(Ed. Note: This content originally appeared in Good Food Revolution for Jamie Drummond, who is a very nice man and, I am pretty sure, no longer has a use for it.) “I have a question: Why does Guinness taste better in Ireland?” This comes up more frequently than you […]

The Opacity of Guinness

Monday, February 23rd The week before you start a new job should be filled with preparation, and it has to some extent. I’m spring cleaning, which takes some doing when it’s too cold to air the place out properly. At some point you have to decide what’s Breweriana and what’s […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of February ...

Monday, February 16th Due to a combination of factors, I had been in for the long weekend.  The isolation of working on a text leads you to interesting places, and the Harmonicist John Popper once sang, “sometimes I think I need a prison in order to dream of being free.” […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of February ...

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Monday February 9th I’ve made sufficient progress on the sections of the book that I have to write that I don’t feel guilty stepping out for lunch with Mom, who has come to town for a school friend’s birthday. We go to Wvrst in Union Station, where she correctly points […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of February ...

Monday, February 2nd For as long as I can remember, Groundhog Day has been marked by the change of my profile picture on Facebook to one of Bill Murray in the truck with the rodent. Bill Murray traded Ghostbusters in order to make an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s The […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of February ...

Monday, Jan 26th The deep freeze is well and truly upon us, and looking at the forecast for the next couple of weeks, it looks like we’re in four-layer territory. If your primary mode of transport and exercise is walking, then -25 with the wind chill does you no favours. […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of January ...

Monday, January 19 I know things are going badly when local radio wants to talk to me.  With talk radio, since I am brought on as an expert on beer taxes and the craft beer segment, there is usually something going on by the time my name comes up in […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of January ...

Monday, Jan 12   Editing continues on the book, and we seem to have reached the portion of January where we’ve done away with the pretense of soups and stews and hearty fare and are mostly subsisting on various kinds of toast, whether avocado or beans on.  Having noted that […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of Jan ...

  (Ed. Note: This is a feature that I have been doing for a little while as a separate page on the site, and which I have decided to keep around based on feedback. I shall probably archive the first five or six of them on that page while I […]

Diary of a Local Beer Man – Week of Jan ...

Walking down Manning as the November light fades reveals that the Annex likes its period authentic gloom. Sodium lights didn’t come in until the 1960’s, and it’s called the Annex because Toronto absorbed the neighbourhood in the 1880’s. I grant you, we’re a little further over than that. Johnny Wayne […]

In Which I Visit Bickford Brewing