Craft Beer, or, The Tale of a Tub

I often like to say that beer is more than just a drink. It's a drink with alcohol. It's more than just a drink with alcohol, though; it's a way of life. Alcoholism, I supposed you'd call it. The art and science of crafting a good brew takes more than just the right equipment, the skills, the years of experimentation and the necessary latent depressive family issues. It takes vision. What kind of vision? Blurry, colourful, and shimmering gold. With bubbles. Think I'm joking? Just ask a master craftsman like myself. 

"Hey Master C, what makes a great beer?"

"The genesis of a great beer takes blood, sweat, tears, some hops, barley, and if you've got any water that helps a little too. Flavour is kind of a big deal. Fermenting starts with the heart. It ends with the kidneys. In between, there are a lot of different byways. Aim for the good bits."

-Me

The following brews have made my list  of "Best Overall Beer I Drank in the Last 6 Hours". Give them a try, I promise they will offer you a world of beer.

-Master Craftsbrewman Hortense McBreakfast

2nd Amendment Sold on Pride 1776: Beyond just a local beer, beyond just a microbrew, 2nd Amendment is what is known as a "conspiro-brew", that is, brewed by a furtive cadre of forest brethren who have sworn to keep its secret to their twig-riddled deathbeds. It is so exclusive that the recipe is known in its entirety to only one single man and three goats. As for the taste, it's gamey, tough, and full of local pride and goat feed.

Shorinji Egg Beer: Some say it is impossible to make beer out of eggs. Luckily, the Japanese have always had a far keener understanding of the matter at hand, namely, that "impossibility" is NOT the same thing as just "really, really gross". It has long been known that the Japanese have more than our 5 traditional flavours. This beer is brewed to titillate the 9th flavour, GANGURO, the taste of pickled sea-urchins and pocky. This beer is salty, yolky, and a surprisingly smooth breakfast sausage condiment.

BUMP: The party beer par excellence. BUMP is smooth, crisp, medicinal, and has an excellent bouquet when sniffed in a red plastic cup or spurted out of a hose onto white t-shirts. Get your party bumpin' with the party beer called BUMP.

Napoleon Brandy Beer: A crisp, fritter-like yeast beer that models itself on a brandy stew served to Marshal Ney the night before the Battle of Waterloo. Traditional ingredients are attempted and their flavours coaxed out by means of a long gargling process practiced by Napoleon's Hussars and their horses. The yeast in this case is the least of your concerns.

Gangrene Faggot Nigger Ale: You've heard the phrase "don't judge a book by it's cover?" The trend these days seems to be to give a slightly ironic name to well-crafted drinks, such as "Sibling Rivalry", "Fat Bastard", "Hobgoblin" etc. This particular ale outdoes them all with a hint of the old south and just the slightest dash of septicemia.

Beer Ball Putsch Special '22: Brewed in accordance with German purity laws, this beer contains only hops, barley, and a traceable family tree with no discernible Semitic miscegenation.

Victoria's: A mild beer mixed with fruit juice for the girly girl in your life. Guaranteed to taste like unicorn saliva. Victoria's comes in a juice-box + promotional bendy straw.

Barnaby 128: This "value-priced" lager (sold at its name sake for a buck twenty-eight) comes from nowhere, goes nowhere, and lives in the lowest depths of the 2x4 grotto. The preferred beer of the homeless guy who sits outside of the beer store, this beer will give you so much value you'll wonder how they ever crammed it in a bottle.

Sports Beer: Trying to avoid paying high premiums on brand name beers, many sporting facilities have taken up with the "Sports Beer" movement, a loose conglomerate of anonymous beer manufacturers who sell cheap and brew cheaper. Despite the low quality of the ingredients, the taste, the bottle materials and the question of zamboni-related contaminants, Sports Beer offers a surprising effect when emptied into a bathtub or sipped through the horn of a Vuvuzela.

Offenboschsauerbenuzfgght: The ancient monastery of Offenboschsauerbenuzfgght, located in the Offenboschsauerbenuzfgght valley beneath the Tuchushoffenboschsauerbenuzfgght mountain range of Boschsauer-On-The-Booger is famed the world over for its traditional "Tuchus Beer". The beer is hand-brewed by a special sect of Trappist Monks who have all taken a vow of incontinence.

Andy Warhol's Glasses: This beer is clearly designed to swoop up the market from Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you've long enjoyed PBR and are looking to sip something a little different as you drive your big wheelie down the park with a copy of The Marriage Plot in hand and a single birkenstock dangling from your neon coloured toenails, this is brew for you.