For the next year, I will drink only Ontario beer

Goodbye, my sweet precious. Goodbye.

It's with a heavy heart, and a sense of foreboding, that I drink this Hibernus, and that I write this blog post. My keys are wet with the tears of trappist monks. Goodbye my sweet Belgians, goodbye...

It all started earlier this week, amid furor over IPAs and their freshness. Folks were complaining (as beer folks are wont to do) about some out of province beer at the lcbo. Saying it was past its due, that it had lost its lustre. The hops weren't fresh. I bought it and I thought it was ok. Tasted really like most IPAs we get around here. To be honest, I didn't really put much thought into it. Another beer checked off the "to try" list. 3/5. Neither offensive nor inoffensive. And that was that. Or so I thought.

But then something else happened. Great Lakes Brewery released their Bourbon Barrel Aged 25th Anniversary Porter - a beer I've wanted to get my grubby little paws on for home use for ages (ok, it hasn't been around for ages, but you get my drift). They put out a few at the brewery store, and I hightailed it over to get while the getting was good. I bought some, but they also had an IPA called My Bitter Wife. They tend to do fantastic IPAs, so I bought some of those too, seeing as I was all the way across the Gardiner.

That night, I cracked open My Bitter Wife. It was a revelation. It put most other IPAs I've had to shame, mainly because the citrusy hop flavours were so juicy-so vibrant-so fresh. And I started to think about it-Could it be that those other IPAs, those IPAs I buy at the lcbo that have been sitting around for months USED to taste like this? Could I be tasting a hollow shell of what those IPAs used to taste like. Because, seriously, this was in such a different league of flavour it wasn't even close. I don't know the answer because I haven't had most of them fresh. But I do know that the difference between the My Bitter Wife I had and many of the other IPAs I buy can be likened to eating local fruit in season and eating fruit imported out of season. The vibrancy, the juiciness, the freshness. Have you had blueberries from loblaws in the middle of winter? bland. rubbery. but you eat them because they're there. You don't complain.

I don't want that. I want fresh. This brings me to my point.

I've [gulp] been looking for a focus for this blog for awhile, and I think I've found it. I've [gulp] decided to make a vow:

For the next year, I will only drink Ontario beer.*

This will be tricky (read: really really hard)-we don't really do belgian styles. Most of the really good stuff is only available at brewery stores. But I want to give this a go. Think of it sort of like a 100 mile diet for beer. I want to support local. I want to drink fresh beer. And I want to chronicle it all for you, my loyal reader. I want to find out if Ontario beer can sustain me. Is there enough variety, enough flavour? Only one way to find out.

Wish me luck. MUCH more to come.

*This vow excludes beer that is already in my cellar (not much). I'll be drinking that until it [gulp] runs out. Then I'm in trouble. Also: I will drink beer from outside of Ontario if it is free, because it is a sin to turn down free beer, everybody knows that.