After our last post from Calgary,  Beersurfing took a day off to go climbing in the Canadian Rockies. Afterwards, we headed back into Calgary to check out 1600 World Bier Haus, a fabled land of beer that has, as the name might imply, quite a selection to choose from.  1600 is actually the address of the bar, but their selection certainly didn’t disappoint.  I got loaded pretty quickly on two large pints of Erdinger Dunkel, a fine dark beer that tasted like a sweet version of Guinness.  I finished the night off with a Traditional Ale, brewed in Calgary by the Big Rock Brewery.  It wasn’t bad, but didn’t really stand out from the other Canadian beers I tried – sweet, tasty, palatable, but still ordinary.  Calgary, all of your beer tastes the same!  1600 World Bier Haus was a friendly place to find unique beers and I would definitely come here again – the food was superb, strange beer flows like water, live music permeated the room, and best of all, the chicken wings on Sundays were 15 cents a piece!  What more could a Beersurfer want? 1600 World Bier Haus, you made my trip.

I had reserved my final day in Calgary to participate in the shenanigans occurring at the Calgary Stampede, but alas, Calgary got half an inch of rain that day and it was, for all intents and purposes, rained out.  Never fear, though, for this just meant that the drinking moved indoors. My Canadian friends were determined to send me off with a belly full of Canadian beer, so I met up with them at the Seanachie Irish Pub in West Hills. The place was pretty popular – the crowd was standing room only, but we were lucky to walk in and find a table just as it was being cleared.  Fortunately, we weren’t here to relax and chill out – the chicken wings here were 10 cents a piece, and litre schooners of Molson Canadian were something like $5. You read that right – during happy hour, you can get an entire litre of beer (that’s over 2 pints for the non-metric folks) for about CAD$5. Sure, it’s Molson, but where else can you get Molson Canadian straight from the source?  I had two, and felt surprisingly lucid afterwards.  Thank you, newfound Canadian friends, for a proper Beersurfing send-off! I’ll return the favor if you ever find yourselves in Phoenix.

And that’s a wrap for Calgary; the beer was worth the trip, although I’ll defnitely be flying next time.  Alberta, you sure know how to show a beer drinker a good time!