DRAFT Magazine

By Noah Davis

SF Beer Week kicks off its second annual festival on February 5th. In preparation for the glorious 10-day experience, we caught up with beer writer Jay Brooks who helped found the event last year. He talks to us about his favorite events, using social media to recruit the masses, and why too much choices is a good thing indeed.

What’s your role in SF Beer Week?

I’m one of the founders. It stemmed out of two different ideas. I used to be the GM of the Celebrator beer magazine and we had an event that we ran for six or seven years called Beerapalooza. We had a few events that took place over the same week. Then, some of the folks in San Francisco — most notably Shaun O’Sullivan and Dave McLean — who have strong beer months during the month of February had also looked at events like Philly Beer Week and thought that the format might work well in San Francisco. There were six of us initially last year and reconfigured Beerapalooza as SF Beer Week and made it a new event and made it what it is now.

How much work is it? Is it ever overwhelming?

It’s pretty overwhelming. [Laughs] I think last year, it succeed in spite of ourselves. We paid for all of it ourselves, each of the people who founded it. We didn’t have sponsors the way we do this year. It was hard work.

This year, there are a lot of people working hard still, but because we’ve had some sponsorship money, we’ve been able to develop the Web site in a better way, more streamlined. We were able to have a small paid staff that was responsible for taking care of those things and not just have people try to fit it in wherever they could around their other job. That’s made a big difference I think we’re a little more prepared this year than we were last year.

What’s different this year?

The biggest one is probably that last year, there were a lot of people and breweries who didn’t quite get what we were trying to do ahead of time at least. Now that they saw how successful the first SF Beer Week was, we have a lot more people coming to us and saying, “Hey, I want to be a part of this.” They saw how it went, that it did bring people into the city, and that everyone who put on events had good attendance. Everything worked out kind of the way we expected, which was that you throw a lot of great events and people are helpless not to come.

You have a pretty comprehensive Web presence with a Twitter feed, an iPhone app, and a fun Web site. Can you talk a little bit about the social media aspects of planning Beer Week?

That’s a product of really looking at the importance of social media to events and really bringing in people who are really good at it. Gannett SF is the company we turned to. That’s something we couldn’t afford last year, but this year we could and it was important to have that eye-catching site. I mean hell, we’re in Silicon Valley. If our Web site didn’t look good, we’re doing something wrong.

Are you noticing the social media efforts helping to reach new people?

It’s hard to tell. There certainly are new venues and people who are putting on events that are different from last year. We’re certainly seeing involvement from groups who weren’t involved last year, who took more of a wait and see approach. So yeah, but it’s hard to tell who’s going to attend and whether that’s going to change and grow. We certainly hope so. We’ll see.

You have roughly 20 events per day. How do you suggest people choose what to attend?

I think there are two ways that people can look at that. One is what’s close to them. For people who are in the South Bay, maybe it makes sense to look at what’s there. The second way is what’s most exciting to you. It’s hard to choose. That’s our No. 1 complaint, and that’s a complaint we like to hear: “There’s too much. I can’t decide!” I think that’s great.

The fact that there are overlapping events that lots and lots of people would want to go to speaks well of what we’ve tried to do with our beer week. This is certainly not to pour alcohol on other beer weeks, but something we set out to do was to not have the “Pint Night” sort of events. We didn’t want to have happy hour type of events, but to have all the events that are going on showcase beer in a really good light. There has to be something to it. We have less events than some of the other beer weeks but we think that the quality of all the events really is our goal, and for that I think we are succeeding.

Any events you’re specifically looking forward to?

Lots of things. One of the most fun events I went to last year was a cheese and beer event at the Bistro in Hayward. The cheese event was very different from any one that I’ve ever been to. What they did was they got five different cheeses and five different breweries, and they asked brewery to pick one of their beers to pair with each of the cheeses. Everybody got a lump of cheese and then five small pourings of a beer from each brewery. Basically, you sat down with one cheese and five beers and tried that cheese with each of the five beers trying to decide which one paired best. They tallied that up and at the end — I don’t think there were any losers, but they said which one most people seemed to think worked best with the cheese.

