Yearly Archives: 2012

Although I grew up in Toronto, I spent a year after university living in Kingston. I like Kingston, but I never really felt as though I understood it. The downtown is laid out as a sort of Triangle, and the bar scene at the time was more or less based […]

Set up a brewery in Kingston, already!

December 31, 2012 in Beer and Food / The Ontario Beer Revolution tagged Alan McLeod: Plate Licking Menace / Brewery / Kingston / Sir John's / The Alibi / The Red House by admin

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking about the craft beer vs. crafty beer problem. While it has really only sprung up as a discourse over the last week, you would have to have been blind not to see the issue coming. The problem here is that large breweries […]

Craft Vs. Crafty

December 14, 2012 in Accounting for Taste tagged August Schell / Brewer's Association / Craft Beer / Moosehead / Yuengling by admin

It seems like every six months we get a spate of articles about privatization of liquor, wine and beer sales in Ontario. Currently, it’s in the press again because Tim Hudak is theoretically in favour of selling off the LCBO. Now, personally, I think that privatization of sales is a […]

Every Six Months…

December 8, 2012 in The Ontario Beer Revolution tagged Large Brewers / Ontario / Privatization / Prognosticatin' like it ain't no thang / Tim Hudak by admin

For those of you that have just joined the craft beer scene in the last couple of years, it’s worth pointing out that Bar Volo wasn’t always a beer bar with a light menu. At one point in the late 80’s, it was an Italian restaurant. After a while it […]

Beer And Food Tuesday: Carbonara Alla Morana

November 20, 2012 in Bar Volo / Beer and Food tagged Aecht SCHLENKERLA Rauchbier / Cameron's RPA / Granville Island Lions Winter Ale / Ralph Morana / Spaghetti Carbonara by admin

These days when I go to a tasting for a new brewery, I’m always a little bit leery. The sheer number of startups in Ontario at the moment suggest to me that we are in a boom period for craft beer. If you want to look at it objectively, you […]

It Takes A Village – Liberty Village Brewing Company

November 15, 2012 in Reviews / The Ontario Beer Revolution tagged Liberty Village Brewing Company / Ontario Craft Beer by admin

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about over the course of the last week is exactly what to say about the tour of the Sam Adams Brewery I went on last Friday. It’s hard to know what to make of Sam Adams. They are so large in comparison […]

In Which I Tour The Sam Adams Brewery

November 12, 2012 in Accounting for Taste / The North American Tour tagged Jim Koch / Karmic Terroir / Kosmic Mother Funk / Sam Adams by admin

I would like to apologize in advance. ‘Twas the month before Christmas and in my apartment, The beers overflowed from the storage compartment The fridge had no room left for soy sauce or jelly On the bright side, no leftovers rendered it smelly This infrequently happens to your […]

The Craft Beer Advent Calendar

November 7, 2012 in Shameless Plugs tagged Craft Beer Advent Calendar / Doggerel / Hudibras / The Beer Fairy by admin

Recently, I was flown to Boston to visit the Sam Adams Brewery. While we’ll no doubt get to the brewery tour itself later in the week once the experience has had some time to percolate through the ol’ grey matter, I wanted to talk about something that Sam Adams is […]

Beer and Food Tuesday: Temple Bar, Cambridge

November 6, 2012 in Beer and Food tagged Beer and Food / Boston Lager / Latitude 48 IPA / Sam Adams Utopia / Temple Bar Cambridge by admin

This morning I was sitting in the lobby of the Park Plaza in Boston, smiling as effusively as the early hour permitted at a waitress in an attempt to get some coffee. Possibly it was because of the lack of caffeine in my system that a blog post from Alan […]