This week in the column, I talked about the growing trend for breweries to produce advent calendars. It’s a fun idea and one that I can get behind. With the short days and cold weather, you want to treat yourself nicely and a single high quality beer a day is […]
Ontario
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
It seems like every six months we get a spate of articles about privatization of liquor, wine and beer sales in Ontario. Currently, it’s in the press again because Tim Hudak is theoretically in favour of selling off the LCBO. Now, personally, I think that privatization of sales is a […]
Every Six Months…
One of the things that we don’t talk about very much in the Ontario beer scene is the initial outbreak of craft brewing in the province. I have the feeling that the reason for this is that it was pretty depressing for a very large number of people. Over the […]
On The Likelihood Of Success OR Consider The Finches
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 Which I Attempt To Be Polite To Bureaucrats
We complain a lot about beer in Ontario. We complain that the LCBO’s monopoly means that we can’t get anything interesting. We complain that The Beer Store is run by huge multinational companies primarily interested in maintaining their control. I am now literally complaining about the fact that we complain, […]
Icelandic Beer Day and Olvisholt Brugghus
Typically, one of the best things about Christmas in Kingston is that I get to revisit, if briefly, an old haunt. The Kingston Brewing Company is the oldest brewpub in Ontario and Canada’s oldest wine producing pub. Back when I lived in Kingston for a short period of time after […]
The Kingston Brewing Company
As you’re all aware by now, Sam Adams Utopias is on its way to Toronto. It’s going to be $115 per bottle. In order to get a bottle, you have to enter a lottery held by the vintages section of the LCBO! That’s some fancy stuff. There are only 70 […]
Sam Adams Utopias: A Public Service Announcement
It’s the end of October, and while for your average pub-goer it’s an excuse to scrape together a last minute costume (“I’m a psychopath. We look just like everybody else.”) for beer nerds it can mean only one thing: Bar Volo’s Cask Days. This is going to be sixth annual […]
Cask Days 2010 – IT BEGINS!
There are, of course, two things that people claim that they don’t want to see being made: law and sausage. One contains a lot of grease , pork and leftover trimmings and the other is delicious sausage. That being said, no one ever claimed that events planning shouldn’t be open […]