As Thick As Cement – A first date brag gone wrong

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One of the weirdest things I have been told on a first date came from a match we call “Concrete” from the apps. He works out of town pouring concrete for weeks and months at a time. We finally had a chance to meet in person when he was back in town and we decided to meet for coffee. We took some COVID precautions and met outside in the cold with our coffee instead of meeting inside. I also refrained from seeing others in the week leading up to meeting. More on COVID and dating to come.

The coffee was warm and he was very chatty. He talked a lot. I learned about types of concrete and his workout and diet plan. He had very nice arms so I was happy to listen to that part. “Concrete” then turned the conversation to places he would like to live long term. He has travelled around so much and spent time in a lot of smaller communities so I was interested in his opinions. His major concern was traffic and since he poured roads and sidewalks, sounded reasonable.

Delicious flight from Bricklayer Brewing

Concrete then told me a story about getting stuck in traffic one time and out of road rage a fist fight broke out. He was one of the fighters! The incident ended up on the radio in the traffic reports, and then in the news and of course onto the internet. I am not into fighting at all and not at all impressed. My jaw must have hit the table like a ton of bricks, because he very quickly ended the date and deleted me off the app.  

Crowler of Burnin’ Down the House for family dinner

Speaking of bricks! This story is best paired with a new brewery in Chilliwack, BC called Bricklayer Brewing! They just opened in this amazing area called District 1881 in the heart of Chilliwack and they have added cute shops and cool new restaurants. Highly recommend a trip out there for an afternoon. While you are in the neighborhood you absolutely should stop by Bricklayer Brewing. I visited the first time just after they opened and tried their smoked table beer called “Burnin’ Down The House” and loved it so much I brought it to Christmas dinner. They have a really delicious IPA called “Great Expectations” and it exceeds expectations! They have also just released a brut saison with raspberry that I am keen to try because everything has been so good that I’ve tried. Highly recommend this spot if you are in the area doing the Fraser Valley Ale Trail put together by BC Ale Trail. 100% worth the visit.

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When Silk Ties Turn Into Red Flags

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Warning – this story contains some sexual content.

“Sprinkles” and I met on the app and we hit it off. In the two months we were dating he met my friends, shared his love of gardening with me and we had many delicious meals! He invited me over and I had prepared (shaved my legs and wore cute underwear), I was ready! He took me on a tour of his place and I noticed that it was more organized than a showroom. Even his copious amount of plants were organized. He showed off his bathroom drawer that had dividers and colour coding and I was honestly afraid to rip the toilet paper wrong. He showed me the bedroom and there was a hook in the ceiling. I had not been the most adventurous in the past and I foolishly asked if that was for a hanging plant. No, not a hanging plant. I will wait while some of you laugh at me, he sure did. He asked if I was into kink and I said I was more “vanilla with sprinkles” (hence his nickname). He had a closet of scary things. Whips, cuffs, ties, and you guessed it, a swing. He had it all. I was immediately a little nervous and he assured me that it was not a deal breaker that I was a bit less adventurous than he was. And if he was ok with patience and less of the kink, I was ok too. He invited me to spend the night and I accepted but we just slept. I was very self conscious that I had mishandled the closet reveal, but in the morning he was eager to take our dating to the next level. He took medication to get himself into it and then I saw why he had the closet and why he needed to pill. I had never seen a micro penis before. I am a smaller person so it was not an issue for me. I was just happy to be there with a guy I liked.

Harry Potter Beer Festival in Seattle

Very shortly after that, my friend and I were attending a beer festival out of the country. She and I were both excited and just going down for the night and try some beers. I told him that I wasn’t going to pay the crazy fees to text while I was down there and I would only be out of range for about 24 hours. I got back late that next day after dropping my friend off and Sprinkles was a morning person so I knew he’d be asleep and I had to be up early the next morning for work. On my way into work he messaged (7am on a Sunday) “So I haven’t heard from you in more than a day so I guess we’re done”. Whoa! I got into the office and messaged back and reminded him that I was out of town and that I was currently at work and perhaps we should talk later. We talked and I had to call it, it was the culmination of the red flags.

