I’ve always known this existed somewhere out there, but at every turn – primarily those leading into liquor stores – I have been confounded by empty shelves or a curious lack of availability. This is not to say it is rare for me to be confounded by other types of turns, but for the most part such incidents are related more to marijuana than alcohol.

I digress. Having finally acquired it, I am mildly impressed with myself for bringing you the third member of the Tree Brewing Trinity.

Actually, having opted to do a little research for once, I’ve determined that Tree Brewing typically has around a dozen varieties in existence at any one time. Fuck it.

This poured with a slightly thick foam, which melted away like lacy, stinky snow. The scent suggest hops, which should not be any surprise to anyone who knows anything about beer, along with very mild nutty and floral elements. The flavour is kind of bitter and a little metallic, with a bittersweet finish – much like my many woefully unrealized fantasies of romance.

Now that I’m sufficiently depressed, I feel no shame consuming at least three more of these in rapid succession before shitting my pants and crying myself to sleep. Fuck you, assholes. Fuck you very much.

"What do you mean nobody thinks it's funny anymore?" I screamed, slamming the door to my corner office. "Just what the fuck do you mean, Jameson?" I briefly pretended to admire the exquisite ocean view out of my full-length windows, but in truth it had become a stale and depressing allowance many years prior. The intern, whom I had briefly forgotten, stammered for a second before my drunken rage exploded yet again. "Everybody loves a lonely, depressed drunk, you son of a bitch! Every person who has ever tried to tell me different..." I lower my voice and linger on the last word for impact as Jameson squirms. "Ended up in several different dumpsters along Main street." The intern gulps comically - or at least, I find it comical. "Are we clear?"

I don’t even know what to say. I bought this with the specific intent of reviewing it, and I knew it would be fucking terrible.

There’s just nothing new about these cheap, shitty Canadian beers. I admit that it’s somehow more bland than most Molson products, but the Big M is so mediocre that it makes absolutely no difference.

This smells like yeasty urine. Surprised? Me neither. Owing to its shittiness, I did not bother to pour it into a glass; I presume the head would be pale, thin and possibly nonexistent. The flavour, at first, appears to be plain tap water, but suddenly yields to a vicious sourness and the slight tingle of insufficient carbon bubbles. Disgusting is a word; I shall apply it now in describing the disappointment I have in this brew.

This is the end. Honestly. This review is over. Here’s a picture.

Totally fucking genuine, because Labatt told me so.

One shitty day,

When the lights were all out,

I felt kinda gay,

So I went for a spout.

But lo -

The pubs were all closed,

The doors barred with two-by-fours,

Chewing gum and old clothes.

I despaired for cheap Gin, my old comrade in arms!

I cried for sweet Vodka, and her most wily charms!

I tried really hard to rhyme the next part

But didn’t pull it off very well at all

Then, beneath a pale, smokey moon,

I discovered the lights of an offsales saloon.

I smashed open the door with a sledge

Then I jumped over an artificial hedge

I tripped on a winerack,

Which came tumbling down,

I slipped on a thumbtack

And slid away silent, into the depths of the cooler.

Lo and behold, a shining idol lay here:

A sampler six pack, full of Christmas Cheer sweet, delicious beer!

And that’s an overelaborate retelling of how I found booze for tonight. Now strap your rubber dick on and get ready for another grueling attempt to be anything but sober.

Mill Street is an Ontario-based brewery, a wee babe with a founding date at the close of 2002. To put it into perspective, this is the only beer I’ve reviewed that wasn’t produced by a company decades older than me. I did, however, have a gluttonously inappropriate relationship with a two-litre bottle of botched home-made stout. It ended drunkenly, in a tumult.

I received one bottle each of six different flavours – Tankhouse Ale, Lemon Tea Beer, Stock Ale, Belgian Wit, Pilsner and Organic Lager. I’m probably gonna drink them in order, so as not to confuse you. Or myself.

The Tankhouse pours a rich copper brown, with thickish brown foam. It has a slightly nutty scent, reflected in the flavour. It’s only a little bitter, with a sour aftertaste. I hated this when I first tried it, but it was on tap and I suspect I received a suboptimal pint. Like pretty much any ale, this is a nice winter beer for those nights you just want to fall asleep beside a roaring fire in your living room, using various rocking chairs and hutches as kindling while the house provides the main fuel reserve.

