Fitger's Lake Ontario

Fitger's Lake Ontario.

I got this, like those other growlers, from Don, but the little description/identifier slipped off the neck and into oblivion. I couldn't remember which it was, such a dilemma. Until I remembered that a FaceBook friend had posted a picture of his, with the 4-page pamphlet clearly open, …somewhat. So, here's what that says…

Ontario…No. 149/2…?? (which one was mine, wish I knew). 16.10.G., 31 IBU, 8% ABV, Brettanomyces Aged Belgian Pale, Brewer, Brain Schanzenbach. A tribute to the Trappist beer, Orval. Ontario has been dry-hopped….and conditioned with Brettanomyces. Brettanomyces is a wild ye…..commonly found on the skins of fruit, which gives this beer a uni…character. Ontario has a rich, orange hue and a dense cream…head. The flavor profile presents a balance between sweet m….honey and a citrus hop bite. X. B….S……."

So, let's drink it!

Deep crimson hue, opaque; large and lovely creamy white head. Looks good.

Aroma: Belgian funk and fruit at first sniff…rich and ripe…and very mellow. Citrus and spice, lemon and pepper. Mmm. Piquant, even. Yes, I use that word from time to time, when I want to seem learned.

Taste: Mmmm, yes. Very groovy, very mellow. For those who are not inside my mind, I am channelling Slim Gaillard, Mr. Mellow-roonie, a Cuban-American jazz singer/guitarist/pianist, whose work cannot be easily summarized, but which was utterly hip and suffused with humor and cool.
Which means that I merely want to express nonsense words and hope you get them. Does that mean that I am lazy and want to skip the work of making words connect to meaning? No, but I just wish that I could. You know what I mean. Admit it, we all wish we could. We just never get to.

So, without further ado…skabop-blee, scoo-bop, doo…shooby doo, shooby-daa…Mmmm, this is creeping into sour, but not quite there, it many kinds of fruit, without being one in partoo-blee-dop-blow…ticular…peach, melon, a little sweet, a little sharp, a little tanga-tee-bop-op-bleedoooo…

I need to put on a Charlie Parker record, and some horn-rim shades, maybe a porkpie hat, pull out a vintage copy of DownBeat. Where's my Ginsburg volume, baby? I've got a velvet bullfight painting on the wall, there's a candle in a bottle of chianti, and Mort Sahl is coming over, man. We're gonna rap, we're gonna get into it, …talk a about some Feiffer cartoons we read….we've got Lenny Bruce stopping by, and we're gonna just dig, man, just gonna groove. Light some incense, already, baby. What's the Playboy Advisor got to say? Bring Miss May over, man! Just get into getting into it.

It's beautiful, is what I want to say, it is terr- iffic. Peach fuzz and malt essence, mellowing it out on the palate. How many times need I say this, very cool, very mellow…if this were a video/audio presentation, I would take clips of Gaillard saying same, and pepper it throughout. I didn't know what "very groovy, very mellow" meant until I heard him say it, and got it. Probably would have helped it I was high, too, as I'm sure he was. Slim made it into literature, appearing in "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac. "To Slim Gaillard, life was one big "O'roonie"
Drinking down this mellow, groovy brew, I can think of no better life, indeed.

Just a hint of the funk, of the farmhouse horse blanket-ness, just a brief whiff of it, and the fruit carries the rest, and it's all mellow and groovy. All reety, all righty, all rooty-tooty.
(Of course, Slim has a "Rootie-tootie" tune. This was when jazz met blues and R&B before there was rock, but it wasn't quite jump blues.)

Just lovely. Not too thick, medium body, full fruity, flavorful feeling, long, lovely finish. Wonderfully warming, and relaxing, without ever being overly alcoholic.

I can't remember when I first became aware of Slim Gaillard. In the early 90's local singer Willie Wisely (now going as merely Wisely in La-La-land) did several of his numbers (Go, Man, Go, Potato Chips)in his act, but he couldn't have been the sole impetus to my discovery of Slim's world. Once he hit me, I got hit, and have almost all of his recordings, some on CD, some on vinyl. (My favorite is a jam with Charlie Parker, whose cover has a gymnast flipping over a fish tank.) (Now that I'm fully into buying vinyl on eBay, I'll eventually find the original, which can't have a crazier cover.)There's a few left to dig, but I'll get 'em eventually.

Just like Belgian beers, I can't remember my first, but once I got one, I was done, it was over, I was in it to win it, baby. Oh, groovy on rootie mcVootie.

Way to go, Fitger's, this is righteous and very groovy, very mellow, a groove juice special.