The highly organized apartment, the BDSM closet, the micro penis or even the medication for erectile dysfunction, each on their own was not a red flag. Put together and with the need to be in 24/7 communication were a mountain of concern with a red flag waving on top that I couldn’t ignore.

Some of the beers we tried at the festival

Due to sensitive nature of this content I couldn’t find the perfect beer pairing for this story. So I am asking you, dear reader, to share your favourite micro brewery in the comments section below.

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Suspiciously Sweet to Savagely Sour – Trust your intuition

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Some things are too good to be true and that was certainly the case with “Victoria”. We matched when he was visiting my area when in reality he lived about 100 kilometres away. The distance was not an issue because we had a flexible means of getting back and forth so I pursued the match. We met and he was perfect. Incredibly sweet, handsome, tall, charming, funny, great job, and he had just bought a new house. He even asked me to help decorate and pick things out for his new house. He was so perfect but something felt off. I had lengthy conversations with my friends and could not for the life of me figure out what my intuition was trying to tell me. “Victoria” and I spent a lot of time together and when he asked me to come on a trip to Utah with him last minute, I was not entirely surprised. He was planning this trip to do alone which he complained about many times. Hiking alone, the spa alone etc. so I asked work if I could get the time off and sadly it was declined so last minute. As a compromise I headed over to his place before he left and spent the night.

Colourful and deliciously sour flight from Ile Sauvage Brewing Co. – Photo credit E Gismondi

On the day he was set to return he showed up as a suggested friend on social media. His picture was a cute photo of him and a girl sitting at a table together, weird because he only has brothers. I clicked on the picture and the caption read “She said yes! We could not be happier! #engaged #utah” with her tagged. What?! What would he have done if I could have gone on the trip? Now what do I do?

I then asked every female I know if I should tell this woman or not. I was the long term girlfriend and had the guy start something with someone else and I would have liked to know so I wanted to tell her. The consensus was to message her. I crafted a message something along the lines of I did not know he had a girlfriend and I had the texts if there was any question we were talking about the same guy. The message showed as read and then both she and him blocked me. I understand they got married and moved into the house they bought together that I picked towels for.

We are given such a wonderful gift in our intuition and I know I should trust mine more often. There are times when something does not feel right and usually it ends up that way. This would have hurt so much more had I not listened even a little bit to that gut feeling that something was not right. A year or so later one of my friends suggested a trip to the city he lived in to have a positive memory attached to the city. We toured a number of breweries and one was Ile Sauvage Brewing Company. They specialize in unique sour beers and the vibe at the brewery is very cool. A perfect replacement memory. My favourites were their Tropique Sour and one that was on their rotation called Au Jardin (made with beets and lemon).The trip was planned out with the help from BC Ale Trail

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Haunted Holiday Season – Ghosts of Boys Past

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A few years ago, I matched with “Yale” on a dating app and we had good conversation for almost a month online but we hadn’t met yet. He disappeared shortly after in the Fall and I shrugged it off. Fast forward to December and a group of friends and I are out at a club downtown, dancing and drinking and I see Yale from across the room. Remember I had not met him in person and was going purely on the photos passed back and forth while chatting. I don’t have an issue with approaching a guy in regular circumstances and certainly not while drinking, so I walked up to him and asked if his name was Yale and if he remembers talking to me and if he wanted to dance. He said yes, we made out on the dance floor and exchanged numbers. We went on a few dates, had Boxing Day dinner together, and he invited my friend and I out for New Years Eve.

On the 31st we dressed up and hit a local brewery with him and his friends for early festivities. Yale’s friend mentioned a house party and told us to head to the liquor store and grab some drinks and Yale would text us the address of the house party. Off we went, tipsy, to the liquor store and bought some supplies and I texted asking for the address, no response. We headed back to my place to wait for the address, still nothing and I knew something was amiss. He was not going to text. We were not welcome at the party. Eventually he messaged and said that his ex was at the party and he didn’t feel comfortable with a potential new girl there too. My friend and I blasted some Miranda Lambert and danced around my apartment until midnight. Not quite the night we had planned but a good one none the less.