Usually when you do a cheese and beer pairing, it’s one cheese and one beer. This was a way to make it much more fun and educational in so far as you tried a range of beers with the same cheese and you saw what worked and what didn’t work in a much more real-time sort of way that I hadn’t seen before. I’m looking forward to that again.

When you wake up on the morning or the afternoon of February 15th, how will you know SF Beer Week has been a success?

I think it’s the passion of all the people in the Bay Area. Every community has it’s own vibe for its beer scene, and ours is one of people who are really passionate about what they are doing. You see the same people event after event, and we’re all here for the same reasons: It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, it enriches our lives.

– Noah Davis is editor of DRAFTMag.com.

Most of DRAFT’s editorial staffers have been LOST die-hards from day one, so we plan to celebrate the final season’s sure-to-be-epic premiere next week by downing 10 beers that honor the show. Here’s our menu.

Kona Oceanic Organic Ale
Freaky coincidence, or a sign the brewing industry has something to do with the Island’s mysteries? This saison is both brewed in Hawaii (where the series is shot) and named after the parent airline of doomed Flight 815.

Atlanta Brewing Co. Numbers Ale
We’re almost as obsessed with this biscuity, grassy Southern session beer as we are with 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

LeftHand SmokeJumper
We’ll take our smoke in liquid form, thanks; this campfire smoke-laced beer is much more satisfying and certainly less physically painful than the island’s course-correcting smoke monster.

Widmer Hefeweizen
Could Widmer Bros. Brewery be a money-laundering front for Charles Widmore? Nice try, buddy; really creative name-change trick.

Celestial Meads Clarity
Made with raw honey, this delicate, fruity mead represents what we loyal viewers need this season — a clear explanation of the blurry, time-jumping story arc.

Hite Beer
Maybe if we drink the No. 1-selling lager from their homeland of South Korea, Sun and Jin will find a way to transcend their four-decade time rift and be together already.

Naked City Brother Orchid
This new, fruity Belgian ale from Seattle hearkens two of our favorite LOST elements: The Orchid station, site of that crazy frozen donkey wheel, and “Brotha,” the aww-shucks Desmondism.

Boulder Beer Flashback Anniversary Ale
It’s one flashback we won’t get sick of — an intriguing “India brown ale” that’s both citrusy and roasty. Still, we can’t help question the beer’s eerie circumstances: It’s the brewery’s ninth release in its Looking Glass Series (Looking Glass=the underwater station where Charlie met his fate), and it was crafted to celebrate the anniversary of when two university professors decided to start a brewery in the 1970s. What’s next? Are they gonna reveal they were researching the effects of time travel on rats with Faraday?

Firestone Walker Double Jack IPA
The Losties’ fearless leader is suffering from a serious case of dual personalities: The first few seasons of LOST showed us kind-hearted, valiant Dr. Jack, but recently, we’ve seen only boozed-up, pill-popping Jack. So, we’re hoisting this high-alcohol IPA and hoping Good Jack triumphs over Nasty Jack in season 6.

Brownings Dharmahead Trippel
Because if we don’t drink the Dharma beer, there might be another “incident.”

By Adam Tokarz

Located on the shore of Lake Huron in Tiverton, Ontario, Steelback Brewery is a small craft brewery dedicated to providing its imbibers with a premium Canadian beer at a premium price. But its award-winning Red Maple lager (a Gold Winner at the Ontario Brewing Awards, the maple lager is brewed traditionally with locally-sourced maple syrup for a smooth, creamy texture) only tells part of the story.

In 2008, Frank D’Angelo, then-CEO of Steelback and its avid, often-flamboyant pitchman, sold his share of the brewery to business partner Dr. Barry Sherman, billionaire owner of Apotex, Inc., Canada’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs. In turn, Dr. Sherman handed the reigns of his brewery to 24-year-old son Jonathon, a recent college graduate who studied industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia.

DRAFTMag.com caught up with Jonathon recently to discuss his portfolio of craft brews, Steelback’s new direction, and the challenges he’s faced as a young, unproven CEO in his first year at the helm.

DRAFTMag.com: All right, first things first. Give us your 30 second elevator pitch for Steelback beer.
Jonathon Sherman: Steelback is a new company. It was formed in May, 2008, and it’s a very small craft brewery in Ontario. All our craft brews are made by very traditional processes of brewing the beer. We’re a craft brewery that has won a number of different awards for quality of our beer, and our prices are pegged to the national brands, so we consider ourselves a craft brew for the everyday guy.

