There seems to exist amongst beer writers a sort of unspoken gentleman’s agreement not to excessively disparage the efforts of a craft brewery. It results in a certain amount of imbalance in reporting. Craft good; Macro bad. Small good; Large bad. There’s also a fairly heavy bias against value brands, […]
Reviews
Tuesday, I was invited along to a beer tasting at Burger Bar in Kensington Market. Now, for me, this wasn’t just any beer tasting. Thomas Riley Marshall, former Vice-President of the United States, once opined that what the country needed was a good five-cent cigar. I have always felt that […]
Cheshire Valley and Burger Bar
Sometimes, through a dearth of planning, you end up with a previous engagement during an important awards show and end up in bustling downtown Guelph during the proceedings. The Golden Tap Awards or “Tappies” are an important Ontario beer institution and I was lucky enough to be able to dispatch […]
The 2010 Golden Tap Awards!
The first booth we visited was the Harpoon Brewery out of Boston, started in 1986. I had talked with their representative Chirsan via email, and he was more than happy to explain the beers on offer. There were two of their core products, Harpoon IPA and their UFO unfiltered Hefeweizen […]
Buffalo Brewfest 2010 – Part 2
Bloggers, I have noticed, tend to be fickle, capricious creatures with short attention spans, and I’m no different. After nearly 8 solid weeks of blogging about Canadian beer, I felt like a change of pace from the Ontario beer scene, and who can blame me? The arguments about difficulties producing […]
Buffalo Brewfest 2010 – Part 1
I should preface my thoughts on the Toronto Festival of Beer by saying that I’ve never actually managed to get to the Toronto Festival of Beer before, despite living in the city for the majority of my adult life. In fact, prior to this year the only beer festival that […]
The Toronto Festival Of Beer
On Thursday, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Craft Beer Festival at Hart House at the University of Toronto. I don’t get down to Hart House very much. In fact, I think the last time I was there was to see a production of Guys and […]
The Hart House Craft Beer Festival
This weekend at Bar Volo, they’re having a series of tastings and events based around the launch of a number of Products from MicroBrasserie Charlevoix. This is the second such launch from Bar Volo, who are also the brains behind HMH Negotiants, which is dedicated to importing quality beers from […]
Charlevoix @ Bar Volo
If you’ve been to the LCBO or beer store in the last year, you’ve probably seen large standees advertising Light Lime beers which have been designed to be tasty summer beverages. I thought about buying a number of them and sampling them and making elaborate tasting notes in order to […]
Lime Flavoured Beer – A Sociological Experiment
In gearing up for Ontario Craft Beer Week, it made sense to me to take a look at the latest promotion offered by the Ontario Craft Brewers: OCB Discovery Pack #5, or as the packaging refers to it OCB Discovery Pack Summer 2010. The discovery pack is priced at $9.95 […]