For many Christians, Lent is a time to abstain
from the things they love. But for people like Chris Schryer, it’s just the
opposite.
He’s giving up everything else except what he loves
most – beer. The 33-year-old web designer from Toronto has shunned all solid
food and has been living on beer since March 5. In fact, he believes that what
he’s doing is a real test of spiritual discipline.
“Without being dramatic, it definitely
is not fun,” said Chris. “It’s challenging. Every meal time there’s a
challenge. I look pretty healthy now, but by the end of the 40 days my wife
figures I’ll look like a castaway on account of my bushy beard.”
For the past few weeks, Chris has been having a bottle of strong beer
for breakfast. At lunch, he guzzles another beer and dinner consists of a large
650 ml bottle. He also has a mid-afternoon ‘work beer’.To avoid getting
dehydrated, he keeps up a steady intake of watered down juice and other clear
liquids. His rules are simple: ‘No dairy, no ‘nectars’, no protein shakes or
smoothies.” He takes a multivitamin and his health is constantly being
monitored by his family doctor.
For Chris, beer is a passion, a hobby and a side job as well. He
runs a beer-based website called TorontoBeerBlog.com, where he periodically
reviews various brews. And since he started the Lenten beer fast, traffic to
the website has surged. “There has been a huge upswing in traffic at my blog,
and messages are coming in via Facebook, Twitter, email and comments here at a
surprising rate,” he wrote. “As a big part of this journey was sharing my fast
with as many people as I could, this is very good indeed.
Most of the beer that Chris consumes comes from a 100-liter
batch of doppelbock prepared specially at Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewing Co.
That’s a German lager, ranked among the world’s heaviest beers, containing just
enough nutrients to help Chris survive. He described its flavor as ‘sweet and
malty, with caramel, biscuits and a bit of oats’. Doppelbock is light on
protein, totally devoid of fat, and gives him about 2,000 calories a day.
Interestingly, Chris is a devout Anglican – he got Reverend Lucy Reid of
Toronto’s Church of St. Aidan to bless the 100 litre stock of beer.
On Monday, Chris declared on the blog that he had ‘reached the
mid-way point’ of the 40-day Lenten fast. “Funny enough, it seems to have been
quite long, and also feels like I just started,” he wrote. But if he keeps this
up any longer than the intended 40 days, the all-beer fast could actually be
fatal. The constant hunger pangs would soon be accompanied by extreme mental
fatigue, scaly skin and a chronic sensation of feeling cold. And eventually,
death.
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