Paul Henman at henman.ca

Andy, Kerri and I went to the 20^th Annual Festival of Small Breweries at C’est What, where we also met up with Michelle.

It was even more busy than usual – they hit capacity at about 5:30pm, and in theory* it didn’t start until 5pm! (*I say “in theory” because Andy & I arrived spot on 5pm and there were already people sampling.)

Anyway, I usually post my “scores”, so they’re below:

1. Chambly Noire 6.2%
2. Amsterdam Oktoberfest 5.5%
3. Granite Hopping Mad 6.0%
4. Mill Street Oktoberfest 5.2%
5. Nickelbrook Sahti Juniper Beer 6.0%
6. Black Oak Wasabi Brown Ale, cask 5.0%
7. King Unfiltered Hopped-Up Pilsner 4.8%
8. Georgian Bay Dipper 5.0%
9. Durham Belgian Witbier 4.8%
10. McAuslan Pumpkin Ale 5.3%
11. Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale 5.3%
12. Railway City Copper Ale 4.9%
13. Grand River Highballer Pumpkin, cask 5.2%
14. Nickelbrook Oak-Aged Uniek Kriek 5.0%
15. Mill Street Helles Bock 6.1% – note: it’s terrible!

I also tried a few others but by then I’d given up scoring them:

• Big Rock Black Amber 5.0%
• Okanagan Pale Ale 5.0%
• Scotch Irish Corporal Punishment 5.0%
• Trafalgar Smoked Oatmeal Stout 5.0%

Home. Tired. 44 hours in one meeting! And it was only a 4-day week.

It’s not going to be a restful weekend though: there’s the Beer Festival, Taste Of The Danforth, the Hot & Spicy Food Festival … oh, and finding somewhere to live!

Apart from my race notes and the odd auto-posted bookmark, I’ve not done an update since the Spirit of Toronto two weeks ago, so what’s happened since then?

• I took a day off and tried to make a dent in my never-ending To Do list
• There was the annual badminton competition – Mark & I were knocked out at exactly the same point as last year, so still no medals for us
• Most of Sunday was taken up with moving my stuff from one (work) laptop to another – most of it went well but my Outhouse configuration wasn’t copied over so I’m still trying to get it to behave the way I like I’ll tolerate
• Monday was Victoria Day, which is a stat day in Canada so we borrowed a friend’s car and headed down to Niagara. A friend’s mum & aunt were over from England so we took them to a few wineries (listed below), on to Niagara Falls (photo) and then had dinner at the Pillar and Post in Niagara-on-the-Lake – we finally made it home just after midnight.
  The wineries tour included:
  • Featherstone – an early start (technically before they opened, but Kerri works with them so that wasn’t a problem); the Topaz was a favourite
  • Stoney Ridge – we joined a tour then sampled a couple of wines before checking out the cheese shop
  • Henry of Pelham – lunch was the first order of business and then a few more samples; I recall the purchase of an expensive bottle but I don’t recall which one
  • Crown Bench – we picked up another bottle of the Hot Ice; the Wild Ginger Ice and one more (I think)
• Tuesday was back to work – it may have been a 4-day week but it felt more like 9 days’ effort!
• Thursday night we had dinner with our English visitors and another friend – we took them to The Nose (Gio Rana’s Really, Really Nice Restaurant) and everyone enjoyed it. Hopefully Kerri will post more details, but basically the food, wine, service & company were great.
• Yesterday I nipped downtown to CompuSmart’s closing down sale and picked up a hard drive enclosure, then went out with Andy in the evening (a pint of Denison’s Weissbier at the Auld Spot then more wheat beer & dinner at Allen’s).
• After watching the race this morning I had a look at my tax assessment – apparently I owe them the (large) amount I calculated but somehow Kerri’s rebate is a lot less than I thought. Hmmm
  Other fun activities today include a huge pile of washing, an equally large pile of dishes, and then some reading for work. Hopefully I’ll get time to make progress with Black (gun porn on the Xbox).

We returned to the Beer Bistro last night – we were there only a few days ago (see post) but that was for Winterlicious whereas this was for Valentine’s Day. (Yes, it was a day early but that was because Kerri had a girls’ night planned and I had badminton.) Read more »

I don’t remember where I found the link (probably a LiveJournal Friends’ entry) but this is funny – it’s a beer advert on YouTube (for Carlton Draught from Australia) called “Flashbeer”