DM: Tell us a little bit about what makes your beer unique.
JS: Steelback has its own unique natural spring water source. We don’t have problems with filtering city water and that type of stuff. We pull our water right from the ground, treat it the way we want, and pull away or add minerals as we see fit. No one else can tap into our water source.

We’re also located in the country, so we can procure ingredients locally rather than have them shipped in from all over the place, using local buyers within 100 miles and locally-sourced food items. So that’s definitely been playing well for us.

DM: According to The Toronto Star, Frank D’Angelo is, “a man who breathed and lived fabulosity” and was coined “the consummate promoter.” He’s had energy drink companies, restaurants, even toured with his own rock band (Steelback 20-20). How has the face of Steelback changed since you’ve assumed the CEO position? What was/is your relationship with D’Angelo now?
JS: I guess I’ll answer the second part first. There’s no more association with Frank, the old owner. He’s no longer involved with the company at all from a marketing, ownership, or contributions perspective. And when he departed a couple years ago, we took six months to restructure the company. Everything was reviewed and really the only thing that remained with the old company was the name.

One of the common questions we get right now is, “Why didn’t we decide to change our name?” The reason we kept it is because there was so much history and so much done with the name Steelback, and so much money was spent in advertising. Now, the budget that was previously used by the old company for advertising is being greatly reduced, pretty much exclusively dedicated now for a sales team which goes door to door to bars, gets our beer on tap, and then sits there, talks to the regulars, educates them, and does a lot of sampling. Our new approach is basically, “One bar at a time.” Our approach from the beginning has been one-on-one education and really convincing people to become brand ambassadors.

DM: Has your craft beer portfolio changed?
JS: Yes. So there were a few brewmasters over time, and the brewmaster we kept from the old company [Jayne McGillivray], her background was more in quality control. In the six months of restructuring, she took her course for master brewing and is now an accredited beermaster. We also hired a consultant, a retired brewmaster, to help us reconfigure some of the equipment, tune up some of the recipes, and implement processes to standardize the whole brewing process. This way, we could abolish one of the flaws of the old company, which was inconsistency in the product.

We’ve streamlined the portfolio, so the old company was offering, I think, either 12 or 13 types of beer, many of which were competing against each other. What we did was limit them down to their unique different types, so now we have: one dark lager; one honey brown lager, which we call our premium draft, which is kind of like an easy-drinking, lager kind of beer for the summertime; a light, a 4 percent, low calorie beer; and we have our mainstream lager. And, once in awhile, we’ll come out with a specialty beer [like the Red Maple lager].

DM: So you’re in the midst of completely restructuring a national Canadian brewery to a quite different business model: a smaller, localized brewery with minimal advertising. What sorts of challenges have you faced as a young CEO?
JS: To put it to scale, we went from over 100 employees to a company of 10. In the beginning, I didn’t have much of a practical business background, so I surrounded myself with an experienced team. Like a very well learned CFO who I hired in for the first year to make sure that everything was being properly managed from a financial point of view. We’ve already discussed the fact that we brought in a retired veteran brewmaster to reconfigure the recipes because I could never go in there and say what they’re doing right off the bat. You learn from the people you surround yourself with.

Along with streamlining the number of beers that we offered, we also reviewed the packaging itself. In the past, there was plastic bottles, there were cans, and there were glass bottles. With twelve brands and three different package formats, it’s a lot of inventory to manage. So the new approach is to move exclusively to the brown glass bottles so the beer stays fresh as long as possible and there’s much less inventory to manage. We can now monitor it close enough so that it’s not sitting on the shelf longer than it should.

DM: Now, despite the different national and international accolades that Steelback’s garnered over the years, beer Web sites rate Steelback pretty low across the board. Do you feel the new Steelback (post-2008) should be held to its own rating standard?
JS: It’s part of the challenge that we’re dealing with, the old stigma of the company. A lot of the international Web sites probably don’t realize that we are a new company and haven’t tried the beer again, because… on the grand scale, Steelback is a relatively obscure, unknown brand. Locally, there are beer bloggers that have recognized the changes we’ve made and have started making comments on Web sites. But it all takes time. If you narrow the search to southern Ontario, beer-blog type reviews, you’ll see more positive reviews recently. Unfortunately, on the international scope, it’s hard for us in a single year to make people aware.

