Yesterday, I went to the launch of The Beer Store’s new venture: The Beer Boutique. One of the criticisms that I keep hearing about The Beer Store is that it is something of a monolithic entity. As one of two corporate entities that is allowed to sell beer in Ontario […]
Beer journalism is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes, it can be a grueling, punishing vocation. I’ve just now pulled in from Montreal on the train, and although the Mondial de la Biere is by no means over, I’m pleased to be well away from it. As beer festivals […]
Mondial 2011 – Il y a des oiseaux dans la ...
(The other day, St.John’s Wort acquired a new employee. Vanessa Scott has graciously volunteered to be my guest blogtographer and executive plus-one. As is sometimes the case with new employees, she’s a bit of a keener and took a rather larger number of pictures than I would have. We went […]
Molson Canadian 67 Sublime – The Return of the ...
It will come as a surprise to few frequent readers that one of my best friends passed away last October. I feel that if I am handing out thank-you’s, one of them should be to my friend Tim Mitchell. He inspired the following piece which I submitted to the Oxford […]
St.John’s Wort – Year One – Brothers in Arms
When I started blogging last year at this time, I didn’t really know exactly how everything was going to shake out. Mostly I started writing about beer because I didn’t get into the first class at Niagara College and I thought to myself that it was eventually going to be […]
St.John’s Wort – Year One
Sometimes, when it’s been constantly rainy for a week and you’ve developed a slight case of the sniffles from being outside signing up pubs for Toronto Beer Week in the pouring rain (some pubs don’t really check their email with the frequency that you might wish. That’s alright. They’re busy […]
Mondial for n00bs: A guide to not getting ganked
It’s definitely a sign that we have a healthy brewing situation in Ontario that it eventually becomes difficult to report on all the things that I go to. I always feel a little bad about that because what that means is that someone has worked really hard to make something […]
Things I Neglected To Mention
It is worth noting that Brewing awards tell you one very important piece of information: Which breweries entered beers for consideration. Labatt did. Apparently Molson did not. (Edit: Thanks to Mark Murphy for pointing out that they did, in fact, enter their Rickard’s brands. Not really a good strategic choice […]
The Ontario Brewing Awards – A Thoroughly Biased Annotation
One of the nice things about the craft beer industry is that generally speaking, everyone wants everyone else to succeed. Also, in the rare instances in which this is not the case, both parties are usually too drunk to effectively fight a duel to the death. It’s very much a […]
So What Can We Learn From Duggan’s?
While my editor at The Sun would probably be shocked to learn that I’m covering the international beat, it was my pleasure last Saturday to get up at oh-dark-thirty and accept an invitation on the behalf of Roland and Russell (Thanks, guys!) to visit Southern Tier in Lakewood, New York. […]