A Year in Beer

What's next? I'll tell you what's next, putting my hand to my chin, looking longingly into space and thinking deeply about what devilishly whimsical pranks the winds of fate have played on me this year and swept me to the place I am now. That's what's next.
And although it was a year ago January 5th when I boarded that big white bird that took me to Berlin and I began my journey into the world of beer, thinking back it was actually the previous summer that changed my life forever.
After returning from a trip through Northern France and Belgium with my wife and some friends, taking in the culture (and by culture I mean wine, food and of course beer), and beautiful scenic vistas over a short three week stint. I came back to my three walled, jail-cell grey cubicle only to find that the walls had become some sort of sadistic torture camber right out of an Indiana Jones adventure. The walls had grown large stone spikes and had some how slowly started to close in on me, threatening to turn me into a 5', 10", 190 pound sieve. My only chance of escape was through a tiny porthole on the information super highway. So I jumped on to my computer and started googling the first words that came into my head, which of course were Beer and Europe. And lo and behold I discovered a bevy of information of beer schools in the old country. To make a long story short, this is how I ended up where I am now.
And now with my first year in beer under my belt I can look back and reflect on how it has effected my life. For good or for ill.
Although most of my memories of Germany and the VLB (the beer school) are fond ones, new friends, new adventures, new careers and many nights of drunken buffoonery (If I ever get tired of drunken buffoonery, shoot me. I'll probably be to old to go on anyways). When I look back now they all have a certain bittersweet taste. I have a deep feeling of melancholy, like listening to a Weakerthan's song, I love the tune but for what ever reason it really makes me contemplative and some what sad. My memories are painted in a pale shade of Hamlet.
I love beer, but in pursuing that love I had to leave behind an even bigger one, my wife. This was going to be the longest we had ever been apart in almost an entire decade. At the time it seemed like an easy task, our relationship was strong it could handle it. But as time progressed it proved much harder than I thought. Now that I've been home for as long as I was away, it's just now getting back to the way it was before I left. Sometimes leaving seems like the hard part, but it's returning that's the real bitch.
Luckily our relationship was strong and she is a wonderful woman so we made it through, but it was truly much harder than I thought.
As for the beer and the brewing, it's been quite a roller coaster ride as well. I went into this blind, no experience, no real brewing knowledge, nothing. And sitting in that class room at the VLB on the first day of school and the first lesson was on Polymer Chain Reactions, DNA, RNA and nucleotides and what not, I thought to myself, "Shit dude, what have you done. You've clearly bitten off a helluva lot more than you can chew, you stupid bastard." I hadn't taken a single science class since grade 13, some ten years previous and now here I was, on the hook for almost 10 grand of my own GD money and staring at a black board full of letters and numbers I could barely recognise. This was going to be a long year.
But after five months of intensive learning, some much needed practical work, and a whole lot of sampling (all done in the name of research I swear it) it all worked it self out in the end. And upon my return to Canada I was able to quickly land my first brewing job.
Magnotta was a great learning experience for me and it afforded me the opportunity to brew many different styles of beer and hone my skills as a brewer. I can say nothing ill about my time there. Mike, Simon, Erica, Mustaq and David were all a pleasure to work with and I appreciate my time working with all of them.
But time marches on. Time waits for no man. Opportunity knocked and I had to answer. And any other inane shit ass saying you want to insert here. Anyhoo, I was offered another opportunity that I couldn't refuse, training to be the brewmaster at the Robert Simpson Brewing Co., in Barrie, ON. And although I still have a long way to go before I become a brewmaster (I'm reminded of this on almost a daily basis as I make mistake after mistake....wait, no let's not call them mistakes, let's call them learning experiences) this was clearly a job I needed to take.
After a year in beer I think I can safely say that brewing beer is not for everyman. The romantic notions of the wise old brewmaster gently turning the sample cock valve on an old oak fermentation vessel and sampling the fresh, golden young beer, then strolling calmly through the brewhouse with his hands in his pockets and air of quite confidence about him are quickly erased when you mistakenly open up a lauter tun door too soon and a metric tonne of hot, wet mash comes rushing out and spews it self all over you and the brew house floor. (Wow that was a wickedly long run on sentence). But saying that, it is a labour of love. Sure it's hard work, but at the end of the day you have accomplished something. You have created something that people are going to enjoy. It is an art. And truly it really makes you proud to think that at the end of the day, you've done something that will hopefully make people happy. There is a nobility in that. And in the end I think that was what I was searching for when I started this journey. Cause we all know, there is no nobility in trying to tell people to go watch The Pacifier.
So what's next?