The best Ontario made beverage that I tasted over the course of the last three years wasn’t a beer. It was a cider. I had been signing copies of Lost Breweries of Toronto at the Only Café’s Winter Beer Fest in 2015 and I’d been sat next to the cider […]
3 It sometimes feels as though I shall be inexorably writing about the launch of a brewpub at 75 Victoria Street. This will be the third time that I’m covering exactly that topic in the space of five years. Originally the building housed Michael Hancock’s Bavarian backed Denison’s brewpub, which lasted […]
In Which I Visit Batch
15 Molson Coors has become more interesting as a company of late. This has to do with unpredictability. In previous years (as little as half a decade ago) they were locked in mortal combat with ABI’s Labatt in terms of their release schedule and vice versa. Bud Light Lime Mojito? Coors […]
John H. R. Molson & Bros 1908 Historic Pale Ale
Growing up I was terribly serious. I was 50 when I was 16. I read Hobbes and Marco Polo and Boccaccio and Cervantes for fun. That said, my favorite book, the one that I returned to more often than not, was an odd graphic novel that I’ve never seen in […]
Book Review: The Comic Book Story of Beer
2 (Ed. Note: It is probably a conflict of interest to review a book by the guy who has just written a foreword to your own upcoming book. I’m still going to attempt to do it without favoritism. Hopefully he won’t alter the foreword to include phrases like “tubby, flatulent drunkard” […]
Book Review: The Beer and Food Companion by Stephen Beaumont
(Ed. Note: Every Christmas, they send me books to review in the hopes that I will publicize them. I’m usually writing my own book and I’m not sold on the strategy. Anyone can sell a book at Christmas time. Everyone needs help selling them at any other time. Welcome to […]
Book Review: Beer, Food, and Flavor by Schuyler Schultz
4 (Ed. Note: When leaving your blog to languish untended for several months, you want to give it a bit of an airing out before moving back into day to day possession. This piece on a trip to Windsor is lamentably delayed, but it has been kicking around the cobwebs at […]
In Which I Visit Windsor
2 An oddly large portion of the subject when we talk about breweries selling out has to do with the concept of indebtedness. Internet response to the news of an acquisition is laughably predictable. There’s typically a certain amount of moderately witty badinage followed by exasperated outrage, threats of boycott and […]
Why do Breweries Sell out (Part Two)
3 One of the questions that people seem to ask more and more frequently these days is: “Why do breweries sell out?” Ultimately, the motivations behind such a decision have not changed much since the advent of industrialization in brewing in the late 18th and early 19th century. This is a […]
Why Do Breweries Sell Out? (Part One)
2 Sitting here in a hotel room and looking across the river at Detroit’s skyline, it seems like an odd time to talk about a trip I recently took to the other end of the province. The difficulty with writing the Ontario Craft Beer Guide is that Ontario is four times […]