– Adam Tokarz is a Boston freelance writer who uses “Once, in a Blue Moon” to start all his debauchery-filled stories. He can be reached at adam.tokarz(at)gmail.com.

By Chris Gigley

Toronto is ruled by giants. Just ask any brewing company not named Molson, Labatt, or Sleeman. Or, better yet, ask any hockey team not named the Toronto Maple Leafs. The little guys have an uphill battle convincing the people of greater Toronto that there’s more to both beer and hockey.

But they’re trying. The city’s craft brewing community is a small and determined band of beer enthusiasts, each putting their own unique spin on beer to attract fans. The one making the most noise is Steam Whistle Brewing Co., based in a historic roundhouse in the shadow of CN Tower. Thanks to its location near Rogers Center and the home of the Leafs, Air Canada Center, its bar and brewery tours have become pre-game staples for the locals. The beer has become a draw, too.

“Our thing from the beginning has been to do one thing really well,” says Sybil Taylor, marketing communications manager for Steam Whistle.

That one thing is Czech-style pilsners. Steam Whistle doesn’t produce anything else. It has a new custom-built Czech brewhouse and a Czech brewmaster, Marek Mikunda, who honed his skills at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in the Czech Republic. The result is a bright, smooth, and thirst-quenching beer that rivals the pilsners from the old country.

Steam Whistle is the only craft beer hockey fans can buy at a hockey game — any hockey game — in the area. The brewery supplies the Toronto Marlies, the Leafs’ top minor league affiliate. The Marlies play five minutes down the road in Ricoh Coliseum, an imposing concrete building reminiscent of the grand-old NHL hockey arenas. That includes Maple Leaf Gardens, which still stands dormant north of the city center.

“There really isn’t a bad seat in [Ricoh Coliseum],” says Chris Goddard, Steam Whistle’s marketing director and resident hockey afficionado. “But the Marlies just haven’t been able to draw. If people don’t have Leafs tickets, they’d just rather watch them on television than go out for a Marlies game.”

What they miss is great hockey in a great, old arena for a fraction of what it costs to see a Leafs game. Great Lakes Brewery’s John Bowden is just as perplexed as Goddard by Toronto hockey fans’ fixation on the Maple Leafs. He should know. He is one. Bowden has never been to a Marlies game, and he offers no explanation for it.

Launched in 1987, Great Lakes is the first craft brewer in Toronto. Today, the brewery has a storefront and brewhouse just west of downtown that’s visible from the Gardiner Expressway, the main artery leading to and from Toronto. Bowden often leads tours of the brew house, which is more typical of Ontario craft brewers — small. While Steam Whistle produces more than 12,000 gallons of beer each day, Great Lakes’ daily output is about 1,320.

Great Lakes produces seven beers, three of them seasonals. Soon, says Bowden, there will be more. Seasonal beers are Great Lakes’ strongest performers, and beer lovers who visit the city right now are in luck. Its winter ale, which features generous amounts of cinnamon, honey, ginger, and orange peel, is easily the brewery’s most popular seasonal brew.

“I think there’s been a huge shift toward more flavorful beers in Toronto,” says Bowden. “But it’s sort of a chicken-and-egg thing. Until people find beers like ours and try them, they won’t start asking for them at bars. But the ball has started rolling for sure.”

A sign of that are two other small breweries that have opened in the neighborhood. Cool Brewing Co., with a three-beer lineup that includes a unique hemp-based red lager, is about four miles north. Black Oak Brewing Co., which brews an award-winning nut brown ale, is less than two miles to the east.

The local hockey team for Great Lakes Brewing is the Mississauga St. Michael’s Majors, part of the Ontario Hockey League. The OHL, one of three major junior hockey leagues in Canada and the U.S., is similar to NCAA basketball. Most of the good pros have come through the league, including the legendary Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and last year’s overall first-round pick, John Tavares. Even though the Majors play in Hershey Center, a gorgeous new hockey arena with even better sightlines than Ricoh Coliseum, the building is rarely full.

