IPA makes me h[o]ppy

Yesterday, I had noted that its been a very long time since I’ve enjoyed Amsterdam Brewery of Toronto’s craft beer “Boneshaker IPA” and at dinner, I made that statement past tense.

Found my Boneshaker IPA on the trendy Toronto street of Queen West. “Loka” specializes in pork of a Canadian style cuisine and also is good at making me smile.

Charcuterie pairs amazingly well with the hoppy character of Boneshaker… back before I was into beer, pairing stronger beers with food was a great gateway to learning about beer as my palette gained experience and my taste buds blossomed. Still there is much for me to learn, but the past year has been quite the adventure in the land of craft beer. By the end of the summer I could tap a keg in the dark, talk about different varietals and tasting profiles. Starting to dabble in home brewing to better understand How It’s Made is an enjoyable hobby, although admittedly I am about to dump my first batch of ipa called hIPAster ipa as a result of being more arty than sciencey.

My socks are also big fans of hops: 

Another delicious place in the area of Bathurst/QueenWest that I’m working an event is Mean Bao that specializes in steam buns with nuts, carrots, raddish, cilantro, love and good stuff. As a student at ocad years ago, I enjoyed their tofu mushroom Bao at the Grange location, and I can say it still tastes fantastic. The bright citra esque of Detour sessionIPA were a winning combo with the… just look at the picture below.. sometimes words just aren’t as good as a picture: sidenote: Detour + oysters + summer = also absolutely phenomenal… I cannot say if they work well in the winter too.

When spring weather happens, I usually start “dry crisp chardonnay” hunting. And for reasons beyond my knowledge, those days usually turned to nights featuring Boneshaker IPA on draft at a bar. Once after a friend’s departing-Toronto party where multiple Boneshaker IPA were imbibed after chardonnay, I fell asleep on the toilet. Not sure how long asleep on ‘the can’ in the wee hours of the morning, but I wasn’t wearing any clothes so swiftly jumped back to life upon hearing someone else stirring and ran quickly to my room, hopefully undetected by any of my housemates. The next day was a heat wave that smoothly passed by without too much sweat (probably because i was extremely dehydrated from endulging in fermented delights) under a tree with good friends and amped up with shark-wizard sweater-broom beer from Bellwoods Brewery (also an IPA) next stop on the nostalgia train, Bellwoods. Been long over due for that brewery.