April 2014 – Ben's Beer Blog

Why right now is a great time to drink Canadian beer

Posted on April 16, 2014May 30, 2014 by Ben

Gauge this
H
ave you been down at the pub lately and noticed that your favourite pints are tasting a little better than usual?

Maybe you picked up a six pack at the LCBO and your usual two evening beers turned into three evening beers because your regular brew was just tasting so darn great right now?

Well, as easy as it is to think that the vague scent of spring in the air might be the culprit for your improved drinking experience, I’m going to suggest to you that there’s another reason.

The reason that your beer tastes better than usual is probably that your beer actually is better than usual right now. Continue reading “Why right now is a great time to drink Canadian beer” →

The Friday Link Roundup 4.11.14

Posted on April 11, 2014May 30, 2014 by Ben

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The Friday Link Roundup is a [newish] feature wherein Ben’s Beer Blog lazily points you to other beery things worth reading on the interwebs this week.

	In what is probably the most detailed study of its kind, these academics analyzed almost a million “geocoded beer tweets” to determine what beer brands most get discussed on social media all across the United States. via Pacific Standard.
	A year after making a glass (allegedly) perfect for IPAs, Spiegelau has teamed up with Left Hand Brewing Co. and Rogue to craft this glass that`s (allegedly) perfect for stouts.
	Esquire takes a look at Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co., aka RateBeer’s best new brewery in the world.
	And in local news…dissatisfied with biased polls commissioned by both sides in the Beer Store vs. OCSA debate, Jordan St. John just went ahead and commissioned his own neutral poll.
	On the foodie front, The New York Times takes an enlightening look inside the fridges of 11 of the NY’s top chefs.

Ben’s guide to talking like a beer snob

Posted on April 9, 2014April 9, 2014 by Ben

Last week, I hosted an event organized by Orchestra Marketing that looked to combine the typically forced act of “networking” with the slightly more enjoyable act of drinking beer. Appropriately, they called the event “BeerWorking” and what it boiled down to was essentially non-romantic speed dating wherein the participants received a different beer each time they rotated to a new table of people to meet.

My job, as the evening’s host, was to fill the participants in on some of the finer points of beer tasting (disclosure: I was paid to do this. I don’t wander the streets looking for people to preach beer stuff at [much]).

The event was pretty laid back and pretty much guaranteed to be a success (easy money for me! *mimes guitar solo*) given that the organizers were on the ball, the space was decent, the room was full of people eager to meet other people, and we were all sampling tasty beer from the good folks at Black Oak Brewery; who make some downright decent beverages. Continue reading “Ben’s guide to talking like a beer snob” →