The gravitational pull of the Leafs doesn’t ease until visitors get about an hour away from the city, where OHL towns are staunch supporters of their own teams, even when the Leafs are on television. The best example is in Kitchener, where the Rangers play in one of the oldest arenas left in the league, Kitchener Auditorium, which opened in 1951. Attendance is always at or near capacity, the fans are loud and knowledgeable, and the cozy confines of the building produce a hockey atmosphere that is about as authentic as it gets.

The Sleeman Center in nearby Guelph is another great OHL rink. The home of the Storm is set downtown and adjoins a quaint indoor shopping mall, making the intermissions a little more bearable. Unfortunately, the arena is ruled by local brewing giant Sleeman. That’s fine during the game, but beer lovers should check out Guelph’s Wellington Brewery, Canada’s oldest independent microbrewery.

After experiencing greater Toronto’s array of OHL teams and craft brewers, the answer will be as clear as a Steam Whistle pilsner. When it comes to beer and hockey, smaller is better.

– Chris Gigley favourite thing about Canada is Tim Horton’s, where the combo meals don’t include fries. They include donuts. He suggests the Canadian Maple.

By Sarah Whitmire

Don’t get us wrong; at DRAFTMag.com, we realize that sometimes the best part about beer is picking up a six-pack on the way home from a long day and simply relaxing. For some, that weekday pilgrimage is not likely to be replaced with a five-hour science experiment of lifting hot pots and a month of patience. But now that we got our feet wet (and sticky) in the homebrew process, there’s a couple a things you need to know…

Size matters
Viewers who caught Homebrewing an Apple Crisp Ale may have noticed the operation being done on a smaller scale. That homebrew kit in particular was from Brooklyn Brew Shop, a couple-run homebrew store that puts out kits in smaller, one-gallon sizes perfect for taking up little space in a New York City apartment. Brewing with this kit could only have been easier if they’d overnighted the beer straight from Brooklyn; plus, the price was right. It was about $60 for the baby kit and grain mix (including shipping from New York to Phoenix). The trade-off? Less beer to show for all your hard labor. This one gallon kit only yields about 12 bottles, and even less when you don’t pour hot wort very well.

Science rules!
Since no one saw fit to talk about brewing beer on Bill Nye or the Magic School Bus, homebrewing calls for a little brushing up on basic chemistry and physics. For starters, be sure to have some kind of unit converter handy to easily keep track of volume; measurements could be in ounces, gallons, cups, quarts, etc. The most insignificant error in converting units can have pretty profound effects on your final product. Next, take time to figure out how beer works (besides the obvious); Brew Your Own has a great article detailing how malt, yeast, hops, and water come together. Trust us on this one, if you don’t know roughly how beer is made in the first place, the already daunting homebrew instructions are going to seem a whole lot worse. Lastly, be smarter than gravity. Don’t assume that you understand all the physics of siphoning liquid from place to place. If physics weren’t your strong suit, practice siphoning with containers of water set on the same levels you plan to use for your beer.

Read the instructions
The straight-forwardness of this point is annoying, but skipping, mis-reading or mis-understanding even one step of the process could ruin your whole batch. If you are brewing by yourself, get a friend in on it to provide a second opinion. As a side note, read the instructions as soon as your kit is home (especially if it is being shipped, and even more so if you live in a warm climate). Depending on your brew, some ingredients (namely, liquid yeast) need to be refrigerated. So if you let your kit sit for more than a day, the included ice pack will do it’s predictable thing; not only will this grime up your brand-new kit, but the yeast will die.

You aren’t the first person to make beer
The Mesopotamians beat you to the punch by about five centuries, but the point is, you aren’t alone. If you think something isn’t going right, or you just want to know more, the answer to your question is probably online. Even more fun is the homebrew sub-culture; beer drinkers are already a subset of the mainstream, but when you begin to brew, you join the ranks of some pretty cool folks. The American Homebrewers Association has great resources and forums to answer questions you didn’t know you had, and you can find out what homebrew events or competitions may be going on in your area.

Have fun!
Brewing at home is a fun, interesting process that any beer connoisseur should dabble in at least once. Despite all the pointers on things that could go wrong, there are really only a handful of ways to mess up the brew. At the end of the day, you can enjoy drinking the craft beer of your choice, at Bud Light prices. By the way, how did that Apple Crisp Ale fair among DRAFT writers?