Take me back to this summery flight from Lighthouse Brewing Company

This holiday season I had the joy of explaining the “u up” text disguised as “Merry Christmas” to my mom. She was perplexed by the notion that a guy would come back after months of silence just to send a “Merry Christmas” text but it certainly happens. I had the distinct privilege of receiving five such texts this year. There is always the debate over if they deserve a reply or not, and what to say.

I made a mistake early in the season by “loving” all of the posts on my wall wishing me well and then it happened. The dreaded post that makes you want to throw your phone across the room. That one person that still stings. What to do?! “Love” it like everyone else? Ignore it or “like” it instead (but then it sticks out)? Delete it and prompt a message along the lines of “hey you deleted my post!”? I opted to put that little heart so he would be the same as everyone else.

Both Yale and the ghosts this year remind me that there is a reason these people are in the past. There is a reason they did not work out the first time around. In 2021 my goal will be to avoid those ghosts and leave them where they are.

Lighthouse Brewing Company Ghost Ship Hazy IPA

A truly delicious beer to enjoy while reflecting on these ghosts is another hazy IPA from Lighthouse Brewing with a perfect name, Ghost Ship Hazy IPA. Prior to trying Ghost Ship, I was strongly adverse to IPA’s and would stick with wheat focused beers. A friend suggested I try this while we were doing the BC Ale Trail Victoria Trail and I was instantly a fan. It’s balanced and has the required hoppy bitterness of an IPA but without the aftertaste. The haunting label will keep my ship right and avoid replying to those “u up” texts in the future.

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When a First Date Feels Like an Audit

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Grab a can and settle in for the longest date yet!

I wish I had a few more of these fruity seasonal summer beers from Category 12

Early in my dating days I had ways to stay safe, makeup and outfits ready, etc. but I did not know how to manage my time around dating.

In comes another online match, we will call him “CRA” (short of Canada Revenue Agency). CRA was just my type, he was a great amount of flirty and nerdy. I was into him by text. We decided to meet for coffee at a local shop around 3 in the afternoon. We decided to go for a walk with our coffees around a nearby lake since it was a beautiful day. We walked and the conversation was normal first date awkward and he shared about his family and his job, all things I am interested in hearing about on a date. And he just kept talking while I politely listened and nodded and smiled. We walked around the lake four times, then sat on a bench for what seemed like a decade. He suggested we get something to eat because now we were encroaching on dinner time, HOW?! We walked to a nearby restaurant and sat down for some food and a drink because after almost three kilometres of walking, I was hungry! CRA just kept talking at the restaurant. By now he had exhausted most date topics, so he moved onto each of the individual 120 amendments that the government had made to that years personal income tax rules and forms. Not kidding. If you need your taxes done, let me know, I am an expert now!

We left and started walking back to our starting point. I am going to do my best to describe what happened next. Please use your imagination. We were walking along the sidewalk and came up to a bus stop with a bench. CRA wrapped his arm around my waist and in one quick movement had me sitting down on the bench. Then he leaned in really close, but now you see we are sitting beside each other on a bench so the logistics aren’t great. Lots of twisting and basically ended up like a pretzel. Then came the moment, the kiss. He must not have eaten enough at dinner because he seemed to be trying to eat my face. The imprint of saliva left on my face was larger than an N95 mask.

After wiping my face and getting back to my car, I quickly realized that six hours of my life was gone. POOF! It was not that I was having a good time. I wasn’t having a bad time either but it wasn’t great enough to warrant a quarter of a day spent. What did I learn from this date? I learned that it is entirely alright to cut a date off whenever. In hindsight, I should have called it after the very long walk around the lake. I had enough information about him to decide if I wanted to see him again or not. I did not need to do the dinner and perhaps the ending could have been less awkward if it happened on another (less marathon style) date.

I only had one beer on this date which is probably too little for the length and subject matter. For this story I thought I would highlight a favourite brewery along the Victoria Ale Trail by BC Ale Trail. Category 12 kind of sounds like something you would find in a tax document but instead it is this really great brewery in the Victoria area. My favourites are their two hazy brews, Juicy Data (hazy IPA) and Compressed Data (hazy pale ale). They also have a great kitchen with many delicious things, but I would recommend their pretzel all day, every day. Especially on a 6-hour date.

