The Anchor Weekly – The Chestermere Lake News

Readers in the audience with an archeological bent may wonder how beer was made before the availability of metal brewing vessels. Students of history will remember that archeologists divide human history into three periods; the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, which we are currently in. Ancient civilizations began the transition from the Stone Age into the Bronze Age starting in approximately 3600BCE, and then into the Iron Age around 1000BCE. Prior to the Bronze Age, civilization was limited to tools made from wood and stone, which meant that beer was brewed in wooden barrels, rather than the steel [...]

When wandering the aisles of a well-stocked wine merchant, the vast diversity of choices can leave even the most seasoned of wine drinkers in a state of worried indecision. Faced with a dinner party to get to, the quick stop at the liquor store can quickly turn befuddling, especially when faced with a thousand different wines that all start looking alike to you. It is at this point that the harried shopper will fall back on something familiar, and in the case of red wine, that familiar bottle will often be a Merlot. Yes, the Merlot grape is the great [...]

Your globetrotting liquor reporter is penning this week’s column from a hip and happening boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan. After flying into NYC for a weekend bachelor party of Dionysian proportions, your humble narrator needed a full week to recover from a single night of debauchery that took us to seedy gin joints and dens of depravity across all five boroughs. And yet, despite what I can only assume was the hammer of Thor himself pounding on my head the morning after, your intrepid liquor reporter somehow found the time to pop into a craft beer pub to sample the [...]

Your intrepid liquor reporter is hopeful that the warmer days of spring have finally arrived, and that Mother Nature is not planning to cruelly unleash the final snowstorm of the season, just as your humble narrator is trying to enjoy a pint out on the patio at the local watering hole. Springtime is a special time of year. A young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of amoré, in no small part because the bulky winter coats start to disappear from the lassies in favour of a more revealing wardrobe. In addition to the baring of pasty sun-deprived flesh, spring is [...]

Faithful readers of this column may recall that North America is experiencing a decade-long surge in the popularity of craft beer, as the unwashed masses throw off the shackles of the tasteless megabrews in search of more flavourful tipples with which to slake their thirst. This fact has not been lost on the oligarchs running the megabreweries, who grew fat and happy off the boozing public suckling from their glass teats with no significant competition. Loving the filthy lucre as they do, some of the megabreweries are venturing out from their bland and inoffensive flavour profiles in hopes of clawing [...]

The Right Honourable Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady herself, shuffled off this mortal coil last week. Readers in the audience that were of school age during the tumultuous decade of the 1980s will remember Margaret Thatcher as the Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher is widely credited with initiating the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the western powers, as well as revitalizing Britain’s moribund economy through union-busting and privatization. What may not have been covered in those middle school Social Studies classes, was that The Right Honourable Baroness enjoyed a [...]

Your globetrotting liquor reporter took a quick trip to California last month, and naturally, my thoughts turned quickly to booze. Flying into San Francisco, I knew it was only a quick trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to reach the vineyards of Sonoma County, with the Napa Valley not much further beyond that. However, the wines of California are well-known the world over, and your humble narrator is always on the lookout for a new and exciting tipple. Branching out from the wine that the golden state is known for, I decided to seek out the legendary California Common Beer. [...]

The eyes of the world were on Vatican City last month, as the big muckety-mucks of the Catholic Church elected a new pope. Your intrepid liquor reporter didn’t pay much attention to all the hullabaloo, but it did get me to thinking on how much beer and pizza got consumed during all those late-night papal votes. As it turns out, there is an official papal conclave beer, brewed by a nearby order of Benedictine monks from the Birra Nursia monastic brewery, which recently started production in a 1000-year old monastery in the town of Norcia. In a country more defined [...]

The month of March always gets your humble narrator pining away for a Märzenbier. For those in the audience that do not speak German, that translates directly to March beer. The history of this beer goes all the way back to the noble Bavarian court in the year 1553, when a royal proclamation declared that beer could only be brewed between the days of Saint Michael and Saint George. That’s September 29 through April 23 for the secular readers in the audience. Worry not, gentle reader, for this was not some sort of attempt at Medieval Prohibition. Rather, the Bavarian [...]

Do you have March 19 marked in your calendar? Your friendly liquor reporter certainly does. The more devout readers in the audience may recognize March 19 as Saint Joseph’s Day, husband to the slightly more famous Virgin Mary. However, your hedonistic liquor reporter has a much more secular explanation for this particular date in the calendar – it is also the traditional day that Bock beers are released! Never heard of a Bock? That’s not too surprising, as the North American palate has never become accustomed to this high-gravity beer with a long and colorful history. The Bock beer style [...]