“Definitely a great brew for the winter season. This beer’s caramel malts, floral hops, and cinnamon undertone would pair perfectly with holiday cookies,” said Christopher Staten, DRAFT associate editor.

“What I love most about it is that its certainly an apple beer — there’s just the slightest hint of sour apple in the very back of the swallow — but that it’s a complete 180 from cider. The emphasis is on the apple skin, hops and, cinnamon; they combine to produce a really floral, herbal, and decidedly bitter beer that’s akin to a dark apple pale ale. It’s delicious — too bad the batch wasn’t bigger!” said Jessica Daynor, DRAFT Managing Editor.

– Sarah Whitmire is an editorial intern at DRAFTMag.com.

It’s Magic Hat! We told you earlier about the brewery’s excellent Feast of Fools seasonal 12-pack, loaded with two new brews (like Howl) and two old faves (like #9). Making the mix pack even handier is the guide Magic Hat sent us on how to pair its beers with an entire holiday spread, recipes included. Our two favorites, below.

HAM WITH #9 GLAZE
Serves about 10

1 5 lb. bone-in ham
½ cup Magic Hat #9
¼ cup light brown sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
zest from 1 orange

* Center a rack in the over and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cut a cross-hatch pattern in the top layer of fat on the ham.
* Cook the ham according to its label. The ham you buy will either be fully cooked or partially cooked; fully cooked hams should bake 10 to 12 minutes per pound, or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the meat reads at least 140 degrees. Partially-cooked hams should bake for 15 to 20 minutes per pound, or until the internal temperature reads at least 160 degrees.
* In a small bowl, stir together #9, the sugar, cloves, cinnamon and orange zest. Set aside.
* Remove the ham from the oven about one hour before cooking is complete. Spoon the glaze over the ham and return it to the oven, basting occasionally.

HOWLINGLY GOOD GINGER BREAD
Serves about 9

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup Magic Hat Howl
1 cup molasses
1 stick unsalted butter, plus more for butter pan
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
zest of 1 orange
lemon curd or sweetened whipped cream for serving

* Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter an 8-by-8-inch cake pan. Set aside.
* Using an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, cream together the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
* In a separate large bowl, combine the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda and salt.
* In a saucepan, heat the Howl until bubbles form around the edges. Stir in the molasses. Alternately add the flour mixture and the Howl mixture to the creamed butter mixture, stirring well between additions. When all ingredients are incorporated, stir in the orange zest.
* Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 50 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature, from the pan, with a dollop of lemon curd or whipped cream.

By Chris Gigley

Greg Taylor has always been a car guy. But until a few years ago, the co-founder of Steam Whistle Brewing in Toronto never knew how excited other people get when they see one with a fancy paint job.

He does now. Since Taylor bought and tricked out his first classic vehicle for the brewery in 2000, a 1949 International Stake Truck nicknamed “Lumpy,” Steam Whistle has become almost as famous for its fleet of eight vintage vehicles as it is for its beer. These aren’t just showpieces, either. While the vehicles are valuable promotional tools for the brewery, they also do honest-to-goodness work, delivering beer or serving suds at live events and shuttling people to where ever they need to go.

“We want these vehicles out on the road so they’re constantly being seen,” says Taylor. “The idea is that these vehicles start a dialogue. People will ask about them later on or they’ll come up and address the driver. People are engaging us and talking about the brand right away without us having to reach out to them.”

Taylor decided to amass a vintage fleet before he even launched Steam Whistle. While working for Upper Canada Brewing, he helped deliver beer in a couple of old vans that had not aged gracefully under the workload. When Taylor caught wind of a graffiti festival in town, he figured even a coat of spray paint would be an upgrade. So, he let a group of graffiti artists go nuts.

“When I drove one of the vans back to the brewery, people were shouting at me, ‘Right on!,’” he recalls. “The paint job didn’t really promote the brewery, but I realized what an impression a vehicle can make.”

Sleeman Breweries bought Upper Canada in 1998, and Taylor, Cameron Heaps, and Greg Cromwell left to launch Steam Whistle two years later. But Taylor didn’t forget about the vans. That’s why he immediately made an offer to buy a souped-up stake truck he saw near his parents’ home in southwest Ontario.

