Month: February 2013

The People vs. blogTO vs. The Only: On the nature of beer blogging

Posted on by Ben

typo

Earlier today, blogTO, the place where my weekly beer-related posts find their home, posted an article about The Only Cafe, noting that “the Danforth could be about to get its first big swig of micro-brewed ale if The Only Cafe’s latest expansion plans come to fruition.”

Shortly thereafter, a few beer bloggers responded on twitter, upset at the speculative language in the article–you’ll note that the article’s writer Chris Bateman sticks to “coulds” and “mights” and notes that nothing is set in stone because well, nothing is set in stone. They were also upset that blogTO appears to have broken the story before The Only was ready to go public with the news.

Now before I get into it, I want to note a few things: First, I didn’t write this article, I had no knowledge of it, and only found out about The Only’s plans when I read this article myself. (I actually wrote another fan-fucking-tastic article about the Junction for blogTO today that largely seems to have gone unnoticed–but I’m not bitter). Continue reading “The People vs. blogTO vs. The Only: On the nature of beer blogging” →

There is no beer for Valentine’s Day

Posted on by Ben

Image

There is no “appropriate” beer for today.

In fact, you don’t have to shoehorn beer into every occasion and you don’t need to make beer relevant to whatever holiday/event/celebration might be occurring on any given day.

Perhaps today, on Valentine’s Day, that’s all the more clear.

Sorry, but beer and Valentine’s day don’t really go together; as much as a large swath of marketing people, beer writers, editors, brewers, etc. might want you to believe it.

Beer isn’t really romantic.

Beer is comforting, yes. Beer is delicious, obviously. Sharing a beer with a loved one can be a great experience. But beer sexy? No. Sorry, it’s just not.  Continue reading “There is no beer for Valentine’s Day” →

London is Getting a Microbrewery

Posted on by Ben

Forked River

I resisted the urge to add an exclamation point to the title of this post; however, I can’t help but hum the tune to “Hallelujah” when I type the words.

You see, I’m from London and lived there for roughly 85% of my life and while London has always had a lot to offer, craft beer has not been one of those things.

Now, with the arrival of Forked River Brewing Company, that will change.

The recently announced craft brewery is the brainchild of David Reed, Andrew Peters, and Steve Nazarian–all London residents and University of Western Ontario graduates (Go Mustangs!). Reed is an engineer who worked a few years running an engineering department at a beverage R&D firm and has been brewing for ten years; Nazarian worked in the biotechnology sector, working in pharmaceutical manufacturing, drug safety testing, and quality control before getting the homebrewing bug in 2004; and Peters is also a microbiologist who got involved with homebrewing clubs in Ottawa and Toronto. Continue reading “London is Getting a Microbrewery” →