For some of us, beer festivals aren't events, they're a national holiday. Which is why Wallybob, the Lovely Lady X, and I recently decided to take the day off, and attempt to drink an entire beer festival. The Toronto Beer Festival features over 120 beers, and we were determined to drink every single one. Here's what happened.
Lady X must maintain her online anonymity, as she knows what happens to cute drunk Asian girls on the internet.
Drinking an entire festival in a day means being the early, and alcoholic, bird. Fortunately, the Toronto Beer Festival let you "Hoptimize" your ticket. For an extra fee, you're admitted a full hour before regular ticket-holders, and you'll need the full hour's extra drinking to forget that pun. It's a grown-up childhood fantasy: a whole theme park without the lines. And like a theme park, you'll probably throw up at some point.
My God, it's full of beers! Just like my belly will be!
The next brilliant innovation was beer tokens. They save you from scrabbling for change, and more importantly, they mean you've already spent the money. Now you'd be stupid not to drink more! Wallybob and I staggered away with more chips than the Doritos factory.
The first beers were easy, with extremely short lines. Mill St's Tank House Ale was my first drink, proof that Mill St know what they're doing, despite horrors like "Lemon Tea Ale" (my second). Lady X found St. Ambroise Apricot Wheat Ale, because she's a girl, but it was also really nice, because it's a beer. We didn't have time to find out what Wally's was before it was gone, and replaced, and gone.
Our powers combine!
But then! As we sank our second round*, Wally's keenly-honed senses spotted something in the distance!
*Note that I won't be mentioning every single drink because of the effects of every single drink.
Wallybob's radar pings.
"Radar" is a euphemism, and so is "pings"
It was rapidly becoming clear that the Toronto Beer Festival was a test-run for heaven. Six beers and ten minutes in, promotional Beer Girls still outnumbered punters and -- on a blazing hot, beer-fueled day -- they offered free replacement T-shirts. Which was good, because as an Irishman, I react to sunlight like an ice cube. Made of sweat.
A demonstration of why I needed a spare T-shirt already
A demonstration of how professional these girls were: she touched me without a Hazmat suit.
You got a T-shirt in exchange for your e-mail address; apparently, companies don't realize that every person in the world has a spare spamcatcher now. I don't think Hotmail even get any real messages anymore. I'm also very curious what marketers will sell to Mr. Raging Dogwelder, or how they'll ship it to Chronopolis, Azerbaijan.
The next beer was Australian, and Australians are heroes because they refused to sell us any Cooper's Ale until it was cold enough. These guys turned down money because damn the money, they weren't going to charge people for suboptimal beer.
An Australian looking friendly.
X forced us to fritter away some tokens for Tsingtao. Many Chinese people suffer from ALDH2 deficiency, rendering them unable to properly metabolize acetaldehyde or appreciate beer, but apparently guaranteeing them a job with Tsingtao.
Canadian brewery Nickelbrook really impressed us. Not only is their Green Apple beer actually good despite its name, they recreated the real pub experience with both wood bar AND barmaids already too bored to really serve much, even though the event had only been open for negative thirty-one minutes.
Church-Key had more flavor on that chalkboard than there is on most menus. Their Holy Smoke beer is liquefied burning peat with alcohol. It's wonderful. But drinking it at a beer festival is like meeting the love of your life at the start of an orgy, and they're a Sumo champion who likes being on top. I took one for the team, lowering my center of gravity by an inch, and moved to the next.
12:30: Thirty minutes in, we'd had twelve beers and already circled the globe once. We were enjoying a gloriously sunny day, full of beer, and all was so right with the world that NASCAR became impossible. We thought our mission wasn't just going to be possible, but plain sailing.
That's when the casks struck.
Please continue to Part 2: Curry Beer and Fire Truck Dancers!
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