Beer

I have been meaning to write a post on this for months. There have been a few references to beer throughout the life of this blog, but it really deserves its own post.

I’ve never been a huge drinker. I’ve never liked being drunk, and being on the smaller side of life, my tolerance to alcohol isn’t particularly high, which makes me a very cheap date. However, I am a complete, unabashed beer snob.

My love of beer started very young when my father used to pour me a bit of his Molson Export into a plastic Tupperware tumbler for me when I was little. Around age 5, if possibly not younger. My love of good beer started when I was about 17 when I discovered the early days of “craft” brewing in the form of Upper Canada Rebellion. (My geeky love of Canadian history had nothing to do with its appeal.)

Yes, I know it's lager. I come from a lager drinking country and had to start somewhere!

This beer is known as "Sex in a Glass" in some circles

After that discovery, no mass market Canadian beer ever tasted the same.

I’ve never been able to drink wine as I’m allergic to grapes (yes, seriously!). Spirits have never liked me. I've still not developed a taste for cider or perry. So beer it has always been. As other cooks cook with wine, I cook with beer. Very well, might I add. I make killer Chocolate Porter Cake (I'll post that recipe sometime), never mind what I can do with a bottle of best bitter, a slow cooker and Bambi, I mean, venison.

When asked by Brits why I moved here, one of my frequent responses is that I moved here for the beer. The discovery of Upper Canada Rebellion eventually lead to the discovery of proper English Ale. The handful of bars in Toronto that served Bass on tap became favourite haunts. My first trip to the UK as an adult in 2001 led me to discover proper English, cask-conditioned porter.

That sealed the deal, I had to move to the land of warm, flat beer served from a hand pump.

After I moved to the UK, a friend suggested that because I enjoy beer, I should join CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), as it would be a good way to meet people. It certainly did a good job of introducing me to some ‘interesting’ people. For the most part, I mean ‘interesting’ in the best possible way, although I will never understand the Morris dancers among them.


CAMRA has introduced me to a lot of things, in particular different styles of beer like Milds, which became firm favourites. It also made me a lot more aware of the “politics” of the pub and alcohol industries, like how some landlords at pubs are pretty much disadvantaged to the point of personal bankruptcy by the pubco overlords who they lease their premises from. It also introduced me to a volunteer career of being a “bar wench” at beer festivals. A British beer festival is truly fun experience and a chance to try lots of different beers. And despite the reputation of the British as being unruly drunks, people at beer festivals are generally a very merry and well-behaved lot.

On the upside, my cleavage is beginning to look like this again!

What finally got me writing this post was a call from a mate from my local CAMRA branch this week wondering why I haven’t been around for so long. The truth is, Crohn’s has stood between me and beer since last summer.

No, I'm not pouting . . .

 I started getting sick about this time last year. Not really sick, but my tummy was not happy. When I started getting really sick was after a beer festival last July. I hadn’t had much to drink, only two 1/3 pint glasses of ale. With food. But it was very hot and sunny, with no shade at the venue and I hadn’t brought a hat. I started feeling like I had heatstroke, so I left early. And then I was very very sick. And I’ve never been sick from alcohol. Whether it was genuine heatstroke, food poisoning, bad hygiene at the bar (all it takes is one volunteer who doesn’t use the liberal quantities of hand-sanitiser provided), or was just the start of that massive flare will probably never be determined, but I was never the same again.

After that, it just seemed sensible to get alcohol out of my diet for the next little while. And by the time I was under the care of a consultant and saw the results of my liver function tests in December, it was a damn good thing I did. That 'little while' ended up being 10 months of being completely tea-total.

As much as I love good beer, I found it much easier to give that up than to give up dairy when that stopped going down a few weeks later. Beer and cheese are a wonderful combination, but faced with a choice between the two, I will always take cheese. I don’t need alcohol to have a good time. I like it, but I don’t need it. I made the mistake once of drinking alcohol while on a short course of Prednisolone for asthma and swore I would never do it again because it made me feel so awful.

But I will admit that after a while, not drinking became emotionally difficult. I don’t mean that how it probably sounds, it’s not that I’m in anyway emotionally dependant on alcohol. But seeing my beer stash in the cupboard under the stairs every time I opened that door just reminded me of how awful I was feeling and how I couldn’t eat or drink what I wanted anymore. A friend promised me a bottle of Orkney Brewery Dark Island Reserve (one of the best beers I have ever tasted) for Christmas, and I had to tell him not to bring it when he visited because I just didn’t want it in the house. I couldn't handle going into pubs anymore because the smell of beer and knowing that I couldn’t have any just made me depressed. It was just a constant reminder of the many things (and more to come) that I had lost. I knew it was really bad when I was at a gig in February at the cheap crap lager they served at the venue started to smell good. It was just depressing.

As beer drinking is generally a social activity, and going to the pub is a favoured social venue, this not only impacted my emotional life, but also my social life. I stopped going to CAMRA meetings because they are always held in pubs. And more than once, during the darkest days of the past six months, my tear-stained cry was, “And I can’t even have a fucking drink!!!!”

At the end of January, I got so fed up with that constant reminder in the cupboard under the stairs that I gathered up all of my beer collection in a box and put it in the downstairs toilet which I use as a storage room (Crohn’s aside, I live alone and I really don’t need two toilets. Or at least, I don’t want to clean two toilets regularly). That’s also where a stashed a bunch of non-perishable food I couldn't eat at the time. That room became known as the “Cupboard of Banishment”. As the recycling bins are piled up next to the door, I almost never go in there (other than to clean occasionally), so I could ignore its presence. Both an act of desperation and of self-preservation.

The contents of the Cupboard of Banishment

Other than having a look at best before dates when I was in there cleaning at the end of March (some of it was about to go off, so it was taken to very appreciative friends who have been brilliant through all of this), I haven’t looked at my beer since. I know it’s there, but I try to ignore it (and try to forget that I have not one, but two, bottles of Traquair House Ale in there).

Last month, I did have my first foray back into beer. I had been off the Prednisolone for several weeks and my liver function tests were back to normal, and the registrar I had at my last hospital appointment with okay'd it after giving me a lecture about limits (he clearly didn't know who he was talking to). My first beer back was a half a pint of XT Pi, a lovely mild, at my favourite pub.

Oh, how I missed beer! It went down okay, but my tummy wasn’t not overly happy about it afterwards. I’ve had a few other halves since (three in total, all on separate occasions, life of rock n’ roll, me!), with mixed results on my stomach. Alcohol and Crohn’s don’t generally mix well.


The future of me and beer is pretty uncertain at this point. Between all of this and the constant fatigue, I had to tell my CAMRA mate that I am still pretty questionable for helping out at the branch beer festival in a few weeks. I suspect my days as a bar wench are becoming numbered. And I should pass on the contents of the Cupboard of Banishment to fellow beer lovers. Although possibly not those bottles of Traquair . . .