The Lemon Tea pours almost completely opaque, proving itself as a wheat beer – though it has a somewhat thin foam. It smells like lemon, which is hugely surprising considering its name; however, there are undertones of muddled, orangey citrus. The taste is pretty much the same, but a bit watery. It was okay I guess.

On to the Stock Ale, which comes out of the bottle like a golden shower. The foam is as thin as the bubbles on top of my piss. It smells like Marmite and slightly overripe fruit, with a taste to match. If you don’t know what Marmite is, find out. No, I’m not linking you – you lazy fucking cock. Ever heard of google?

This beer was just kind of watery and plain. Nothing to write home about, not that I write home ever. Do I come off as the responsible type? I fucking hope not.

Predictably, the Belgian Wit is a wheat beer. At this juncture, I wish to announce that ‘coriander’ was misspelled on the bottle; regrettably I would have to purchase another case to determine whether this atrocity was committed as an accident of stupidity or laziness.

The Wit is orange-yellow and looked cloudy like sperm in a glass of water, which initially worried me. I fucked up the pour, so the foam was pretty much nonexistent. I theorize that it would have been thick and glorious. The coriander smell in this beer is actually very strong, and it has the expected citrus undertones of a wheat beer. The taste, as is common, lends itself to the smell. Or vis versa. Or whatever. Fuck it. I would drink this again, as it has a pleasant spicyness that I find particularly appealing in all of my favourite wheats.

The Pils is the darkest I have ever poured, looking almost like a light ale. The transparency, however, is in line with lager/pils. It even smells slightly nutty, with a honeyed sweetness. I would claim this to be a misbottled beer, but it looks and tastes nothing like the other Mill Street ale. I’m a little confused. It tastes like it smells, the nuttiness overtaking the sweetness, and overall I don’t understand how this beer was classified. It doesn’t make any fucking sense, but then again I might just be too drunk to know anything.

The Organic is a lager. It is very pale, and smells like lager. Watery lager. It also tastes like watery lager. Beginning to see a pattern? Me neither.

Seriously, a huge letdown. Usually this ‘organic’ bullshit is rife with fruitiness and strong artificial flavours to make org-whores think they’re better than other beer drinkers because they’re ethical, or they spent more money, or something like that. I don’t give a God-damned fuck. I can taste a little fruit in it, and I guess it’s fine, but if I had a decent range of choices I would not particularly want to induce a coma with this beer.

So that makes this review about half-and-half for Mill Street. Which I guess is good, considering how poorly I treat most of my beers.

Don’t have a Merry Christmas. It’s all corporate manipulation; Christianity and Christmas were invented to make sure you meet your highly confidential consumption quota. The World Controllers are watching you, especially at this infamous time of year, so I implore you to keep up your pretenses of having fun and actually wanting to spend indecent amounts of money on your brattish shithead kids. Don’t let them know – the horrors of the real world are too much for such feeble minds.

To join the resistance, find the darkness within the dream of the light of the path of manyfold eight-times bitten Spiderman clone babies. It is the key.

Fuck Christmas! For the revolution!

The brew with the hot bitch on the can!

An old standby for anyone with a drinking problem, this used to be one of my favourite beers. In terms of taste, to be fair, it still would be – but the hot bitches lately have sucked, and the new can design is almost as lame as the Kokanee reboot. Of course, Kokanee was pretty lame already after that fucking Ranger asshole showed up. Advertising for beer makes me want to mandate post-natal abortions for everyone. And I mean everyone. Liquor commercials, on the other hand, usually make me feel like a lonely miser with awkward fashion sense and effeminate mannerisms.

If I kill myself, isn’t that kind of like the universal abortion plan? I mean, in either case, I don’t have to see any of you shitheads again. Frankly, a solid hanging would be a lot quicker and easier than the alternative. I’ll have to contemplate this deeply in an attempt to elicit sympathy from promiscuous women.

Old Mil pours a remarkably urine-like yellow, with the usual shitty thin head that budget beer has. Honestly, it just smells like… bread and water and… vomit? Whatever.

It isn’t watery in flavour, which is a nice change. The bready quality is pretty dominant, and a strange peppery aftertaste is present. I just noticed a whiff of paint thinner, and I’m a little concerned.

What else do I usually say about beer? I loaded this shit into my Power Goblet and I’m beginning to forget the days of the week.

