Picture this: Kingston, Ontario. The early 80s.
A young boy—golden blond locks resting gingerly on his velour sweater vest—stares up adoringly at his dad, who is putting on quite a show. His arms are flailing. The music is blasting.
The boy is entranced.
On the coffee table, fuelling this spectacle, sits a glass. This glass is filled with a beautiful golden liquid. The boy asks for a taste. The father looks towards the kitchen furtively. No sign of the mother.
“This will put hair on your chest,” he says, as he passes the drink to his son.
“This is beer,” he says, as the son tastes the sweet nectar. It’s like nothing he’s tasted before. He finds it strange. Odd. He loves it and hates it all at once. He is revulsed and drawn back for more.
It’s the pungency he’ll remember. And a certain taste. A taste he can’t describe, and that he’ll probably never be able to describe.
Fast forward to 2011. That boy is a wonderfully handsome and respectably tall man.
That boy, you’ll be flabbergasted to know, was me.
A young boy—golden blond locks resting gingerly on his velour sweater vest—stares up adoringly at his dad, who is putting on quite a show. His arms are flailing. The music is blasting.
The boy is entranced.
On the coffee table, fuelling this spectacle, sits a glass. This glass is filled with a beautiful golden liquid. The boy asks for a taste. The father looks towards the kitchen furtively. No sign of the mother.
“This will put hair on your chest,” he says, as he passes the drink to his son.
“This is beer,” he says, as the son tastes the sweet nectar. It’s like nothing he’s tasted before. He finds it strange. Odd. He loves it and hates it all at once. He is revulsed and drawn back for more.
It’s the pungency he’ll remember. And a certain taste. A taste he can’t describe, and that he’ll probably never be able to describe.
Fast forward to 2011. That boy is a wonderfully handsome and respectably tall man.
That boy, you’ll be flabbergasted to know, was me.
It turns out that my dad used to drink O’Keefe Ale. It had a taste that still haunts me. There was something about it that I can’t describe, but I know it when I taste it. You can’t get O’Keefe around here. In fact, I’m not even sure you can still get it, though I’ve heard rumblings it’s still around in rural Quebec.
A few months ago, I decided I wanted to find this taste.
(Tangent: In fact, I found this taste one other time in my life:
Picture this (I promise this picture this will be shorter than the last): Tucson, Arizona. Around the turn of the century.
I drank a bottle of Pacifico. A Mexican beer. It had the taste. I verified with my brother, who I was visiting. IT HAD THE TASTE!!
Alas, there is no Pacifico in Ontario.)
***
Sidebar:
For future reference, and to explain the name of this blog, I call this taste Braü.
When I was growing up, every so often, my dad would make this very guttural sound that can’t be spelled but that I’m approximating as “Braü.” He’d usually be in the basement, which I’ve since learned, is absolutely the best place to Braü. The room, suddenly, would be engulfed in the smell version of that indescribable beer taste mentioned earlier. The room would SMELL like O’Keefe TASTED!
Without fail, no matter where she was in the house, and I have no idea why other than it was hilarious, my mom would, without skipping a beat and no matter what she would be doing, say “Bra-woo’s back in town.” (Bra-woo is an alternate spelling I agonized with, but decided on Braü since it kind of looks like “Brew” and I thought it would make a cooler title for the blog.)
As kids, we didn’t pick up the disdain in our mom’s voice until much later…
***
OK – back to the present. Long story short: I’m on a beer quest. An odyssey. I’m obsessed.
Maybe this is happening to me now because I became a dad for the first time last December. Maybe “Dad” and “beer” are so twisted together in my brain that, in some mixed up way, it feels you can’t have one without the other.
Maybe I’m trying to reach out to my dad through beer.
Maybe a home isn’t complete without Braü wafting through the air.
Maybe I’m just really stressed out because I haven’t slept since December and I need a drink…
Braü represents something to me. Fatherhood perhaps… Maybe I’m searching for something authentic, going back to my childhood...
Whatever the reason, I’ve started tasting all the beers I can get my hands on. I’ve started reading. I’ve started learning.
This blog will chronicle my odyssey in beer.
A few months ago, I decided I wanted to find this taste.
(Tangent: In fact, I found this taste one other time in my life:
Picture this (I promise this picture this will be shorter than the last): Tucson, Arizona. Around the turn of the century.
I drank a bottle of Pacifico. A Mexican beer. It had the taste. I verified with my brother, who I was visiting. IT HAD THE TASTE!!
Alas, there is no Pacifico in Ontario.)
***
Sidebar:
For future reference, and to explain the name of this blog, I call this taste Braü.
When I was growing up, every so often, my dad would make this very guttural sound that can’t be spelled but that I’m approximating as “Braü.” He’d usually be in the basement, which I’ve since learned, is absolutely the best place to Braü. The room, suddenly, would be engulfed in the smell version of that indescribable beer taste mentioned earlier. The room would SMELL like O’Keefe TASTED!
Without fail, no matter where she was in the house, and I have no idea why other than it was hilarious, my mom would, without skipping a beat and no matter what she would be doing, say “Bra-woo’s back in town.” (Bra-woo is an alternate spelling I agonized with, but decided on Braü since it kind of looks like “Brew” and I thought it would make a cooler title for the blog.)
As kids, we didn’t pick up the disdain in our mom’s voice until much later…
***
OK – back to the present. Long story short: I’m on a beer quest. An odyssey. I’m obsessed.
Maybe this is happening to me now because I became a dad for the first time last December. Maybe “Dad” and “beer” are so twisted together in my brain that, in some mixed up way, it feels you can’t have one without the other.
Maybe I’m trying to reach out to my dad through beer.
Maybe a home isn’t complete without Braü wafting through the air.
Maybe I’m just really stressed out because I haven’t slept since December and I need a drink…
Braü represents something to me. Fatherhood perhaps… Maybe I’m searching for something authentic, going back to my childhood...
Whatever the reason, I’ve started tasting all the beers I can get my hands on. I’ve started reading. I’ve started learning.
This blog will chronicle my odyssey in beer.
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