were to be avoided at all costs, he wasn't here for a quick pint and a talk at the bar, he wanted to go deep into whatever nonsense passed for a tap list and pretend it mattered on any scale. 

  Finding a small table near the back, he set down his coat and wandered to the bar to get a starter, something low ABV, maybe a Pale Ale or a Lager, and although the latter was becoming increasingly more popular, the quality often lagged behind. Leaning in, he could see the guy behind the taps was beyond his years after too many flights, questions of slight intelligence and the general malaise at an industry he got into with great enthusiasm, that now graded his work on an app he'd rather fell into the mash tun than exist another minute. A Dream of purpose and driven to bring his creations to market had been replaced by a need to pay the bills and brew the thing that was for the moment, that he may brew what he loved in the future. 

Seeing this face, our traveller ordered a pint of the Vienna Lager, surely an easy choice and a smart one, to begin his descent, slow and steady he always told himself. The man pouring was efficient, engaged in a patter he knew well and opened a tab so our weary drinker could find other things to fill his glass. 

  Settling in with a look of solace in rest, he took a small sip and pondered it's life. A balanced pint, it lacked nothing, simple malt bill, soft noted with a bitter finish that welcomed another quick tip back. It was satisfying, this overlooked, unhyped style, he knew the menu was geared towards what sold best, although they hadn't yet put a seltzer out, so at least that tiny fragment of the dream remained. He finished his first quickly and moved up the ABV scale in quick succession, becoming more relaxed as the third iteration of what seemed to be the same Hazy IPA rested in his hand. He had reached that 5th pint moment of clarity when the day that was began to fade into the night and the troubles of tomorrow dimmed into the remaining final sip of beer. This was when he felt real, felt whole, even though he knew it was what was also slowly destroying him, he could not look away, a train wreck at minute speeds proved no less damning than one hurtling down the tracks full speed. Gathering his things, he paid his tab, left a decent tip and stepped out front to wait for his ride, he was a practiced drunk, not a stupid one and never took a chance on something that would interfere in getting his next drink. He was outwardly happy and polite in public, never letting too many loosen his grip on a persona honed over decades of drinking. He knew he wasn't done with this day, but whatever he poured in his glass next would be done alone, away from a world he increasingly found difficult to navigate without the promise of oblivion when he navigated his way home again.

Polklore : Foundational Breweries

 

A wise woman once told me that a relationship needed to built on a solid foundation to be able to survive the bumps and rough roads life will throw at you and that without that solid base, things will never be stable. As I look back on my life in beer, I can see the building blocks, the foundational breweries that helped make everything I know and love about craft beer possible today. This is about the places and pints from 2014 and 2015 that shaped my mind and palate as I stepped away from macro lagers and into the light of a new, tastier day.

In no particular order...

1. Grand River Brewing

  There are two beers that form the basis for almost everything that comes after and one of them was the Curmudgeon English IPA, a bready toasted malt pint that brought a new, but not overwhelmingly different feel to my glass. It was a fuller, more nuanced beer than I was used to and it was the first time I went back and bought more of a beer after we had tried it at our weekly get-togethers to split beers and chase badges on UnTappd. They had a few more offerings at the LCBO that caught my eye and for a time were my favourite brewery. Sadly, their quality began to decline precipitously and they were finally sold to Magnotta and no longer produce anything of significance. But for a time...

2. Beau's All Natural Brewing Company 

  I remember when I finally made the trip to Beau's brewery in the summer of 2016 and how it felt like I was visiting a high holy place of beer. So many of my introductions to various beer styles and adventurous ingredient choices in said styles came from Beau's, their seasonal 4 packs and seemingly endless releases at the LCBO made them an easy choice to be one of my most sought after UnTappd check-ins, you never knew what crazy idea they'd come up with next. They were quite ahead of the game and while they have since been sold to Steamwhistle and been reduced to a far smaller footprint, the memories of what was will always be special to me.

