At the Ontario Craft Brewers big beer conference and the taps open at 10AM, about the time I’m usually having my second cup of coffee, and Farmer Steve is having his second pot. You would have to cross the Atlantic to find that special 5 o’clock somewhere spot at 10AM our time, so I waited until noon to sample a Stonehooker. * Not to be confused with TJ Hooker, John Lee Hooker, or Xaviera Hollander. **
Stone, TJ, John Lee, and Happy
Stonehooking was a way of removing stone slabs from the lake bottom and it was big business on Lake Ontario in the late 1800’s.**^ A Stonehooker was a schooner that was loaded with those stone slabs, the idea was to rock the boat, but don’t tip the boat over.****
A Chill Pils was a lighthouse bright golden pint with a creamy surfs up head. An ideal quaff for some laidback daytime drinking, so it was anchors away ***** and batten down the hatches and hoist the jib, etc. etc. to see if this pils would float my boat.
A light malt aroma. The first quaff is a malt forward pils, I caught a touch of citrus. Not really a traditional pils finish, more malt smooth than crisp. It has a nice full mouthfeel. Easy drinking and smooth, no bite or bitters. A nice easy going malty pils.
*Editor’s Comment: 10AM in Toronto is 5 PM in Cape Town South Africa, Helsinki Finland and Cairo Egypt. You would still have to cross the Atlantic to get to London England to find 5 o’clock when it’s noon here.
**Editor’s Comment: John Lee Hooker is a well-known blues guitarist and singer. He did a cameo in the movie The Blues Brothers as Street Slim performing his signature song “Boom Boom”. TJ Hooker is a fictional TV character and lead of the show of the same name, played by Canadian William Shatner of Star Trek fame. Xaviera Hollander wrote the 1972 number one bestseller “The Happy Hooker”, a memoir not of her crochet club exploits, but of her time as a prostitute and madam in New York City. The movie came out in 1975 with Lynn Redgrave playing the Dutch madam.
***Editor’s Comments: During the peak of the stonehooking industry in the late 1800’s as many as 30 stonehooker schooners operated on the North shore of Lake Ontario out of Port Credit near Toronto.
****Editor’s Comment: From the 1973 hit by the Hues Corporation “Rock the Boat”. They weren’t hauling slabs of limestone, they were “sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion.”
*****Editor’s Comment: The correct expression is “anchors aweigh” as in to weigh anchor.
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