Grotto Thoughts (2)

 

We all have favourite styles of beer. Some love IPAs, others go for lip puckering sours or maybe a dark roasted stout or porter, but what we all have in common is the love of really good beer, no matter the preference in composition. Every can or bottle poured into the glass is the culmination of something that began as an idea or dream in the brewers head, a creation writ real by the mash tun.
  We see only the final result of what could have been months or years of hard work and development, perhaps less in the case of a growing confidence and mastery by the brewer, but nonetheless, it is an end of a process that starts long before the first bag of malted barley is poured or the kettle heated. The beginning of any recipe calls for some sign of what the final product should and can be, a beer is no less a design of components mashed together to create something unique in a world of bland corporate sameness. The only limitation is the edges of what constitutes a drinkers palate, there is an open possibility of what can come next if we are willing to try it.
  While we may debate why we drink the beer we do, there is no doubt that along with the creativity and design of each new brew, we are drawn in by the community surrounding our beer even more. It is the experience of the taproom, the communal nature of sitting down and being able to talk about the beer with the people who make it or who have a passion for it just the same. The new friendships that have happened because of simply sharing pictures or thoughts about your beer online are astounding, it's not just the beer traders, it's the groups that get together and go on beer tours, self guided or otherwise, who meet up when they go out and who have formed new and lasting relationships with people they would never have met in a million lifetimes, just because they choose to drink craft beer.
  Dreamers alike, brewers and beer drinkers, we hope for a bright future for this industry we call craft. We seek to support local business, some larger than others, some hyper small and serving only a tiny space in this world. We want people to succeed with their dreams because we feel connected with every pint we buy and every story we tell. We belong to this community because we see the possibility in what comes next, believing in a future where it transcends beer and becomes ingrained in a more inclusive and diverse world we can create. We look around us at a planet resting on weary legs and wonder what if we can make some part of it better, from the start and with conviction. The door needs to be open wider, we who have come in already need to make a place at the table for anyone who wants to sit down and if we really mean we want to make this world a better place then we need to be more active in defending and calling out the actions we see that bring harm or disrespect to anyone.
  It's not about beer anymore, it can be so much more than that if we want it to be.
  It matters because we can make it matter.

Cheers!
Polk

Leap of Faith - One Polk's Dream..

 

