Astute readers will have noticed that I have been absent from my blog for a couple of weeks. For the first week, we had Alex Nixon writing about Portland, Oregon in his inimitable fashion. We’ll be seeing more from him later this fall, as my near quintessential semi-legitimacy seems to […]
Accounting for Taste
Well, now. The results for the 2010 Canadian Brewing Awards have been announced and that means one thing: I can talk about the results without the threat of hired goons coming around to dangle me off a seventh story balcony. I tabulated the scores and have therefore known the results […]
The 2010 Canadian Brewing Awards – Results and Analysis
One of the main problems in brewing extreme beers is that it goes completely over the head of your primary market. The two examples that I touched on last time are Brew Dog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin and the Hart & Thistle breweries Hop Mess Monster. Tactical Nuclear Penguin weighs in […]
Tactical Nuclear Penguin and the Hop Mess Monster
One of the best things about craft brewing is that it tends to reward innovation. New developments are typically welcomed by the consumer and indeed talked about online ad nausea. This is as it should be. While there was certainly a period in Ontario during the last twenty years where […]
The Ontario IPA Challenge
Today, I’d like to talk about marketing: Specifically the most recent ad campaign for Molson Canadian. If you watch prime time TV, you’ve probably seen this one already, but the link to the commercial is here. “We Canadians see things a little differently. We don’t see cliffs, we see diving […]
Molson Canadian – Made Up Canada
One of the things that makes sites like Ratebeer and Beer Advocate work is the fact that, by and large, human physiognomy is a bit same-y. We’ve all got approximately the same number of arms and legs and we’re fairly similar in terms of the amount of sensory data we […]
On Personal Preference and Favorite Beers
Here’s an interesting conceit that occurred to me the other day while I was writing about tasting and opinion: In craft brewing, the brewmaster brings a lifetime of personal experience and taste bias to designing a beer. While there’s a certain amount of cloning of the recipes from other breweries […]
Beer Vs. Wine and the Cult of Personality
One of my beer drinking friends worries too much. Not about things like the number of calories in a beer or gradually developing dementia and cirrhosis or even that all important question: “How did my tab get that high?” No, this is a person that worries about the validity of […]
On Beer Tasting and Opinion
It has to be said that I’m spoiled as it relates to beer. For the last couple of years, my local pub has been Bar Volo, just north of Wellesley on Yonge street. The owner, Ralph Morana, has been able to import a huge number of really interesting, high quality […]