(Ed note: This is longer than usual. There are no pictures. Next time there will be pictures. Promise!) When we talk about beer and food pairing, we try to come up with shorthand rules. I’ve heard Stephen Beaumont suggest you treat Lagers like White Wine and Ales like Red Wine. […]
Yearly Archives: 2014
9 When I was working closely with Alan McLeod from A Good Beer Blog on writing Ontario Beer (See right! Buy one for a friend! Buy a dozen!) one of the things that we would disagree on periodically was beer and food pairing. Alan more or less believes that the entire […]
Beer and Food Pairing: A Fresh Start
One of the things I don’t see people taking into account frequently when they talk about beer is time. I don’t mean that you should drink a hoppy beer when it is fresh (you absolutely should) or that a 2008 Thomas Hardy is probably still too young to drink (it […]
Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff
One of the things that I find frustrating in writing about beer is the insistence by people that brewing is not first and foremost a business. I have written two histories now and I can claim to understand from its outset the development of brewing in North America. At no […]
Stone’s Indiegogo Campaign is Cynical and Exploitative
“Such is the uncertainty of Human Life we know not the moment we may be called off – the hand that guides this pen may ear another day be stiff and cold” – William Helliwell. April 7, 1837 These were the words of William Helliwell on finding that a maltster […]
The Ghost Tour
It must be fun to end the world. So many authors do it. There’s a giddy thrill that comes through in just about every book that does that and that’s likely the only commonality between them; the desire of the author to play with an entropic collapse. No one who […]
Beau’s MaddAddam Gruit
(Editor’s Note: I once had an aunt who wrote letters to politicians. I believe she once lambasted Prime Minister Chretien over the rise in the price of a head of cabbage. It seems that the frivolity of subject has skipped this generation even if the letter writing impulse has not. […]
In Which I Realize I Have An MPP
Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to ask nicely. A few weeks ago, I had become frustrated with the constant bickering between The Beer Store and the Ontario Convenience Store Association on Twitter. As a columnist, the nature of my beat is editorial rather than journalistic. […]
Fun With Numbers: Legitimate Polling Edition
In undergrad, a friend of mine adopted a principle that allowed him to spend more time playing cards than doing coursework. While he was very interested in doing his best when it came to the courses pertaining to his major, he viewed elective courses as something of an intrusion into […]
On Mediocrity
Philip St.John lived in Uxbridge, Ontario. He settled there in 1817, if I’m remembering the details correctly. He had emigrated from Cork in Ireland to Upper Canada, but he wasn’t properly Irish. The St.Johns were from the German Palatinate, which is near Heidelberg, and went to Ireland around 1710. Before […]