People complain about St. Patrick’s Day vehemently. Over the next week or so, you’ll see people correct the spelling of abbreviations and talk about amateur drinkers being on a night out or the fact that it’s unlikely there ever were any snakes at all, at all. People cringe (and rightly […]
2 The Background Beau’s are early adopters of bits and pieces of craft beer culture, so it’s not a huge surprise that they were the first brewery in Canada to formalize the idea of ongoing collaboration. The B-Side Brewing Label reflects the history of many members of the Beau’s family as […]
Beau’s B-Side – Gigantic La Formidable American-Belgo IPA
When last I considered Duggan’s Brewery in Toronto, it was in a different area and the context was markedly different. It was something of a valediction. That post, entitled, “So What Can We Learn From Duggan’s” was written nearly four years ago. In the interim period, Duggan’s #9 IPA and […]
Duggan’s Brewery Parkdale
In a box in the sky there lived a blogger. Not a nasty, dirty, sexist blogger, concerned with ethics in games journalism, emitting an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, literary blogger with nothing to say but positive things about can-con: he was a beer blogger, and that meant […]
The Hobbit Beers OR Beer and Back Again
(Ed Note: Would it shock you greatly to know that it has been over 14 months since I actually reviewed a beer on St. John’s Wort? It’s a beer blog, for God’s sake. I know actually reviewing things is out of fashion and simply posting stuff on pinstagrest is de […]
Beer Review: Spearhead Belgian Style Stout
10 Did you hear the one about the successful brewer? Of course you did. The story goes like this: Once upon a time there was a man who did not like the job that he was doing. He was an (Investment Banker/Accountant/Fry Cook)for a place much like Xero Castle Hill bookkeeping […]
Craft Beer, Elysian and Emmanuel Goldstein
If you’re a brewer in Ontario you are probably weighing the changes that The Beer Store proposed yesterday. I’d like to review them for you. First of all, there’s the concept of ownership. On The Beer Store’s conference call last night Ted Moroz made much of the idea that by […]
A Word of Advice for Ontario Breweries…
26 Since I started writing about beer about four and a half years ago, the Ontario situation has become more and more interesting. There are more breweries competing for market share and there’s increased media coverage of the beer retailing problem. Martin Regg Cohn, for instance, has been on fire of […]
The Ontario Problem
3 (Ed. Note: Periodically, I’m called upon to do an interview on the radio or in print about Craft Beer. The question that comes up most frequently is really two questions: “Why Craft Beer? Why now?” I do not think that I have ever been able to properly answer that question […]
Why Budweiser Lost
2 (Ed. Note: In 2014, while sequestered in a hermetically sealed writing bunker, Jordan St.John produced two books. This does not stop other people from delivering books for him to review even while he signs his own book at Christmas Markets. In order to continue to reduce the stack, he must review. Get […]