Well. Fuck it.

The way Old Mil is supposed to look.

Moosehead touts itself as the ‘oldest independent brewery in Canada’. Technically I believe this is a falsity, as I’m sure there are a handful of woefully failed companies most assholes have never even heard of. Also, Molson predates Moosehead’s founding predecessor by about a century; though Molson is no longer Canadian-owned, it is older.

Regardless, Moosehead is union-made in New Brunswick – which leads me to believe that consumers only receive about 50-60 percent of the gross product. The rest is listed on a tattered, coffee-stained sheet in a foreman’s office somewhere, with an illegible signature scrawled over the words ‘ daily staff party’.

For a beverage that could easily be named for a grossly homosexual blowjob technique, Moosehead is surprisingly good. In fact, it’s probably one of my favourite beers for the fact that it reminds me of home while also not making me throw up.

It smells fucking awful, in a way that gives me a semi.  It’s a bit like a kitchen sink full of fairly clean dishes, with an undertone of red licorice and stale, warm Molson. It may interest you to know that my own kitchen presently smells a lot like this. It’s medium gold in colour, and pours with a very thin foam.

The taste is sweet-sour-bitter, with just a hint of water. The aftertaste is the same, with a bit more sour. Overall, Moosehead holds no surprises and tastes like bubbly pee – much like everything else I’ve ever had. In spite of this, I wish to reiterate that I fucking love Moosehead and I would gladly drink it out of someone’s asshole just for a sip.

Only that would be really gay, so I guess I’m torn.

I guess I could just stick the bottle in someone's ass, and then drink it without, y'know, touching them. Would that be gay?

I have spent so many hazy hours sitting at the bar at the brewery on Granville Island. This is where they churn out their seasonal features, or so I am told. To be honest, those features are usually the most worthwhile products available from the company. I will admit a fondness for all of the brew, however, mainly because it’s decent mid-range beer at a low price. Good enough to share, and cheap enough to drink alone.

Today I’ll be going over the four varieties provided for me in a sampler dozen. As before, I will be finishing all of each variety before moving on to the next, and consequently the odds of you getting all offended and pussying out will rise steadily until the abrupt conclusion.

Random Pick the First: English Bay Pale Ale

My first pale ale poured with absolutely no head. This does not usually start happening until I’ve had most of the case, which makes me slightly concerned. In any case, I’ll get back to this towards the end of my appraisal.

The smell is sweet, like slightly burnt brown sugar, along with something that smells just a little chocolaty. The taste bears the expected sweetness, but also has a weird soapy quality. As a pale ale, this seems like it should be a lot more bitter – especially in the aftetaste, which is pretty much absent by comparison with every other pale I’ve had. Fine overall, but not really what I expected. Drinkable, yet mildly disappointing.

So uh, all of the pales poured pretty much the same way. So did the first of my next pick, the Cypress Honey Lager.

This whole beer is blatantly self-evident in every way. It smells like lager… with honey. It tastes like lager… with honey. The sweetness is nice, and doesn’t stick to your mouth in that gross way that some beer does. Overall, the flavour is in line with darker lagers, with a deep gold colour to match. Once again, little aftertaste to speak of. Just a bit sour.

All the honey lager poured badly too. I would say it’s my fault, but… that’s impossible. I’m too awesome, and we’re talking a failure rate in the range of one hundred percent, here. It can’t be me – no fucking way.

Moving on to the Brockton India Pale Ale…

Again, no foam. I don’t fucking get it.

It’s a kind of cloudy gold colour, quite dark. It smells like pungent bitterness with odd citrus notes. My first sip of this beer was pure bitter. Eventually, I picked out a slight, sour lemon flavour, especially strong in the aftertaste. It’s kind of like biting into a lemon seed, actually. If you haven’t done that, I guess you’re just better than me. Asshole.

For the sake of consistency, no foam on the next two IPAs either. Am I fucking high or something?

Oh wait. Probably. Silly me.

We’ve finally arrived at the Island Lager, and none too soon. I have to take a shit of cosmic proportions, but I swore an oath that I’d finish this fucking article before moving from this spot.

Except to get beer, I guess, so… nevermind.