“It was the perfect vehicle, because it was vintage and still could be used to haul beer,” he says.

Taylor’s determination and persistence paid off. He kept checking in with the owner, and a year later he finally sold Taylor the truck, Lumpy. Taylor quickly acquired and revamped other classic trucks for duty. He found a 1950s Chevrolet Sedan Delivery, for instance, at an old fire house south of Montreal.

“I almost didn’t make it back to Toronto,” he remembers. “The thing was shaking so bad I couldn’t sleep that night because of the back and neck pain. A couple days later, we were driving it somewhere and a wheel fell off on the road. I learned some lessons right there. You never know where the weaknesses are when you get these vehicles.”

Now the Sedan Delivery, appropriately nicknamed “Shakey,” runs smoothly for its regular driver, Steve Ellery, Steam Whistle’s customer service supervisor.

The most unique-looking vehicle in the fleet is Chuckles, a 1956 Dodge Fargo that looks like it came from a cartoon. The cargo vehicle was once used for postal service. Now, it hauls fresh kegs and cases of beer to private house parties in greater Toronto.

The most popular vehicle, however, is virtually unanimous among Steam Whistle customers. Even Taylor says the “Steam Machine,” a 1967 Ford Econoline Heavy Duty van with a tap built into the side, is his favorite.

“It’s just such a ridiculous design with so much character,” says Taylor. “We put blue shag carpet inside and added a sound system that plays different songs and the steam whistle sound. But most people love it because we can pour beer from the side of it.”

Recently, Steam Whistle added a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro to the fleet, which seems like an odd move.

“It’s not really a departure from the rest of the cars,” Taylor insists. “The Camaro has a retro design and we’re getting it in its first model year, so we get the same kind of reaction we get from our vintage vehicles.”

For those who prefer the authentic rides, Taylor says not to worry. He and his car guy, Paul Speirs of Speirs Automotive, are currently rehabbing a 1958 Chevy, nicknamed “Retro Electro,” to run on electricity. That vehicle will be sent West to promote Steam Whistle in the Vancouver area.

Taylor says his goal is to convert most of the fleet to electric and have the larger trucks, such as “The Party Bus,” a 1965 Ford Blue Bird, run on biodiesel. Taylor says he is currently scouting for a streamliner truck, a popular hauler in Canada in 40s and 50s. If he finds one, he says it will also be switched to biodiesel.

“We take environmental initiatives seriously because it’s a big part of our brand,” says Taylor. “We’ve probably spent about $35,000 on Retro Electro alone, but it’s worth it.”

Spoken like a true car guy.

– Chris Gigley is a freelance food, travel, and sports writer who has discovered that Natty Greene Red Nose Ale, brewed in his hometown of Greensboro, NC, is an excellent cure for writer’s block.

By Sarah Whitmere

In October, DRAFTMag.com discussed the basics of homebrewing. Today, we’re back with a step-by-step guide to producing the best apple crisp ale your kitchen has ever seen. (And watch the video as well.)

1. Mix up at least 2 qts. of no-rinse sanitizer before you get started. The small packet of C-Brite is the brand shown here, this .8 oz. packet was enough for 1 gal. of sanitizer.

2. Activate packet of liquid yeast, by feeling for a lump in packaging. That lump is a small packet of dry yeast that mixes with the sugary “slurry” and turns your wort into beer.

3. Bring just under 2 qts. of water to 160 degrees Fahrenheit for the mash.

4. Add grains, for this particular kit, I added malt as well. Temperature will fall to about 150 degrees. Stir until mash has consistency of oatmeal, and then take temperature readings throughout mixture. Try to keep it between 144-152 degrees; if it gets too hot, the hulls from the grain will begin to break down and release unappetizing tannins into the brew.

5. Bring 1 gal. of water to 170 degrees.

6. Set up a brew pot that will hold all the liquid you’ve been boiling, with a strainer to strain your mash.

7. Strain the mash, allowing the wort to drain through. Then pour the heated gallon of water over the mash as well. Overall, try to collect more than you intend to have at the end of the batch.

8. Bring wort pot to a boil.

*After this point, EVERYTHING that touches your wort must be dipped in sanitizer!

