I was walking through the LCBO at Summerhill last night on the way back from Niagara College looking for something to drink. Not review, but drink. Sometimes you just want a beer with dinner. If I wanted to review something, I would have picked up a bottle of Trafalgar’s new […]
In Ralph Morana’s ever expanding quest to take over the beer world, Cask Days 2011 has to be seen as a massive success. That being said, it wasn’t without gambles. Any time you move a beer festival to an outdoor location, you face a number of variables that are beyond […]
Cask Days @ Hart House
On Friday, I was one of the judges for the Stella Artois Draught Masters National Championship at One King West in Toronto. Never having really taken part in an event of that scope before, I didn’t know exactly what to expect going in. In terms of writing about beer and, […]
The Stella Artois Draught Master Competition
Mostly, brewing school tends to deal with biology and chemistry, but one of the major things that I’ve discovered is that there’s a significant amount of quantum physics involved. At least, for me that’s the case. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the concept of Schrodinger’s cat. Essentially, it’s […]
Let’s Kill The Cat And See What Happens
When you receive an email from an organization called The Society, inviting you to a private dinner, there are a number of possible responses. They range from bafflement (which I experienced fairly significantly) to a sense of impending dread that you might be on the radar of the illuminati or […]
The Social Ramble Ain’t Restful
As you may have noticed, if you read the blog frequently: I like to crunch numbers, me. Recently, because I’ve had a business math class at Niagara College, there has been less of this kind of thing, but I’m here to tell you that I was spurred into action whilst […]
Fun With Numbers – The BMO Nesbitt Burns Edition
“Despotic the new regime was undoubtedly from the start.” This is a sentence that I have carried with me since grade 10, and it illustrates a point that I had quite forgotten until I got into brewing school. Textbooks are frequently poorly written. In the case of my grade 10 […]
The Adventures of Johnny Barleycorn
Competition tends to bring out the worst in people and for all that brewers exist in a sort of brotherhood (siblinghood, so as not to exclude the brewsters) most of the time, there is a significant amount of smacktalk that surrounds events where there’s going to be a significant amount […]
Toronto Beer Week 2011 – Day One – Drinking Sumac, ...
As regular readers will be aware, I have somehow managed to get into the Niagara College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program. It’s my intention to write about the experience whenever the mood takes me. I doubt that I will be talking frequently about the content of the courses, as […]
Time Spent in Reconnaissance
(Disclaimer: This is essentially twice as long as most of my blog posts. Go make a sandwich or something and then come back and read it.) Do you know, as I was walking along Renforth drive over the 427 on my way to the Molson plant this week, I was […]