3. Great Lakes Brewery

  When it comes to building the foundation of beers in my life that changed everything for me, we find our other pillar in GLB's Pompous Ass English Ale. This one combined with the previously mentioned Curmidgeon to slowly pull my palate out of the macro Lager drudgery and elevate it for what was to come. The seasonal rotation of Tank Ten beers, mostly the delightful IPAs, taught me that beers come and go, but the good ones were something to be looked forward too and sought out when they returned. They always had something interesting and the core one two punch of Canuck and Pompous always found its way into my glass. It's been a long, great trip with my friends from GLB and as they continue to grow, they remain committed to the high quality and outstanding consumer experience that brought me in so many years ago.

4. Cameron's Brewing Company 

  There was always something special about going to Cameron's brewery, something new to put into my growler, a dry hopped Tripel that remains one of my all time favourite beers, to the Deviator Doppelbock and oh, so many Barrel Aged beauties. Cask nights were another new thing for me at this Oakville Brewery and they were the first place I made a friend inside the industry, my buddy Mike who helped me navigate a lot of what I was learning about craft beer in the mid 2010's. They have continued to grow and change with the times, even adding an IPA (or 3) to their lineup, but remaining true to their mission of bringing only the best they make to the world. Forever a fan.

5. Nickel Brook Brewing 

  From a small U-Brew shop on Drury Lane that became a beacon of Craft beer to a shiny new taproom and another location in Etobicoke, Nickel Brook had been with us since the beginning and so many of the things I love to drink continue to come from. It might surprise you to hear that I was not a fan of most of their offerings in the beginning, I couldn't handle IPAs at all and would wonder why Nickel Brook was all piney and bitter until the world of my palate finally caught up and I discovered my intense, burning love for Headstock West Coast IPA. Bourbon Barrel slow sippers, sour and mixed fermentation pints all came to my glass from NB and the continuous innovation and creativity as the market changed has kept me coming back. But more than that, it has become like the old neighborhood bar I used to frequent, I feel at home when I make my way to Nickel Brook.

There you have it, 5 foundational breweries in my life, although I will say there are a few more that deserve honorable mention to be certain. Mill Street, Lake of Bays and Wellington played smaller roles in what became the nonsense I do now, the fun I had in those days built everything worth anything. 

Perhaps next we will get into 5 Foundational beers and dive a little deeper into Polklore...

Polk

On 50

 I'm 50.

Half a century.

Time for a 2/3rd life crisis? Why 2/3rd's? Well, I really don't think I'm gonna see 100, but I got a shot at 75...maybe...I wanna at least make it to retirement age.

But today is an oddly quiet day. There is no party, my 40th had dozens of friends and family over to the house for a Roast of Rob, and I know that my solitary celebration is entirely my own doing. When I move through life, I have shed jobs and friends with some astonishing speed. My persona and interests have careened from devoted Freemason, party planner and sports organizer to depressed and reclusive hermit who only communicates through an online exaggeration of myself to cover his very real mental health struggles. Even in the 6 or 7 years I've been this beer guy, I have made and lost friends, some explosively and some because I became too much of a disaster waiting to happen for them to hang around. Regardless of the reason, I have watched it happen without much control because there is something inside of me that feels I am unworthy of any friendship and waits for the other shoe to drop and everyone to leave...even as I myself force them away. I don't know why this happened, I used to love having people over, parties for the smallest of reasons, hell I threw an Irish Wake for one of my fish when he died, going so far as to write a eulogy, build a coffin and have a service for Seamus "Pinky" O'Brien....that was his name...great party. 

  In 2012, when everything came crashing down, we struggled to keep the lights and heat on...literally. Having your heat cut off in late October or your phone's cut off the next month as you leap from one disaster to the other strains you. But I seemed to still be able to be somewhat like myself but I didn't see the edge of the spiral that was swallowing me every day. It was such a gradual devolution of who I thought I was that by the time I felt so low I contemplated what I was even doing being alive, let alone having friends, it was so far gone that I didn't know if I would make it to this very day. 50 seemed like an impossibility and there were more than enough days where I thought about the end that I wanted to make sure I had as few people around me as possible. It was somewhere in this darkness that that sort of logic grew and fed my anger at myself and the world I had built just to watch it crumble around me. I hated who I was and as I worked 70 or 80 hours a week in a job where I was clinging to the last of what was, I felt humiliated by my public failure that I had no answers for and spiraled deeper into that hell I knew I deserved.