It’s pretty light, but not watery-looking. It tastes like cat-piss lager, but it doesn’t smell like anything. At all. I might just be wasted, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s a little bit sweet, but not really. Mostly it just tastes like water and bubbles with planty shit fermented in it for countless eons. It may surprise you to know that this is exactly what beer is, so I guess that makes sense.

Remember that shit I was talking about? The ultra-log lodged in my rectum like so much penis? I’m gonna go take it for a swim, followed by a thousand-point reversal to vomit.

Remember kids – we’re all going to hell, so have as much sex as possible before you’re horribly maimed by a pack of angry bulldogs. After that, you probably won’t be able to do anything especially fun; you have many options, but personally I would choose to fucking die. It’s not like I’d ever have an erection again, with dreams of rabid canines haunting my sleeping hours and crushing depression wracking me when I wake. Mutilation is not usually a turn-on.

Here’s a picture of some beer, so you’ll know how to drown the sorrow until you make up your mind.

What kind of gay name is 'The Mingler'? It sounds like a cross between a serial killer and a homosexual.

Today I had the wonderful pleasure of trying a glass of the finest brew I have ever tasted. It is also the rarest, or so I am told. In fact, the pint I consumed I am also told required the blood of a thousand unfortunate poverty-stricken third world children to be brought to my table last night. Why, I don’t fucking care. Because it was good beer. And I am now being told that it was actually the run-off of a massive horse dick in my backyard. Why do I listen to leprechauns?

Before you get all “Oh my God Spatula is reviewing an oriental beer he’s so sexy”, the Kirin produced for consumption in Canada is made by US company Anheuser-Busch. That’s right, the guys responsible for Budweiser. The label assures me that this travesty is committed under the ‘strict supervision’ of Kirin Brewery. Because I’m a rube, I believe this makes any fucking difference. Also I am being sarcastic.

Now that all the highbrow douchebags have left the room…

Kirin smells like sweetened cat piss. I mean that in a good way, given that I was raised on the tit-milk of Molson-produced shit. It’s highly translucent, bright gold in colour, and has particularly thin foam. If you’ve ever consumed one of the three varieties of pseudo-Japanese beers available here, you’ll know this describes all of them. Admittedly, Kirin’s colour is slightly darker than Asahi or Sapporo.

The taste is refreshingly plain; the sweetness in the smell doesn’t really come through, nor does the cat piss, and it comes across with all the unobjectionable qualities of swill beer. Here’s the catch – it doesn’t share the disgusting aftertaste, which is a mild, pleasant bitterness.

Do you like to get fucking trashed? Are you too much of a pussy to buck up and deal with the grossness of swill? Then I guess you should invest an extra two or three dollars per half-dozen to drink Kirin – or any other Japanese beer – and stop fucking complaining so much. In the meantime, I’ll be drinking Old Milwaukee on the porch with my dulcimer and rifle. I’m better than you, and I have more money left over for weed.

Hang on, it’s time for the fountain of sushi. From my belly.

Chinks developed the formula for this shit!

Also here is a Kirin, which is some kind of sweet-ass dragon-horse-flamey-thing from Japan. I hear they really exist, and consume the young of samurai who are too weak to defeat a five-year-old in Pokemon battle.

This .gif and the preceding sentence are here only because I am lazy, and did not feel like spending very much time writing this. Enjoy your daily dose of pointless bullshit, asshole.

I scrounged up one more each of the hef, lager and pale ale. At this point, I got a devilishly drunken idea: Why don’t I mix them together in my P-P-P-POWER GOBLET? The Power Goblet is capable of holding just over a full litre of fluid. Naturally, it has only ever been used for beer. It looks a lot like this:

In fact, this abomination and my own Power Goblet have something in common: Both are vases sold by Ikea.

Understandably, even God is afraid to drink from this sordid cup. I, however, exhibit no such display of pussydom. My analysis of this extremely scientific beverage immediately follows the last word of the following sentence.

For those of you wondering, I poured them in this order: hef, pale, lager. No stirring, no jiggling – nothing.

This was actually amazingly weird. It had the complete citrus smell and flavour of hefeweizen, slightly watered down by the other, less aromatic beers. There’s also a weird sour-bitter-sweet taste that comes through, especially in the aftertaste. It’s engrossingly* thick, unfortunately not in a good way.

Overall, it wasn’t bad. To be entirely fair, I’m already drunk, I couldn’t give a shit how bad this might actually taste to a sober observer, and I fully expect to be retching my non-existent uterus into the toilet within the next twenty minutes.

