Month: September 2018

A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of beer drinkers in brewpubs and breweries from being a burden on their parents or other patrons

Posted on by Ben

It is a melancholy object to those who choose to frequent brewpubs and breweries when they are forced to see communal tables, patios, and even bar tops populated by tired, weary parents sipping pints with their children in tow.

Almost everyone who chooses to go out to a local brewery for a tasting flight or just a pint or two would agree that having to see living breathing proof that other humans in your community have chosen to procreate is an experience that is inversely proportional to actually enjoying that beer-drinking experience. Human children are, at best, a nuisance. They’re loud, they spill things, and they demand unreasonable things like glasses of water, or, depending on their age, crayons or activities that can take the attention of bartenders or servers who could be doing more productive things like bringing more beer to legal-aged paying customers.

That said, it seems unfair to punish those beer drinkers among us who have had the misfortune of breeding, whether by accident or by design, simply because we may not be able to find childcare during the period in which we require alcohol, which, I can attest with certainty is just as often as the childless require it, if not much more. Continue reading “A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of beer drinkers in brewpubs and breweries from being a burden on their parents or other patrons” →

Toronto Beer Week and AB InBev

Posted on by Ben

infiltration
[in-fil-trey-shuh n]
noun
a method of attack in which small bodies of soldiers or individual soldiers penetrate the enemy’s line at weak or unguarded points in order to assemble behind the enemy position and attack it from the rear, harass enemy rear-area installations, etc.

Toronto Beer Week, which was created in 2010 by a group of like-minded publicans, beer writers, cask ale supporters, homebrewers, and craft beer enthusiasts, launches today.

The week-long celebration of local beer was originally launched with no sponsor investment and a stated purpose of helping promote the city’s burgeoning craft beer movement.

This year, it seems like that’s definitely changed.

Each consecutive year has seen TBW grow even larger in scale and, in the opinion of some grumbling beer nerds, become more and more marketing-focused in its attempts to attract evermore new participating bars and breweries.

In May of this year, Toronto Beer Week was acquired by St Joseph Media, the company that produces Toronto Life and Fashion magazine, and many of these same beer nerds wondered what this would mean in terms of the tone and direction of the nine day series of once craft-beer-focused events.

As the event week begins its ninth year today, it seems to me that we might have a clear indication that TBW has officially jumped the shark given that it now includes Goose Island Brew Pub among the list of participating breweries. Continue reading “Toronto Beer Week and AB InBev” →

Owen Sound’s Mudtown Station

Posted on by Ben

With over 270 breweries in Ontario, it is increasingly easy to embark on a little beer tourism almost everywhere you go in the province.

So this past week, on an extended vacation with the family at my in-laws’ cottage in Southampton, when I had an urge to get out for a little while and have a beer, I was thankful to have a few options in the area.

Finding no takers who wanted to join me, I opted to embark on a solo mission–and may or may not have been secretly thankful for some alone time. Sleeping in the same bunkie as your flu-ish wife, your five year-old, and a puppy with some kind of weird stomach thing that made him spray foamy diarrhea tends to detract from the relaxing vistas. But I digress.

Having already that week hit up my most local cottage brewery, Outlaw Brew Co on the main strip of Southampton, I opted instead to explore the fairly newly-opened Mudtown Station, which was about 30 minutes away in Owen Sound.

Opened roughly three months ago, Mudtown Station is owned and operated by Morag Kloeze, who comes to Owen Sound by way of the Niagara Brewing College and Neustadt Brewery, and most recently as the brewmaster at Tobermory Brewing Co. Kloeze and her parents had an opportunity to lease the CPR station in their home town of Owen Sound and Mudtown was born.

The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound area actually has a fairly storied history in Ontario’s liquor lore, featuring a legacy of bootlegging and prohibition that some local tourism material touts in a “Saints and Sinners” tour you can take of places to eat and drink in the area.

So it is kind of a fun irony to see Owen Sound become home to not only a new brewery, but also one of Ontario’s few female brewmasters and co-owners. The city is essentially the birth place of Ontario’s prohibition movement and in 1847 was home to the formation of the first Canadian chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Owen Sound was actually legally dry from 1906 to 1972. Presumably 66 dry years can make a town thirsty, so thank goodness for Mudtown. Continue reading “Owen Sound’s Mudtown Station” →