  A year later, mid 2013, I found a new job that led to a return to a somewhat normal life, still burdened by debt and doubt, but now with health benefits and a normal 44 hour work week. This seemed to slow my slide towards the darkness and when I started really getting into writing and talking about craft beer in late 2015, it really did feel like I had made it through some of the worst storms of my life and was doing more than treading water or worse. Life felt better and I embraced it.

  That rolled on quite well into 2020 and as the pandemic came to dominate my every day, I began again to lose touch with the people I had gathered into another new circle of friends and began collapsing into the darkness once again. Three years on and I reach this magical number of years gone by and I look back to a life that looks like the rings on a tree stump, some fat and full of growth and life and others thin and short, filled with anger, depression and hate. It has not been at all what I imagined even at 30 years old, I couldn't have foreseen the massive changes coming to the world itself and my own small part of it.

  I wish I could say I know where I'm going. I wish I could feel like it is all getting better every day. I can say that we did find our way to a better financial way of life, debt free and not living paycheque to 4 days before paycheque. It took a lot of lean years living close to the bone and keeping the house to reach the ability to utilize that equity to clean the sheets and give us a fresh start I never really had since my early 20's. With money not being a crushing weight, I wonder where the fear, the deep pit of self loathing and lie awake at night worries will come from next.

 I want to be a better person, but I don't know if that is really who I am. I wonder who I will be in 5 years because when I look back at the me of 5 years ago, I don't really remember how it felt to be that guy, never mind 10 or 20 years ago. I'm trying to not just recapture what I feel are my glory days, that's not something any of can do, time passed is time gone forever, but I want to find who I am supposed to be as I enter this next phase of my life. It's not quite the endgame, but I do feel that pull of legacy and memory tugging at my not so swift feet. I always say you never really die until you are forgotten by the the last person who remembered you and I know that circle is pretty small for me now. My words and videos will outlive me by whatever time those platforms exist and perhaps my need to post something every day or share the minutiae of the nonsense in my head because I find it calming to create something, anything to leave behind a little stamp of "I was here". 

Existence has been weird, but I wanna stick around and see how more of it turns out.

Polk

03/16/2023

Thinking...

  It seems we are in a serious period of change in Ontario when it comes to craft beer and with change comes a particular brand of nostalgia I didn't know I could experience.

  I think what I miss is the thrill of it all, the experience of seeing that big bottle of Beau's latest release sitting on the shelf and wondering what new and potentially wonderful thing was inside. They were, for a lot of us, the introduction to so many styles and ideas we didn't know beer had. For me, Beau's was a pinnacle in those early years and while I didn't always understand what I was drinking, I appreciated the opportunity to drink it and explore. Insert Lake of Bays, Great Lakes or Amsterdam in here and the feeling is the same. Hell, I was a huge fan of the now forgotten Grand River Brewing Company, now a shell of itself run by a winemaker with little regard to quality or reputation...

  But this isn't a post about Beau's after their sale to Steamwhistle or the Amsterdam one or anything in particular about the business of beer. It's about this feeling I used to have that I seem to have lost along the way.

Today we have even more options at the LC, we have more breweries open to visit and even mail order which often hits your porch the next day. It's mind boggling how much has changed in just the last few years and it is that sheer number of choices that drives this feeling of loss and a reminiscing for something that by all standards was less than we have now. 

  I can find any style of beer I desire, made here in Ontario or from somewhere else, close by and available year round. There truly is something out there for anyone who seeks it, a veritable cornucopia of blessings in can or bottle to whet your desires and this may be the golden age at its apex, cresting a wave just peering at the inevitable ride down the other side. Whether that is a rapid descent or smooth trip to equilibrium is truly unknown at this point. But the roller coaster ups only work if you go down too and the appearance of abundance is a mask of serious issues at some of our favourite places. 

