GUS wrote:...& there's me (& family) who yearn for the cold of Canadian winters (does less damage to your bones than a damp winter in the uk , ...make that damp summers & winters in the uk).
Frequent visitors to Alberta & all is good bar some of the beer (no such thing as a good bitter that i've found, would love to be proven wrong) red aint bitter!
..but I can "suffer that" gladly.
Having lived through 40 years of cold Canadian winters, followed by 16 years of Florida heat and humidity, I'll take the heat, thank you.
As to the beer, Canada has very retrograde alcohol laws. In many respects, Canadian law can be more progressive than US law (although the US eventually follows). In the area of alcoholic beverages, however, Canadian provinces have so many tight restrictions that these laws have choked off consumer choice very badly.
For example, Unibroue beer, excellent Belgian-style ale made in Quebec, is easily available in Tampa and most other places in Florida. Try to find it in Ontario; I wasn't able to. Can you get it in BC? Similarly, there's a blond ale made in Ontario, that I like, called "Lug Tread", made in a town that's not 14 km from Quebec...yet this beer cannot be bought in Quebec. Stupid. And destructive both to commerce and to consumer choice.
The US has a number of beers that are called "amber ale" which are a pretty good approximation of bitter. And I agree, "red ain't bitter". Many excellent US IPAs are easily available in groceries: Sierra Nevada Torpedo is a good example, which all my aquaintances in the UK enjoy when they can get it. Of course, American hops taste different than UK Goldings or Fuggles, but that's all right, that's "terroir", as they say.
Can you get beer from Sierra Nevada, Stone, Dogfish Head, Samuel Adams, etc in Canada?
Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen. - Heinrich Heine.