I first met Stan in London, Ontario, in 1970. Visiting Stan, he would serve you a bottle of his home-brewed beer (which usually hadn’t aged the requisite amount because the last batch had prematurely run out) and proudly proclaim that his brewing secret was to use corn syrup instead of sugar to better aid the fermentation process. What he didn’t always tell you was that the corn syrup formed a nasty sludge in the bottom of the bottle. This was often a rude surprise to the uninitiated, who would only realize something was terribly wrong just a little too late, much to Stan’s amusement. I think his “home brew” later became the subject of a song.

—Rob Nicklom