I need to change up my rules for drinking. They're just not working out.
Last month, after coming off a Dry July, I made the decision that I would only drink alcohol on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The rest of the week, I'd go dry again.
It seemed like a reasonable goal, except it didn't always work.
A few weeks ago, DW and I met with one of our good friends and his girlfriend for dinner. We had difficulty finding a day that worked for all of us, and we finally decided to meet up on a Tuesday.
At the restaurant, everyone ordered wine but because Tuesday is a non-drinking day for me, I stuck with water. It wasn't a big deal, though when we all clinked glasses at one point, I felt strange clinking my stainless-steel cup against three wine glasses (we were in a Korean restaurant).
 |
| My buddy, Russ, at a Korean restaurant. (I'm beginning to miss the beard.) |
After dinner, we didn't want the evening to end quite yet. It was early, even for a work night, so we went to a nearby pub.
This time, I thought, this is silly. I recalled that over the last drinking days—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—I had consumed only one pint of beer, on the Saturday. I hadn't had any alcoholic beverages on the previous Thursday or Friday.
The whole point of me putting a limit on days that I could drink wasn't to designate dry days, but rather to limit my overall alcohol consumption. I had lost a few pounds over July and my belly wasn't bulging as much.
But what I've discovered, since August, was that I haven't felt like drinking alcohol overall, and that just because I had given myself permission to drink on three specific days, I didn't feel compelled to consume alcohol on those days.
So, I've allowed myself to consume booze anytime I feel like I want a pint or a glass of wine, but I now limit myself to five drinks per week.
Even then, I'm consuming less than that.
Anyway, on to this week's review (which I would have normally posted on a Thursday but had ideas for a different post yesterday).
Also, a few weeks ago, DW and I decided that we wanted to upgrade our kayaks and made a trip out to Frontenac Outfitters to test paddle some longer kayaks. On our way back home, we stopped in the small town of Westport, nestled in a spot between the Upper Rideau Lake and Westport Sand Lake.
DW and I have been to this town a few times. We stopped here for dinner, decades ago, before we started our 60-kilometer hike from Frontenac Provincial Park to Kingston. It was a rest point on a couple of our Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour.
When we paddled in a 16-foot canoe from Kingston to Ottawa, in 2013, we considered making a stop in Westport for lunch, but it was a detour that would have added about seven or eight kilometres to our journey, and we had to tackle the massive Big Rideau Lake, to get to Murphy's Point Provincial Park by dinnertime.
That was a tough paddle.
On this visit, we had a late lunch/early dinner at the Tangled Garden Café and then wandered the small town, when we came across a brewery.
It would have been rude to not pay them a visit.
Had we known, before visiting the Tangled Garden, that the brewery had a full menu, we might have gone there. Mind you, the pizza at the Tangled Garden was okay but it wasn't nearly as memorable as the pizza we had all those decades before, when we were about to embark on our Kingston hike.
(The Westport Pizza restaurant was what made us seriously consider a detour on our canoe trip but we weren't sure if it still existed, and it would have been a disappointment if we couldn't find it after making the trip. Today, it's no longer there.)
My visit to the brewery was brief. They had a refrigerator that was stocked with two styles of ale: a brown ale and a red ale, and there was a lone can of an IPA. I grabbed two cans of the brown, one can of red, and the last IPA.
I was going to open one of the brown ales when we returned home, to review the following Thursday, but by the time we got home I was tired and didn't feel like having a beer. And the next day was Sunday, which was one of my dry days.
In the weeks that followed, I kind of forgot that I had made the stop at Westport Brewing, and only remembered the cans when I went into the fridge, last night.
Though I picked up three different styles of beer from the brewery, I only intend to review one, though I'll likely share my thoughts on the other two on Mastodon and Threads. For today, let's finally turn our attention to that brew, of which I bought two cans.
Westport Brewing Company
Westport ON
Appearance: pours a deep-walnut brown that allows little to no light to pass through (though, I did shine a flashlight through it and saw a garnet-red hue). The beige head is foamy but settles to a solid lace, and then disappates, allowing only miniscule bubbles to rest in spots at its surface.
Nose: malty coffee and a hint of cedar.
Palate: more coffee, mixed with chocolate. The malt is full-bodied and leaves you with a dry finish of more cedar.
Overall impression: this is a very good brown ale. Loads of flavour and a solid body. It's almost perfect for a cool autumn evening. It's also the closest brown ale to a stout that I think I've ever had.
That's not a bad thing.
Beer O'Clock rating: 🍺🍺 + .5
Sadly, you can only pick up Westport beer directly from the brewery, though they will deliver the beer for a fee. For me, I think DW and I will make another stop, next spring, when we pick up our new kayaks.
Westport is definitely worth a stop if you're passing by.
Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment