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One of the really nice things about having a column with a big circulation is that people send you things to review. Sometimes, it’s not even beer. At one point about a month ago, three books cropped up. One of those was Pete Brown’s Shakespeare’s Local, referred to here by […]

In Which I Review Two Books About Beer

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When I started writing about beer, it was because I was trying to establish some credentials in order to get into brewing school. I did manage, subsequently, to get into brewing school, but then there was a book deal. I found that commuting 5 hours a day to Niagara College […]

So You Want To Be A Brewer: St. John Marzen

A couple of weekends ago, I signed a contract to write a new book with m’colleague Alan McLeod of A Good Beer Blog. The book will be called Ontario Beer: A Heady History of Brewing from the Great Lakes to the Hudson Bay. We’re just kids in a candy store […]

Beer and History: Mesopotamia at the ROM OR Sumer Lovin’

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The other day, I got a haircut. This is not news in and of itself, even though I’m relatively pleased with the haircut. During the smalltalk that goes along with a haircut, I mentioned that I write about beer. It turns out that the stylist had intended at some point […]

Fun With Numbers: Doom and Gloom Edition

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

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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