Magic Hat Afternoon

What is it about a free jug of beer that makes you want to cancel your plans for the day and sit in the sun drinking the sweet, sweet nectar to your heart's content?

Well, I didn't spend the entire day basking in the bright sun and crisp spring breezes but there was some relaxation plus beer enjoyed.

I've been doing some videos for Magic Hat and one of the perks is the free beer when you leave. I chose a growler of Circus Boy Hefeweizen (YUM!) and even though it was only noon, I wanted to take a swig SO BAD - right there in the parking lot! But I resisted and stored the booze in the Flynn fridge while taking Tracy's high octane dance class.

After last night's dose of intense yoga and 2 hours of dance rehearsal, today's class nearly killed me. All the death defying lunges and leaps - it is so hard to ignore gravity and bounce your body UP in the air repeatedly - the hip thrusts and spins - zowie, I am gonna hurt tomorrow. Pain. Lots of it headed straight my way.

There were some dudes putting cement on the roof next door and I considered giving them the free growler of beer. It seemed like the proper thing to do, hard working people always appreciate a cool refreshing drink when doing manual labor. But I figured cement + booze might not be the best combo and therefore justified my selfishness.

Magic Hat is such a cool factory - sort of like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory crossed with Beetlejuice and sprinkled with Mad Max. If you have not gone on the factory tour, by all means, go soon. I have a real fondness in my heart for gigantic, funky industrial spaces, especially ones filled with beer and smelling of wheat.

While creeping around and taking pictures, I marvelled at the magical beer bottle filling process. It was like Laverne and Shirley's opening title sequence (embedded below), or like Wayne's World parody of it, but SO much better!

The beer bottles whizzing along, getting disinfected and filled with the magic elixir in an air tight chamber, the fancy inner-workings of the machines that make it all happen and drop the beer into boxes with delicate metal paws, the never ending walls of beer cases wrapped in cellophane awaiting transport to a supermarket shelf near you. It is exciting, and makes a girl thirsty.

Anyway, where was I? Yes, after dance we had our girl lunch sans Suzanne (sniffle) and then ran errands around town while soaking up sun. The best errand was definitely the bra fitting - girls love to try on expensive lingerie, what can I say.

Then it was back to Suzanne's to eat candy from Costa Rica (thanks Tracy) and FINALLY take a sip of the delicious Hefeweizen which is unfiltered and unfettered. Mmmm. I earned that.