  I honestly think part of what drives this feeling in me is the volume of experience behind me in the last 7 or 8 years. Knowledge is power, but it is also a curse that brings clarity to all that occurs besides what new beer is coming to the fridge and taprooms we visit and enjoy. When every style was an exploration of my own making, a true window into a new world, I was bright and wide open to everything. As the years and beers passed by, it became harder to find that thrill and even with some of the world class things I've had in just the last few weeks, I still can't capture that particular vibe as often these days. 

  Beer had become an avenue of self expression for a lot of folks, an extension of themselves and with the rise of social media platforms, a way to say "Hey, here I am. I exist and I'm enjoying life!" while supporting local businesses and connecting with like-minded folks from around the world. It really felt so good to write about everything connected to beer and the community, with special attention paid to being positive and working towards helping make it more accessible and diverse to grow our world.

  But.

  It doesn't feel quite right anymore, a sort of ennui has settled into the world around me, a longing for a time just not so long ago that it seems possible it existed. I mean, I get excited about new beers and returning favourites, but it does feel somewhat muted when I know there is a bigger story of struggle and the fight for survival happening all around me. Not just in craft beer, but in the general sense of folks just trying to get by and enjoying a pint when they can because it brings them happiness when they need it. I want to reset to that feeling of joy and exploration I once had that inspired me to drive deep into this community and immerse myself in the experiences held within.

Time will tell, but the road ahead is most assuredly going to see us lose some places we hold dear, so be ready for a bumpy ride.

Back again...2023

 

Hey.

So it's been a while since I've been able to sit down and write beyond some nonsense beer stuff on Instagram or Twitter and as this new year dawns and that big 5-0 is just around the corner in March, I wanted to try and get back to this long form expression of whatever happens to be in my head on any given day. I want to set a goal of spending at least an hour a day writing, subject doesn't matter, just the words, and while I have no doubt there will be days when not much will come out, I feel like my abandonment of taking the time to coalesce my thoughts in one place has left me in a far worse space than before. It always made me happy to spend time sharing things about beer and life in general for anyone who wanted to peek in at one old man's world.

  Having said that, 2022 was not the best of times scenario in a lot of ways, but it came to be crystal clear as Christmas rolled around and I had absolutely zero spirit for a season I used to love with reckless abandon. I have little doubt that without the presence of social media there would have been no decorations in our house at all and as I took down what I dubbed "Christmas Corner" in the basement, I reflected on why I had fallen so out of sync with my family and friends as this year went on. I feel a disconnect with the world around me, beer and real, time feels faster and as I feel the decades weigh in, I wonder what the purpose of everything has been. Traditions, legends and tales of those who came before me still resonate in my mind, I revere the people who helped shape me and wonder how I can honour them when I feel like my mark on this world ends with my own demise. I've written before about not having kids, but as 50 approaches and my peers raise their kids and some even have become grandparents, I feel left out, but only because I have made myself feel that way. It is a most disconcerting way to live.

But...

I am still standing. I have a will to see what comes next for me and those I love. I want to watch the kids I know grow up and experience all life has to offer and I want to be better at being there and present for everyone who is important to me. I feel isolated, but only because I have become really good at doing it, but I am lifted up by the people who continue to push aside my defiance and love me in spite of myself. They persist where so many got tired and moved on, good people pushed too far and lost to me forever. My memories of who I was haunt me in my weakest moments and I miss that guy with all my heart. 

  My question to myself is can I find me again? Can I shake off a decade of dwindling confidence and depression to shape what I hope is at least the final third of my life?  Let's face it, there's no way this drunk is seeing 100...but I'm still hoping to at least getting to retire for a few years before hitting that Dive Bar in Hell...

I know this post is disjointed, meandering and weird...but I am all of those things every damn day and I hope I can come back and give a little hope and happiness, some deep looks and light and dark moments to bring truth and real life to you all in the coming 12 months. 

  If you're still here, Thank You.

I have some adventures planned this year, some heavy opinions to give and so many great beers to share with you all. I'm not done yet, I've been on pause and I'm ready to hit the play button again...

Thank you for believing in me, for keeping me going and for never letting me go...

This life is not over yet...

Polk, 01/01/23