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Major General
Posts: 12,683
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Calgary
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04-17-2007, 03:07 PM
[quote:aaa5d]
Flames fans raising 'heroin' to their heroes
DAWN WALTON
Globe and Mail Update
CALGARY — Legend has it the Pengrowth Saddledome is home to a certain potent potion, a kind of mystical elixir, that whips Calgary Flames fans into a frenzy unseen in any other hockey city.
So when Flames devotees get their first taste of 2007 Stanley Cup playoff action on home ice Tuesday night against the Detroit Red Wings, what will also be on the lips of many in the 19,289-seat arena will be a pint — or several — of draft unflatteringly dubbed, yet affectionately known as "heroin beer."
"I think it's an urban myth," Mike Bridgewater noted recently as he was busy slinging plastic cups of Molson beer to fans at the Saddledome as the Flames squeaked their way into a playoff spot.
Now, the 1989 Stanley Cup champions — and 2004 runners-up — have lost the first two games of their best-of-seven Western Conference playoff round against the heavily-favoured Detroit Red Wings.
Between pours during that recent regular-season home game, Bridgewater yelled over to one of the assistant concession managers tending to other vendors of food and grog.
"What do you think of 'heroin beer?' " Bridgewater asked.
"Prior to working here I believed it," the manager replied. "But there's nothing to it," he added before rushing off.
Both at the rink and online, fans swear by the particularly intoxicating effect of Saddledome draft (Molson products available at the arena are Canadian, Coors Light, Rickard's Red and Rickard's Honey Brown), debate the cause for the uber-buzz and commiserate about the resulting heroin beer hangover.
On Calgarypuck.com, a self-described "unofficial Calgary Flames fan community," National Hockey League aficionados offer their own experiences and theories.
"What is it that makes it heroin beer?" wrote someone with the handle Rougeunderoos. "Has anyone ever satisfactorily explained why a guy like me (heavy drinker) is ripped up like a Hulkamania t-shirt after just three or four of them? I can (and often do) perform minor surgery after four Lucky Strongs but I don't even like to negotiate stairs after four 'Dome beers."
The heroin beer allure even has cachet outside the confines of the arena.
Broken City, a downtown Calgary bar, is doing its best to cash in on the liquid marvel by advertising televised home games and "our very own Saddledome heroin beer."
"Mmmmm . . . heroin beer," brags the bar's website.
So is there some chemical explanation to this heroin beer mythology?
Is it merely an extension of the same sort of frat-boy wisdom that spawned funnelling and shot-gunning as the most efficient road to drunkenness? Or is there some kind of placebo effect gone awry involved?
The Flames organization initially balked at queries about Saddledome beer.
Peter Hanlon, the club's vice-president of communications, said beer is merely a service provided at the arena and not part of the team's "messaging."
"We would like to once and for all dispel the urban legend of our beer," he said.
Libby Raines, the club's vice-president of building operations, said the tales of the fabled beer have been around as long as she has been in the building — since the Saddledome opened for the team's 1983-84 season — but insisted that it is the same, ordinary keg beer that is consumed all over the city.
While there are some kiosks throughout the Saddledome with small, portable kegs where draft can be purchased, much of the hype around so-called heroin beer starts at the 2.6 by 6.7 metre beer cooler located in the bowels of the building.
From there, beer lines run — in some cases the equivalent of the length of the sheet of ice — up to taps throughout the building. A combination of nitrogen and carbon dioxide gases are used to push the beer up through the system.
Could carbonation created by all that gas be literally pumping up the beer?
No way, according to both the Flames and Molson Canada.
The folks at the country's oldest beer company said this is the first they've heard about the "special powers" in their Saddledome brew.
"It is a well-calculated engineering process involved in moving beer through the pipes," explained Ken Robbins, Molson's head brewmaster.
The company also supplies the other five Canadian-based NHL team arenas, but Robbins, himself a hockey fan, suspects the adrenaline rush at the Saddledome — especially at playoff time — is probably what's responsible for the buzz.
Still, Princeton University says those tiny bubbles do affect how the body reacts to alcohol.
"If your drink is carbonated, the increased pressure in your stomach will force alcohol into your bloodstream faster," the Ivy League institution's health services office points out to students.
A full stomach, however, can slow absorption of alcohol, it adds.
So the beverage buzz must be true of all other NHL arenas — the so-called "crazy beers" at Rexall Place in Edmonton jumps to mind — but like any good hockey rivalry, nothing quite matches the storied history of Calgary's heroin beer.
"Maybe we just have a more exciting atmosphere," Raines added with a laugh. "We certainly work hard to create a more exciting atmosphere."
As Jason Zimmer and Jody Evans, both in their late 20s, carried cups of beer back to their seats during a recent regular-season home game, they offered their own insight into the phenomenon. There isn't anything special in the beer, they agreed, but the heroin beer effect is real, they insisted.
"I think it's just the atmosphere," Zimmer said.
"You have something to cheer," Evans added.
Back at Bridgewater's station, his kegs have been emptied and he's packing up for the night.
Lots of people do chalk it up to the environment, he said, while some people think it's the nitrogen. Others just don't realize they are drinking 20-ounce cups of beer, not a 12-ounce can, he explained.
Then, he thinks about all those times he spent off-duty taking in on-ice action with a draft in hand as a Saddledome civilian before he started working here three years ago.
"I get drunk faster when I drink it for sure," he said with a smile.[/quote:aaa5d]
I have drank a lot of heroine beer at the saddledome, and there is something about it.
It's definitely not the atmosphere, because the saddledome is used for NLL lacrosse and WHL hockey as well as concerts. All of which I have been to, and all of which I have had beer at. Some of the WHL games have around 8,000 people there, and there's not really any atmosphere at all, especially when the hitmen are losing.
Maybe it's just because they are bigger cups, but man, after 3 of these things, it gets tough. It's really strange, but there has to be something in the heroine beer.
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