I look into the mirror every morning and I see a tired man looking back at me. I am old at being young, but young at being old (to quote The Barenaked Ladies), but I feel every year sometimes. Life is rolling along at an ever increasing clip and as a blue collar guy who left high school and has worked in a variety of customer service jobs over the last 30 years, I don't have much in the way of plans for the future. Little savings from being self employed for 13 of those years and working for chains that don't offer retirement packages means I am most likely to work till I am well into my 70's or until I keel over at the grill one day. The prospect of another 30 years spent grinding out 50 hour work weeks with 2 off for good behaviour seems daunting at times as the entirety of my life will be spent working to just stay put. Not an appetizing thought by any means and I lack the self discipline or guts to trim my life to the basics so as to save and retire a bit earlier on a modest budget. But one day I had a thought, perhaps I could "retire" for a few years now while I can enjoy it and then toil away my remaining years with the wonderful memories I could create.
  How's that now, you ask yourself?
  Well, admittedly it isn't the smartest plan or the most stable but it is a dream to dream each night.
  We bought our house about 12 years ago, right before the market went ape-shit. Coming in at a very reasonable price, we looked at it as our forever home where we would raise our child (to come soon after) and enjoy the life we were building. A simple 2 bedroom home with a huge yard and room to grow, we hosted parties,a wedding and so much more before life got really complicated after I lost my business in 2012. The struggle to stay afloat was real but after a time, we found our footing and on we went. The real blow was when we found out that it wasn't in the cards for us to have kids, tough to swallow that one I will tell you, but once again, we refocused and strode on into the night with our sights on tomorrow.
  But I did get tired of it all some days. I looked at a future where we just keep doing the same things, day in and day out, a fait acompli until I take my leave of this mortal coil and no longer care. This cannot be all there is and one day, a mad plan, a decidedly crazy and unabashedly irresponsible plan popped into my head when I was a few pints in.
  We sell the house.
  Travel the world for 2 or 3 years.
  Come back and resume our lives, but with the tales and memories to carry us to the end while we still can enjoy them.
  Simply put, as madness usually thinks of itself, the profit from the sale of our house is going to exceed $300,000 and while we do have decent jobs, they are nothing we couldn't find again after a few years away. I don't have a career that needs saving, a life worth living should be lived well and hard. This is what I proposed one evening...
 We take half of what me make, maybe a little more and just go.  Leave with the wind at our backs and don't stop until we have to come back to ground and resume this life lived proper and true to what is expected.
We would head to Europe for a few months first, chasing beer dreams from Belgium to Germany and the Czech Republic. Drinking Belgian Trappist beers in taverns across from the monastery that produced them, sitting in a German Bierhaus during Oktoberfest and crushing Pilsner Urqhell on the patio in Pilsen would no longer be a dream and without a rigid travel timeline, we would be free to explore at our own will.
  Returning across the Atlantic, we would embark on the most ambitious part of my "retirement" plan; Polkapolooza : North America. Buying a truck and a trailer, we would start our journey in Newfoundland, exploring the local craft beer and food scene in every province and territory in Canada as we travelled across this great land. Timing stops for cultural events that pique our interest, we would search out experiences that will give us the memories promised but left unfilled in an uncertain future. Perhaps a year or so spent driving and stopping in to visit anywhere we fancy before we turn south and visit our friends and neighbours in the United States to do more of the same.
  Rather than looking for a reason or a purpose, we will simply go where the wind takes us and live the life that we cannot expect as our years advance. There will be no lazy senior days for this guy and this rather wacky and wholly un-thought out plan remains a dream that tantalizes my soul when the days get dark and the future a muddled mess of repetitive convention. Is it idiocy or madness that drives me to contemplate taking a risk and just letting go of all the routine and "correct" things we are supposed to do? Sure, a little of both but I do know one thing for sure, I was not born to just work until I die and pay bills.
  There you have it. The flights of fancy of a middle aged dreamer who will head back to work tomorrow with a little glimmer of what may be, even if that's all he has to keep him going.

Cheers!

Polk

Just One Tonight

A good night.

It's late Monday night or maybe the clock has rolled over and it's very early on a Tuesday morning. Matters not as another day has come and gone and I am tired. Life is pretty good and last night's Grotto beer party with Kat was a nice break, albeit one that left me a little punched this morning. Not hungover but pretty spent in a good way, great beer rarely leaves me feeling anywhere near where the Old Mil or Pabst did. We enjoyed several amazing pints, big boozy bastards and light wheat beers included and it was an almost perfect night.

Grotto Beer par excellence

  The work day was supposed to be short with only a quick few hours but as nothing I ever plan about my life, it turned into another 10 hour shift. So when I got home tonight (yesterday?), I was of the mood that it would again be a multiple brew night, including a few big Imperial IPAs I had picked up on the way home. There is a constant threat of that kind of behaviour and despite my ability to keep it in check (most of the time), I do still slip into Old Polk mode when the stress of the day gets to me or I just feel like it.
  Tonight had that vibe as I rolled in and quickly shed the trappings of my work life. I am all about comfort at home and am most often found in sweats with a loose shirt allowing for maximum fat guy relaxation.  Pausing to say hello to Kat and Jinx, I headed to the garage for what was to be the first of many beers this humid September evening. A delightfully refreshing Beau's All Natural Cranberry Oat Ale was perfect and at 6.3% ABV, a nice slow sipping, slightly tart beauty that would allow for maximum ramping up as the night went on.

Tonight's only beer.

