Cold Comfort

Well, crap. On Wednesday, the Canadian Men's Hockey Team was eliminated from medal contention at the Turin Olympics by a far superior Russian squad. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on this disaster, as it would take pages and pages to properly express my feelings.

Soooo..... I decided instead to go home and cry into my beer. However, when I got home, I realized that I didn't have any beer on hand, so it was off to the LCBO (the liquor store). Since I was buying some beer anyway, I thought that it was a good time to resurrect a tradition I started this past September - The Weird Beer Tour of the World.

Perhaps I should explain. My birthday falls in September, so this past year I declared the entire month of September to be "Ianpalooza". On each Friday night during Ianpalooza, I went to the LCBO, and selected three or four interesting-looking beers from a specific country. I then brought them to my friend Joe's place, and we would each sample them. We were fortunate, as September 2005 contained five Fridays, so we toured fairly extensively.

Getting back to last night - I decided that the most appropriate first stop for the tour this time would be - Canada. And more specifically - Ontario. Since I had to work this morning, I only selected three beers. Two of the beers I had not previously tried, and the other one I hadn't had in a while. The three beers on the menu were -

Hockley Dark Traditional English Ale - Hockley Village, ON
Dark and Dirty. Very tasty with a full flavour. Meat & potatoes in a bottle.
Hockley Village is located about 30 minutes NW of Toronto. I actually had to look it up, as I had never heard of the place.

Headstrong Pale Ale - Guelph, ON
A bit lighter tasting the the Dark, but with a nice crisp bite to it. Also, at 5.7% ABV, a serious bottle of beer. I would have included a link with this, but oddly, I couldn't find one.

Creemore Springs Premium Lager - Creemore, ON
I wasn't impressed with this one at all. It had kind of a funky taste to it. I know several people who swear by this beer, but I don't get it.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

More installments to follow.