9. Add bittering hops at beginning of boil, or the point where foam forms and breaks (known as a “hot break”), with this brew I also added a stick of cinnamon. Boil wort for 60 minutes, stirring every ten minutes.

10. Peel and chop two apples.

11. In the last minute of the boil, add flavoring hops.

12. Turn off the heat, and add apples. Let steep for 20 minutes.

13. Prepare ice bath, and add wort. Try to chill wort to 70 degrees as quickly as possible.

14. Remove apples, pour cooled wort into fermentation vessel.

15. Pitch yeast, shake vigorously and use rubber stopper connected to rubber tubing to create a blow-off tube. In this case, my vessel probably isn’t full enough to need one, but submerge the other end of tubing in remaining sanitizer to create air-tight seal.

– Sarah Whitmere is an editorial intern at DRAFT.

Forgo the classy intermission sips of bubbly at your next musical and stuff a few bottles of these apropos brews in your tux jacket.

“Cats”
Synopsis: Cats with names like Bustopher Jones and Mr. Mistoffelees gather in a junkyard to publicly manicure themselves, meow songs, and decide which feline will be reincarnated.
Drink: Dairy-inspired Left Hand Milk Stout and New Glarus Spotted Cow are the cat’s pajamas, and catnip to us.

“Phantom of the Opera”
Synopsis: A disfigured stalker with a pension for opera wins the affection of a beautiful woman, but loses his cool when he finds out she’s in love with a smooth operator named Raoul.
Drink: Split your time between two spirits; smuggle in Fantôme Saison.

“South Pacific”
Synopsis: Guys will do anything to meet chicks — even travel to mysterious Bali Ha’i. Sailors in this wartime production go native.
Drink: You likely won’t be able to score a South Pacific SP Lager, so stick with the island pleasure that is Kona Longboard Lager.

“Billy Elliot”
Synopsis: A young English boy transforms a poor, outdated mining town with his wicked ballet skills and leaps from working class to high-brow society.
Drink: It takes guts to buck the status quo. Throw back a few pints of England’s own John Courage.

“West Side Story”
Synopsis: Two rival gangs dance it out on the mean streets of the Big Apple in the name of cred, and learn something about themselves in the process.
Drink: If you’re a Jet, go with Brooklyn Lager; Sharks should represent Puerto Rico with Cerveceria India Medalla Light.

By Sarah Whitmire

Sure, baseball may be the “official” American pastime, but when it comes to a sport that people actually play in their homes? That sport is beer pong.

“The Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong” from director Dan Lindsay, follows four individuals into a realm of fierce competition and drinking (but mostly competition) at the 2007 World Series of Beer Pong. This isn’t your local frat house tournament; the die-hard pros practice beer pong full-time for the notoriety of being world champion and pocketing the $20,000 grand prize.

Beer pong, or Beirut as it is officially called, is a serious matter at this professional level. It is clear very quickly that it isn’t about the beer for these players; they passionately defend it saying, “It’s a sport. It just happens to involve alcohol.” Throughout the whole movie, not one mention was given to the type of beer in the cups, and per official World Series of Beer Pong rules, many of the cups contained water.

Endorsed by fellow beer pong aficionado Morgan Spurlock, the documentary begins in the homes of four very different Beirut players. The first is a loud-mouthed body-builder, another is an endearing Jonah Hill look-alike, the third is a computer programmer who creates statistical software to analyze his shot accuracy, and the last who calls himself “The Champ” and is known for challenging the public to play him one-on-one for a cash prize. “The Last Cup” gives you a look at how these professional beer pong player train, the culture behind the sport, and how they got so serious about a game with beer, cups, and ping-pong balls.

This film has all the makings of classic, motivational sports movie with smart, witty editing, and an added splash of drunken debauchery. While the top players purposefully pace themselves, they can’t all be winners, and the rest party accordingly. With this comic relief keeping things light, you find yourself getting swept up in the player’s stories all the way to the nail-biting conclusion that only a final, world-champion deciding match of beer pong could provide.

There are just a couple screenings left of this documentary; head to the movie’s Web site for info on where to catch it, how to host your own screening, or to pre-order a copy of the DVD that releases December 29, 2009.

– Sarah Whitmire is an editorial intern at DRAFTMag.com.