 As I tried to get a picture before the sun was gone for the night something clicked and I knew I was going to be one and done. I can't describe it, there's never a plan to drink 1, 2 or 6 beers, I just come home, have a bite, drink a beer and see where it takes me. The freedom of being childless comes to the front most often when I get 4 deep on a Monday night and don't have to worry about a little one needing Dad's attention. It can also lead to too much self indulgence but that's the price you pay for being a guy like me. Kidding, but sometimes I wonder if I would walk away from the whole craft beer thing if we had been able to conceive...
  We watched a few season premieres of some of our favourite TV shows and I felt no desire to open another beer. I thought about it, I always do, but it seemed to me that after 675 days of having at least one beer, I was good with that single on this particular night. That's the thing with how I live, it is completely without pretense or plan, I do what I have to for survival but the rest is all a huge crapshoot most days. Not to say that I hate my life or live without purpose, it's just that I let myself embrace whatever catches my fancy after my responsibilities are taken care of and that's how we get here. One night, One beer and a happy Polk letting you in on a day that wasn't about anything but a nice mellow evening of a boring married couple who know enough to know they know nothing.
  Plus I am off tomorrow (today?) so there is always Day Drinking as a possibility...

Raised to you from me!

Raise your Glass and your standards,
One beer at a Time.


Cheers!


Polk

From drunken to Drunk - My Journey is not over.

I don't know if I've seen my rock bottom, but I sure as hell hope that I have. Broken hearts, crushed dreams and a future dashed against the rocks of reality have been with me many times over the years, mostly of my own doing. I've made impetuous decisions that altered the course of my life and suffered, at my own hands and actions, the results of not looking forward. It was never a conscious decision to throw so much of my life away, but I did it nonetheless. Entering my 20's without an anchor or a dream, I married a lovely lady despite the fact that we were not ready or good for each other. I thank my lucky stars that she was smart enough to cleave the knife on our ill fated journey early, that both of us have found happiness apart and now are friends with a history that brings smiles and not tears. I wandered from job to job, always with alcohol keeping my mind at ease about the fruitlessness of my empty life. Covering up the fact that my early promise of a life of substance was blown away by my lack of focus, addiction and apathy. It was always about today, to hell with tomorrow. I lived for that immediate satisfaction only several beers, shots or the occasional foray into something harder could bring and it is with some shame that there are large parts of my life I do not remember or have only the haziest recollections of.

Meeting Kathryn come at a time when my wheels were spinning and life had no direction. What was supposed to be a friendship blossomed and despite my continued troubles, she stood by me and our love grew. I wish the tale would take a turn for the better in that summer of 1997, but it still had miles to go and a darkness that had several shades of black to be added. Opening a business, getting married, buying a house and then trying to start a family brought some joy to my life, but still the rampage of alcohol abuse continued. Not all the time, not every day, but often enough that I developed and earned a reputation as a functional alcoholic. I never drove drunk, missed work or got into fights, but my lack of remorse for my actions is shameful for me to this day. Having found my niche as the party guy, I threw bigger and more drunken bashes, always focused on getting as much beer into me as possible, often more than a 24 in a single sitting. It was my only focus of any time alone to drink as many beers as I could before my body gave up and I would pass out, mind at rest but not at ease.

When you wake up and the thing you've built for over a decade is starting to come crumbling down around you and you have no idea why, it should be a sobering moment. Once again, I was not stopped by losing my way, even when financial ruin stared us in the face. The depression that had always been held at bay by alcohol, in a sense, came crashing down as I took a job that kept us in our home, but crushed what was left of my soul. Taken as a failure, I was treated as a liability but at least I could fill the roll of a simple line cook and pay the bills. The cheap beer continued to flow, only now it was every day and it was with purpose. That fleeting moment when the drunkenness took over the pain of my actions and I briefly felt a glimmer of joy, even though it was false.