Farewell, you impotent fuckheads.

The Malevolent Mugs of Self-Defenestration

*spellcheck tells me I made this word up. I’m using it anyway. I’m so fucking proud.

Another BC beer, commonly found in mid-to-high range pubs and restaurants, and available at all but the shittiest liquor stores. Today I’ve acquired three bottles each of four different varieties. Two additional flavours, Black and Porter, are generally less available. I’ve tried both and neither suit my extremely sophisticated palate, though the Black is a decently average specimen of stout to be perfectly fair and honest. I think porter in general is disgusting, and if you like it you’re probably a huge snobbish dick and I hate you.

Anyway.

Since it’s the first one to topple out of my badly-stacked refrigerator…

The hefeweizen has a fairly present citrus flavour, sort of a cross between orange and grapefruit; it’s also quite noticeable in the smell. The cloudiness expected in a filtered wheat beer dissipated rather quickly, and the foam was unusually thin compared to many of the others I’ve tried. The aftertaste is mild, indistinct and slightly bitter. Overall, it has the rudimentary qualities of a hef but falls short of comparison to more robust European versions.

The pale ale came out a moderately dark copper-brown, with fairly thick foam and rapidly dissipating bubbles. It was slightly nutty, but mostly just bitter. I am aware that I made claims that concepts like ‘mouthfeel’ were too homosexual for these reviews, but in this case it seems obligatory to mention that this beer feels thick. It has a typical bitter-sweet aftertaste, with a mild and not-unpleasant sourness permeating the entire drinking experience.

It is at this juncture that I come to a dark realization: My obsession with doing everything in some kind of order led me to drink all the hefeweizen first, and this means I have to drink all of each beer I review before moving on to the next. Consequently, this could get messy. I do not apologize for ensuing offensiveness and leakage of bodily fluids. I’ll be back when the rest of the pale ale is gone.

Oh, and I should probably warn you that I have another multi-brew review in the tubes. Get used to this kind of bullshit, or I’ll find you and tear your eyes out.

Given my readership I’m actually starting to think that intimidation tactics were a bad choice, but I’m committed now. Onwards, to indolent misadventure…

My third blind selection is 1516, named for the year in which the purity law was decreed. It’s classified as a Bavarian-style lager, most of which I’ve found to be a bit lighter in colour and taste than the majority of other European lagers. The stereotype holds true here. Surprisingly, the beer lacks any especially distinctive smell where I was expecting the usual musky cat-pee scent of Canadian light brews. The slightest hint of sweetness comes through, but I might just have the brain cancer or something.

The taste is watery, more so than I would have expected. It’s very slightly sweet, and oddly enough has a thick texture similar to the pale ale. It’s also quite lightly carbonated, which makes me think this batch may just be slightly off. It’s hard to tell, especially when dealing with a ‘sampler pack’ that could easily be made up of forgotten rejects and the remains of broken lots. Those capitalist bastards.

For the record, I don’t actually know if they make sampler packs out of rejects. I kinda said that for effect without having anything to back it up.

Honestly it isn’t bad; nothing I couldn’t pound back all fucking day, but not something I would spend money on when I can get high-alcohol budget beer like Pabst and Iron Horse for two thirds of the price. My implied lack of taste might be why these reviews are so fucking shitty.

Well, that and the fact that my blood alcohol level is probably higher than what I’m drinking at this point. Now, for the final variety of beer in this accursed variety pack…

The lager (more like LOL-ger). This pours  a bit darker than the 1516, but is otherwise pretty similar. The texture is a little thick which, again, is a surprise. It also smells more of the musk that I anticipated. The flavour seems to be essentially the same as the previous beer, without the wateriness. As such, the lager amounts to a concentrated version of 1516. The aftertaste is an enjoyable sweetness that segues into mild bitterness.

I have two more bottles of this to annihilate, and I won’t lie: I don’t have the slightest interest in spending that time writing more filler for you to read. Here’s a stolen picture of all the Okanagan Spring products. Now get the fuck out of here.

If you have a problem with me stealing pictures, you can suck my dick. Seriously. I’m down with that. If you’re smart, my phone number is encrypted in the names of the beers in this picture. I look forward to your call, you sexy little whore.

These assholes are like the six musketeers who make you forget what you did last night.