Given that last weekend contained the American Independence Day, most US citizens had either Friday or Monday off from work. The Dude is one such citizen, and decided to celebrate by leaving the United States for the weekend to visit Phoenix’s sister city in our neighbor to the North – Calgary! After a grueling 27 hour drive from Phoenix (long story), Beersurfing made it to Calgary, Canada, to check out the local beer scene and get away for a much needed vacation. Naturally, the first order of business was to find a local pub, find a local beer, and tell all of you about it!
On the list for Night #1 was The Point and Feather Neighborhood Pub, which is the perfect crawling distance from where I was staying for the first couple of days. After walking in, I was hit with a calm and decidedly local atmosphere. For some reason, all of the waitresses were wearing cowboy hats, a fact that was confusing at first but cleared up when I discovered I arrived just in time for Calgary’s annual Stampede. Anyways, as I was very tired after the drive, I limited myself to food and a single pint of beer. A couple of the locals suggested Rickard’s White Ale, a wheat ale which almost passes as a hefeveisen in these parts. Since it didn’t appear to actually BE a hefeveisen, I questioned why our lovely waitress had tossed in a slice of orange, which I almost always remove from my beers. Without the orange, the beer tasted quite stale and was nothing to write home about. However, the orange juice really added to the flavor of the beer… ok, it changed it dramatically, for the better. I nearly ordered another, but sensibility got the best of me after I was reminded how unbelievably tired I was after the aforementioned drive. The price was right though (about CAD$5 for a pint), and I noted it as one of the first fine beers that I had the honor of sampling in Calgary.
After sleeping for a long and relaxing 12 hours, I headed out with my travelling buddies and one of their local friends to Brewster’s Brewing Company in the southwest district of Calgary. The overall ambiance of Brewster’s was nice and quiet, but ornate. Wooden tables filled the room and the staff was very friendly. Quickly realizing that one beer per pub would not make this already great trip awesome enough, I ordered a sampler tray of 5 seemingly random Canadian beers:
- Hammerhead Red Ale – a VERY tasty beer! Not strong, kind of bitter, but loaded with flavor. This one was my favorite.
- Bow Valley Brown Ale – a chocolate stout. I’m not a big fan of stout, though this one was pretty good as far as they go. This one was best downed quickly to move on to other tasty treasures.
- Gunther’s Hefeveisen – Bananas! Cloves! It’s… a hefeveisen! Not awful, but I’ve definitely had better
- Flying Frog – I don’t remember much about this one, other than it was tasty. It sure didn’t taste like a flying frog
- Wild West Wheat Ale – this tasted like the many “white” beers I had in Canada, and was par for the course as far as white’s go. Much like the Rickard’s I had the night prior, it was dull at worst and stale at best, even with the fruit tossed into the mix.
My one regret on this trip was that I did not find more Hammerhead Red, which also had the added bonus of being cheap on this particular outing. Paying homage to the beer gods, I ordered another pint and enjoyed it, slowly and tastily. Mmmmmm, Hammerhead. A++, would drink again!
After our outing at Brewster’s, we went off to find a local beverage store to sample more of Canada’s finest beers privately, in the comfort of one’s basement. We quickly located Willow Park, which may as well have been a candy store for beer drinkers. Here, I was presented with the many beers of Canada (though by no means the finest) in one single aisle of the store. I admit, Willow was far prouder of its wine selection than its beer, but I was still impressed. Here, I picked up a Sleeman Brewery‘s variety pack of beers. On this night, I was only privy to one flavor of this pack – Sleeman’s Cream Ale – which was fairly tasty and anything but creamy. The basement outing was cut fairly short, and we spent the rest of the day exploring one of Alberta’s provincial parks outside of Calgary.
Other than that, the night was pretty quiet. We stopped at a party later on and were provided with a can (eww) of Big Rock Brewery‘s Big Rock Lime Lager. I won’t sugarcoat this one – it tasted worse than Bud Light with Lime, and tasted marginally better after we added actual lime juice. I’m convinced there was more alcohol in the lime juice.
So far, I was enjoying the atmosphere of Calgary more than the beer itself – not only was everybody much happier, it was NICE outside! Clouds! Wind! Rain! Cool air! All things that Phoenix lacked! I checked the weather – by the time I went to sleep at 1AM, it was still 100+ degrees (F) in Phoenix. Despite missing out on the American 4th of July, I was having a good time. I even saw some fireworks (although, admittedly, the blue was missing from the otherwise red and white Canadian light show. When in Rome…). In our next series, we take a brief one day hiatus to explore nature, and I get a memorable send-off from a Canadian-Irish pub.