While working 60 plus hours a week to keep the wolves at bay, I was certain I would die with a fryer basket and a beer in my hand. There was no hope, no future and as we had ended our pursuit of fertility treatments, no kids or family. It was then that Untappd came into my life and a world of new beer opened up. It isn't too much to say that this app changed my life, it literally did. I began to pursue the badges that you would receive for trying different styles of beer, for exploring new ones and leaving your everyday macros behind. I found a world of interesting flavours and people were waiting just outside my regular sphere and all it took was letting them in. I stopped pounding 8 or 10 beers every night and found my footing, scoring a better job and some self respect at the same time. For many of my old friends, my slow but steady transformation from drunken idiot to slow sipping craft beer lover was viewed with trepidation. many who knew my 20 plus years of self abuse could not believe that I would change for something as simple as better beer. I didn't for the longest time either, falling into a depression because I could no longer party like I used to but not really understanding that I didn't want to be that guy anymore. It has taken a long time for me to come to grips with my own past, to confront the demons I grew myself and to let go of my hate for myself for throwing away so much of my promise. I have had to leave some of my old life in order to grow a new one, many times I turn down invitations because I still have a weakness that can be hard to control if I begin to feel anxious. The old expectations are still there for so many who used to know me and now that I have turned the corner, I feel them looking at me as if I am a ghost of drunken Rob past.

The new friends that I have made because of the decision to begin writing about not only beer, but my life, have been a real blessing. They too appreciate the way craft beer has changed our lives and we all seem to share similar stories about walking that fine line between happy drunk and the gutter at one time or another in our lives. I am grateful to anyone who has ever been part of this life I've led and while I am feeling everyday more hopeful for the future, I know there are those who will never see me for anything but an drunken asshole. I cannot change the past, I can only acknowledge my roll in my own destruction, apologize and hope that they will come to see that it is indeed a new day in my world. I may take a bit of ribbing because I wax poetic about craft beer so much, but it is not being facetious to say that this community and the people in it have helped to save my life from what was sure to be an early and painful ending.

Writing about my beer on Instagram brought me into another level of interaction with the world and it has spawned into what you all now know as the Drunk Polkaroo blog, videos and well, adventures. I now use craft beer to enjoy, not escape life.

I have written about parts of this many times, my life seems to go in circles and I have learned that I cannot ignore something that is in my head, demanding to be written. I no longer fear the past or the future and despite losing so many years to depravity, excess and hubris, I want to believe that this is just the beginning of the second (or third) act of my life. There is so much to explore and if it takes me the rest of my days, I am going to pursue a life of passion, love and honesty about what I want.

Raise your glass and your standards,

One Beer at a time.

Cheers.

Rob

In Defense of The Hammer

I was out and about on Tuesday and when I was coming home from Toronto, crossing the Skyway bridge, I started to think about all the times I hear and see people slamming my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario. So many times, especially on social media, I will see people posting about how they can't wait to get out of this city, how all the people here are losers and so on. I am struck by how they feel. I am not sure if they realise that it isn't Hamilton that does

One Less Bad Habit or A Smoke Free Polkaroo

I have another confession to make. I used to smoke and I liked it. I loved the way the first cigarette of the day would wake me up and get me going. Nothing beat a smoke and a beer after a long day at work. Take a break, light one up and inhale that lovely nicotine. Damn that was stupid.

I started smoking, like a lot of people, when I was a teen. Probably to be cool or something. Everybody I hung out with did and I wanted to fit in. I can still remember the foul taste and odour from that first pack. I coughed and choked and kept at it. Terrible, but slowly I began to need one. I needed the lift it provided or the calmness when I was upset. It was the last thing I did before sleeping and the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I have been addicted to many things in my life, but nothing can match tobacco for sheer destruction and cost.

I would imagine being smoke free, but it scared the hell out of me. What would I do when a craving hit? How would I calm my nerves? Would I get fat(ter)? I was never the best person at denying myself any pleasure, so quitting smoking seemed like something I could do later.

