Wild Rose IPA

The case for the best beer brewed in Calgary.

Evan Spence | 2006-09-19

Wild Rose Brewery
AF23, 4580 Quesnay Wood Drive SW
Calgary, AB T3E 7J3

Attention: Al & Mike

Dear Sirs:

I am writing in response to your letter received, perhaps as many as five years ago, on the subject of Wild Rose IPA. Undated and hand-delivered at the Ship & Anchor, the text was as follows:

Recent studies indicate that 94.3% of you will be challenged with the hoppy character of our Industrial Park Ale. To you, we say; 'Practice, practice, practice'. To the 5.7% of you that enjoy the big, bold taste of hops in our IPA, we say; 'You' re welcome'.</p/> </p><p>Sincerely,</p> <p>Al & Mike</p> <p>PS. Please practice responsibly.” /></p> <p>My posession of this letter has spurred this correspondence, as it has provided me with insight into the type of brewery you are endeavouring to remain. If you will pardon the lateness of my reply, I will pardon your gratuitous use of semicolons.</p> <p>Honourable brewers, you make the best beer in Calgary.</p> <p>Please accept this letter as further encourage to continue brewing the best beer in Calgary. My fear, however, is I shall have to begin saying you <em>made</em> the best beer in Calgary.</p> <p>I raise the spectre of you stopping IPA production, because the idea seems to be gaining traction. Broken City has stopped serving it, and has been telling patrons no more is being made. Liquor stores stock every other Wild Rose beer—a workhorse brown ale, a true-to-the-style hefeweizen, and a fruit cooler—but no <abbr>IPA</abbr>. The Ship & Anchor seems to have periodic problems keeping their <abbr>IPA</abbr> kegs pouring, which sparks intermittent panic among drinkers. As of September 19, I am happy however to report that a fine 20-ounce pint of Wild Rose <abbr>IPA</abbr> can still be had at the venerable Ship.</p> <p>I have written to cement in your minds the importance of your continued brewing of this beer. Here’s why.</p> <p>Calgary is <em>mad</em>.</p> <p>This city has no conception of how much is enough. Work, leisure, consumption, expansion. Everything at full volume. We supersize our infrastructure to facilitate more of the same, then bemoan the evidence that more has arrived.</p> <p>Calgary is <em>mad</em>. Consequently it citizenry is also mad.</p> <p>We can no longer maintain the pretense of being a small town masquerading as a city. We’re just a big city now, with all the corresponding metropolitan challenges and ills, but as citizens we haven’t adopted the requisite code of behaviour and politeness that enables true cosmopolitan centres to cope and thrive under their blankets of density.</p> <p>Calgarians—those who have been here for any length of time—want smallville Cowtown back, so any incident that reminds them that it’s gone forever is met with injurious indignation. Calgarians are mad, and it’s a <em>mean</em> mad.</p> <p>Mad Calgarians make for mad employers.</p> <p>The boom has been going on for so long some exhausted participants have been muttering, <em>sotto voce</em>, “where’s that damn <a href=national energy program?” The joy has gone out of the expansion. Calgary companies are presented with unrelenting demand, but have no one to provide it. The evidence that inflation in this city isn’t triple the national rate is proof the city’s employers aren’t escalating salaries at a meaningful rate. Consequently every business in town is short staffed. Undermanned and swamped with business.

Where does that leave typical local beer drinkers? Compressed between an expanding wild-eyed urbanity, and intransigent métiers.

How do they cope?

With hops.

These modest, robust flowers offer the requisite pungent respite from the diurnal state of near-panic that passes for worklife in Calgary. While not physiological, when one craves an IPA, no other beer will suffice.

Mere alcohol, such as that delivered in prosaic ales, does nothing but dull the senses, rendering the imbiber insipid and compliant. The hop aroma, however, quickens the mind, and brings about a lessening of the nerves that can be felt between the shoulder blades, reaching the tip of the ancient reptilian part of the brain and descending as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn.

At the end of a workweek—How do we measure workweeks now? My current week of work sits at 17 contiguous days, can yours be any shorter?—how do we choose to wash the filmy reminiscence from our countenances of an oblivious employer and an irreconcilable rink of time, resources, deliverables and schedule?

It could be a number of things. Religion, sport, pornography, partisan politics, the gambit of drugs.

I choose hops.

Mssrs. Mike and Al, your IPA is the delivery mechanism for those hops. Please be so kind as to continue offering them for purchase. As my part of the bargain, I will search out whatever establishment is sufficiently enlightened to serve Wild Rose IPA. For your part, keep the kettles burning.

Yours truly,

Evan Spence

September 19, 2006
OOØOOOODCCLXXXII

One Response to “Wild Rose IPA”

  1. Nick Says:
    October 5th, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    I believe that true to its name, the hop-in-brew still serves Wild Rose IPA.

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