(Ed. note: Having been suspended from instagram at the beginning of December for contacting too many breweries in short order and violating the algorithm and with twitter being a little cursory in form for reviews, I began to think, “hey, what if we just review beers on a semi daily […]

Review: Muskoka Brewery Big World Small Batch Belgium

Over the course of a long winter, I wrote about the brewery strike in Toronto in 1904 because people I know within the industry had become interested in organizing labour in Ontario’s small breweries. Although I didn’t write about it in Lost Breweries of Toronto, which was designed to be […]

1904 Brewery Strike – What Can We Learn?

Ed. Note: Sometimes paid work gets in the way of skylarking like this. Apologies to anyone who was waiting for a conclusion. We’ll get there eventually. When last we stepped in the Wayback Machine, the labour situation in Toronto’s breweries had come to a head, although in the early days […]

The 1904 Brewery Strike – Part Three

If we can establish a popular mood at the turn of the century in Toronto as it regards the labour movement during a period of rapid population expansion, we’d do well to look at the Toronto Star from March 23rd, 1901. The week’s labour column speaks not only of the […]

The 1904 Brewery Strike – Part Two

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Having written the history of Toronto’s breweries, I’m frequently struck by how little things change over time. Watching the development of the Craft Brewery Workers Alliance of Canada over the last couple of months has caused bells to ring in the back of my mind.  Brewing is a generational business. […]

The 1904 Brewery Strike – Part One

One of the main structural problems that exists with the beer industry is unchanged since the beginning of the industry in Canada: Beer is heavy, and the roads are poor. Back when Toronto was Muddy York prior to 1834, it was a common complaint.  Brewing is one thing, but the […]

Janus Craft Beverage: The Future of Delivery?

Hop Water is better than Non-Alcoholic Beer for a simple reason: Non-Alc Beer is less than the sum of its parts.  As we established last week, Non-Alc beer can just about hit the high points of a style without being sweetened in order to add texture, complexity, and nuance. Whether […]

… And All Beautiful Yellow Flowers

Recently, I was tasked with tasting a number of gluten free beers in order to accommodate a student with Celiac disease. This was an exercise with interesting parameters. In addition to the substitution of ingredients for wheat and barley, there’s the problem of texture. Alcohol makes up a certain amount […]

In Which I Drink No Alcohol

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“The main obligation is to amuse yourself.” – S.J. Perelman I was standing, not that long ago, in The Only Cafe talking to Sam Corbeil and Dave Lee about the new hop variety that they were using in the beers that were featured at the Sawdust City 10th Anniversary Tap […]

Yeah, I’ve Tried Most Hops

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As we reach the end of the semester, I’m on the hook for marking papers. (Ed. Note: If you’d like to enroll someone in a beer class for Christmas, just follow the link) One of these papers is going to require a little extra effort. One student announced fairly early […]

In Which I Drink No Gluten