As I got older, I noticed that I knew less people who smoked. Many of my friends and family never did, so it was a non starter with them. Some people I knew tried many times to quit before it took hold and many gave up trying and kept on puffing. I may have tried to quit once or twice, but never seriously.

Sitting outside all winter to get my fix, I bought propane heaters for the garage and thought this was normal. Having to get up from a movie or party and traipse outside for a butt was something I did so often I should have just stayed out there. I was hooked, knew it and didn't care.

Summer was easier, I could stay outside all night and smoke while I drank my macro brews. Something about alcohol and tobacco just clicked and I associated them with each other. I would smoke like a chimney when drinking, often going through two packs at a party. This was part of the pattern of abuse I put on myself. I didn't care about the future, just right now.

A year and a half ago, I was in a wedding party and if you know me, you know I love an open bar. The wedding was in September, so the weather was still fine and I looked forward to a night of drinking, dancing and of course smoking. Many of my "smoke free" friends still puffed on stogies when we drank, so I would have company that night. A funny thing happened as the blessed day approached. I had seen people using e-cigarettes and thought no way that would work for me. Beside that, we were broke all the time and I couldn't afford it.  My cousin Angie and her husband Glen bought me one when I expressed a desire to try it and quit smoking. I hung on to it, trying it out now and then, but still spending upwards of $100 a week on packs of Player's. But with the wedding approaching and the knowledge that I would be stuffed into a limo with non smokers made me self conscious of the smell associated with it and I decided for that one night I would use the "vape" only.

My last cigarette was when I was driving back from Burlington after picking up the flowers for the wedding. As I puffed away down the QEW, I decided it wouldn't just be that night I wouldn't use the demon weed, it would be for good. I had half a pack left and put it in the ashtray of the truck in case I failed; I always hedged my bets.
 I threw them away a week later.

It was a wonderful evening and while I drank way too much still, I didn't smoke. I vaped away like a hipster (I know) and showed it to my mom and dad, both of whom had smoked for decades. Little did I know that by the end of the year Dad would have quit any sort of smoking altogether with the help of this little machine and Mom was not far behind. The next day dawned and I didn't smoke again. It continued that way as the winter came down over us and I had no desire to ever go back.

Early in 2015, we finally came up with our first workable budget and I knew I would never smoke again. The financial costs are out of this world. At $11 a day and around 9 packs a week, we were going broke one cancer stick at a time. My costs on keeping the e-cig going come in at about $40 every 6 weeks or so, just remarkable. Controlling my bad habits has not only improved my life, it has been a financial windfall. This is the stuff grown ups have to do I guess.

I realise that vaping is still not good for you, but there are far less chemicals and other nasty stuff coming out when you do, so it is a start. I am trying to work up the courage to give up even this device. I know there are serious concerns about its long term affects and have no desire to leave this world even a minute before my time is up, let alone accelerate it by poisoning myself. But for now, it keeps me off the cigarettes and that is a victory I savour.

I try to leave it at home if we go out and find myself using it less and less each week. Not binge drinking helps me to avoid temptation and I don't have the edgy feeling I would get when I couldn't smoke for a few hours.

I have made so many changes to my lifestyle in the last year that I kind of forget smoking. It doesn't lurk in my mind the way excessive drinking does. It doesn't creep up on me at night and tug at my sleeve. I wish I had done it sooner and hope I quit before much damage was done. My taste buds have roared back with a vengeance and it is partly why I have gotten so into craft beer. I can actually detect the subtle and not so subtle flavours the brewers are trying to impart in the beers and it is wonderful.

If you smoke, I want you to know you can quit. But don't beat yourself up, hate the habit. Look around at all the loving and wonderful people in your life and think about how much you would miss them if you leave. Think of the money you can save and what you can do with it. I use it to pay bills on time, but if your good with money, maybe you can save up and take a trip. Whatever your motivation, just do it. Your body will thank you and so will your wallet.

Cheers!