A flight of delicious Category 12 beers

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Gracias Guatemala – A volcanic start to dating

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Grab a cerveza and settle in for the first of many stories!

Local beer from Xaman Brewing Company found in Antigua Guatemala

I met a man online after my friends had convinced me to join a dating site – let’s call him “Guatemala”. He was the start of my dating experience. Our text conversations were engaging and he was just the right amount of flirty. Everything about him was perfect. He had put off meeting for a number of weeks due to some work engagements and when it finally happened, he was amazing. Handsome, not too tall, easy to talk to and our first kiss had my knees shaking.

I had a trip planned to Central America with a friend and she had to cancel last minute, I debated cancelling and on our second date he suggested that he come with me! What a gesture! I didn’t want to travel alone, and he had frequent flyer points. He booked it right then and there. He sent me his flight details and ticket numbers. I was travelling through Houston on my way down and he was going through Dallas but arriving within an hour of each other. The next few days we messaged about the itinerary, vaccines he needed to get, where he could get currency. The day before we were set to depart, he said he couldn’t talk much because he was running all these errands for the trip.

Our separate flights departed, I slept over at the Houston airport and messaged him on WhatsApp to let him know I was safely at my halfway point and I did not hear back. Not unreasonable because he was on a flight at the same time. I landed in Guatemala City and found the shuttle driver, but “Guatemala” was not there. My first thought was that maybe he was detained for travelling last minute to a foreign country in Central America on points with a girl he barely knew. I messaged and called and no answer. Something in my gut told me that he never boarded the flight.

I went to the first hotel and freaked out. I researched how to get home the next day. A few friends and my ex of all people encouraged me to stay and do the trip alone. I woke up the next morning to a gorgeous view of a valley between two volcanos and decided to stay and it was life changing. I did everything I wanted to do and more.

When I got back home two weeks later, he wanted to talk. It turns out that had met another woman around the same time, and he did not want to ruin his chances with her by taking the trip with me. He wanted to stay in contact (to keep me as an option no doubt) but I politely declined. I learned so much about myself and came back so much stronger and more confident, but the biggest lesson – maybe don’t book a trip on the second date.

Delicious flight from Andina Brewing Company

While on this trip I drank a fair bit of Gallo (Guatemala’s most popular beer) and I found a few craft beers along the way.  Since heading to Central or South America might not be in the cards, the best local option is Andina Brewing Company who celebrate British Columbia and South America in their beer and food offerings. Pálida is their hazy pale ale and my favorite in their core line up. Throughout the year they have a number of seasonal offerings that are worth repeat trips to try them all. Their menu is full of delicious food like empanadas and their amazing ceviche. They are located in East Vancouver and can easily be added to a brewery crawl that can be planned out with help from BC Ale Trail.

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Internet Dating Safety

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After going on a few online dates I created a list of personal rules for the first date (and as many as needed after that). These rules are meant to keep me safe and protect me in case something goes sideways:

– Meet somewhere you know – you know where the exits are, how to get home easily, etc.
– Have a “person” who knows exactly where you are and who you’re with, this means their name, job, any information that will narrow them down from the other million people in your city.
– Have a check in time. I suggest 2 hours in. Most dates don’t mind me sending a quick “I’m having fun and I’m ok” message when asked.

I will typically go to a local brewery for my first dates. You can leave at any time, most of them either have a kitchen or food trucks nearby in case it’s going really well and you need food, and I know how to get home in case my car acts up or something happens.


These seem like little things but they’re important when meeting an internet stranger. Feel free to use them and let me know of they work for you!

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Hello world!

Posted on by Must Love Beer

Hi Everyone!! I’m Must Love Beer and I’m sharing some of my most colorful dating stories over a few flights or pints. All names and some identifying details will be changed to protect all parties but I will remain true to the story, be it hilarious, shocking, ridiculous or otherwise. I hope you enjoy!! Cheers!

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