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(Ed. Note: Once in a great long while I will feature a guest writer. This doesn’t happen much anymore as I’m not really hurting for content. That said, earlier in the summer, my Mom texted me a picture of the hop coir she had bought for next season’s crop of […]

Guest Blog: My Mom’s Hop Yard

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Dad texts to see how the trip is going at some point as I’m walking from my Airbnb in Saint Josse Ten Noode toward the Grand Place. My answer, looking back, is less than encouraging: “Brussels smells like pee.” “Well, people have been peeing on it for a thousand years.” […]

Brussels: An Outsider’s Perspective

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“One apricot, Please.” “One kilo?” says the vendor, sizing up a sizeable tourist. “One apricot. Please.” He rumbles a couple from the top of a punnet and finds a ripe apricot, understanding that it is going to be eaten immediately. I feel I need to be doing something while stumbling […]

An Ideal Saturday in Mechelen

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Thumbing out of airplane mode somewhere between wheels down and passport control, I was surprised to learn that Barley Days, a perennially underperforming brewery from Picton, Ontario had decided to take up the Buck-A-Beer challenge. The main surprise would be the constraint that it seemed unlikely to be a profitable […]

A Busman’s Holiday

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I don’t know if you realize this, but the entirety of progress made in the Ontario market in terms of Craft Beer sales was under a Liberal government. The Ontario Small Brewers Association was founded in 2003 and for the entire time that it has existed, including its eventual rebrand […]

Some Thoughts About The New Regime and Ontario’s Beer Market

In writing and researching about beer and food, I’ve elected to start from the ground up. Despite having made that decision, there are always other avenues of approach. Early last week I was at a beer dinner at The Chef’s House at George Brown College featuring four breweries from East […]

Pork Rinds

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Gregg Irwin from Fourpure says, as we’re enjoying the collaborative Pilsner they’ve brewed with Henderson for the launch of a beer that didn’t quite clear customs, that the thing that got him into beer was beerbistro. It was around 2008 and it was the first time he had Dogfish Head. […]

Frites

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Given a recent tweet from the PC Party of Ontario claiming that if they win the election they will bring back “buck a beer” pricing in the province of Ontario, I feel like I now have to whip out the calculator again. Actually, it’s not really a math problem, but […]

“Buck A Beer” Is Absolutely Not Coming Back

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Here’s an idea: Let’s take the three star Michelin chef at his word. Maybe if you’re going to think more about food, you need a deeper well of reference and to break the problem down into components. I tell the kids in the beer appreciation class at George Brown that […]

Salt Peanuts

It’s warm in the sun on Carlaw and the line outside the black box theatre is full of people in new clothes for the season; girls in summer sheath dresses and guys in light sports coats. It’s a Haspel and madras affair and a real fashion statement in a double […]

In Which I Visit The Estrella Damm Gastronomy Conference