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It’s no secret that one of the things I look forward to every year during Ontario Craft Beer Week is the comparatively larger number of people thinking seriously about beer and food. Beer dinners, for instance, abound. The version of beer and food pairing that I think is probably most […]

Flights and Bites @ Fanny Chadwick’s – 2013

June 20, 2013 in Beer and Food / Ontario Craft Beer Week tagged Beer and Food / Fanny Chadwick's / Flights and Bites / Ontario Craft Beer Week by admin

One of the things that frustrates me when I’m reading a bottle of beer is when there are food pairing suggestions that don’t tell you anything. “Try this with spicy foods,” the label proudly exclaims, as though that conveys any useful information. Usually, when the bottle says something like that […]

Beer and Food Basics: Hops and the Marshall Stack

June 2, 2013 in Accounting for Taste / Beer and Food tagged beer / Cascade / food pairing / Fuggles / hops / Saaz / Turn off your smoke machine and marshall stack / Twisting In The Wind by admin

One of the things that frustrates me when I read about beer and food pairing is that the subject tends to get filed down into digestible sound bites. I suppose that makes sense given that a lot of communication on the subject takes place on twitter and in short articles. […]

The Basics of Beer and Food – Malt and Maillard

June 1, 2013 in Beer and Food tagged beer / Dry Heat Cooking Methods / Food / Maillard Reaction / Melanoidin by admin

Recently, I was sent a copy of Tom Acitelli’s new book, The Audacity Of Hops, for review purposes. I finished it last week and I can tell you that it’s well worth reading. The prose is engaging and the story that it tells of craft beer’s rise to prominence is […]

Book Review – The Audacity Of Hops

May 28, 2013 in Reviews / Shameless Plugs tagged Fritz Maytag / Jim Koch / Stick of Beeman's / The Audacity of Hops / The Right Stuff / Tom Acitelli / Tom Wolfe by admin

One of the things that always interests me in craft beer is how larger regional breweries deal with the market. Of course, there are independently owned regional breweries like Great Western who are pretty much devoted to doing one thing and doing it well. Then there are large breweries like […]

Big Rock – Changes in Direction

May 22, 2013 in Reviews / The North American Tour tagged Barghest / Big Rock / Erratic / Paradox / Paul Gautreau / Purple Gas by admin

I want to suggest something to you, and it may be something that has crossed your mind if you’re a brewer in Ontario. I think that we’re all aware that large brewers are, if not faltering, then experiencing a period of contraction. This is probably as the result of the […]

Hoppy Beers and Monoculture in Ontario

May 2, 2013 in Accounting for Taste / The Ontario Beer Revolution tagged Data Analysis / IPAs / LCBO / Ontario / Pale Ales by admin

In this week’s column, I answered one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, which is “What do YOU drink.” I imagine that anyone with a beer blog or column gets that question quite a bit. Most people go with the tried and tested answer “a lot of […]

The Twisted Kilt

April 27, 2013 in Reviews / Shameless Plugs tagged The Bow and Arrow / The Twisted Kilt by admin

Probably the most interesting thing about the currently available LCBO brewery feature is the fact that many of the beers from Brasserie Dupont are not as easily quantifiable as past featured breweries. If you look, for instance, at one of the first brewery features from Tree Brewing in British Columbia, […]

The LCBO Dupont Brewery Feature

April 22, 2013 in Reviews tagged Biere de Miel / Cervesia / Dupont / Moinette Bruin / Monk's Stout by admin

The other day, I was invited to a lunch launching a couple of Goose Island’s beers in Canada. Specifically, Matilda and Sofie. The Goose Island property is a contentious one, and to attempt to relate the details of the lunch without at least acknowledging some basic facts about the brand […]

Beer and Food: Goose Island and Nota Bene

April 14, 2013 in Beer and Food / Reviews tagged David Lee / Goose Island / Matilda / Nota Bene / Sofie / toronto by admin

I’m sitting here and I’m trying to come up with an interesting and insightful way to plug The Brewer’s Plate. I mean, you could go with “It’s one of the premiere events of the Toronto beer scene!” or “It just keeps getting bigger and better!” or “I know $125.00 seems […]

In Which I Plug The Brewer’s Plate

April 11, 2013 in Beer and Food / Shameless Plugs tagged Beer and Food / Beer Pairing / Howard Dubrovsky is a Golden God / Not Far From The Tree / The Brewer's Plate / toronto by admin

St. John's Wort

Beery Musings And Amusing Beers