Category: Beer

It’s always important to remember, whenever we launch headlong into the debate about The Beer Store, that this debate actually happens with a fairly predictable frequency. Indeed, in beer writing circles, it’s been posited that you can count on a rant exposing Ontario’s “foreign-owned monopoly” to surface pretty reliably roughly every six months or so. It’s almost as though beer nerds unofficially take turns having a go at The Beer Store simply for the guaranteed web traffic it typically translates to. It’s our version of shift work.

What even we angry beer writers might not realize though, is just how long this debate has been raging.

To give us some idea, and to maybe lend me a reminder of just how futile all of our recent anti-Beer Store writing probably is, fellow beer scribe Jordan St. John, who is the national beer columnist for QMI and who writes a beer blog called St. John’s Wort, recently sent me an article that he uncovered while doing research for a forthcoming book he co-authored on Ontario’s brewing history (a book which, incidentally, is currently available to pre-order on Amazon.ca).

The subject line of his email, appropriately, was simply “hahahaha” and he had saved the attached file as NOTHING EVER CHANGES.pdf.

The actual title of the article attached, however, was “‘Smelly’ stores cleaned up,” a piece by reporter John Heinzl from The Globe and Mail from December 9, 1991, about The Beer Store. It’s an interesting article for a few reasons, but mainly because it serves as a stark reminder, some 23 years later, that the issues we all currently have with The Beer Store are nothing new, that they’ve faced competitive upstarts before, that they’re happy to make tiny improvements to appease their consumers, and that, ultimately, sadly, they’re probably not going anywhere. Continue reading “The Beer Store monopoly needs to change, says 23-year-old article” →

In case there was any doubt, allow me to make something clear: I routinely receive free beer.

As you might also imagine, most beer writers do. In fact virtually all beer writers with any sort of respectable following have probably received at least a few free beers and I imagine a handful of them got into the beer writing biz  for the express purpose of receiving free beer.

Shocking stuff, I know.

That earth-shattering revelation aside, you might not realize that there are actually some mixed feelings about how we should talk about the fact that virtually all of us receive freebies. On the one hand, there are some beer writers who thoroughly enjoy flaunting their freebies. The job of a beer writer isn’t exactly one that typically makes a ton of dough so the beer perks might be considered something like the job’s “benefits.” For some, I imagine, bragging on social media about being among the first to try the next experimental offering or new one-off from a brewery are simply extensions of those perks. Continue reading “Why you should send me free beer” →

I am running for Mayor.*

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while but about which I’ve always been hesitant given a few obvious obstacles, not the least of which is my fondness for beer.

This past year or so though, the current mayor of Toronto has shown me that people with drinking habits far more serious than mine are capable of winning an election.

Indeed, he’s even shown that one can hold onto their seat in public office–and even register to run for re-election of that office–despite being photographed with now-dead criminals, admitting to smoking crack cocaine while serving as the mayor, drinking and driving, and making reference to “eating pussy” on live TV.

So I figure, what the hell. If this guy can do it, I can totally be mayor.

So I’m running for Mayor.* Continue reading “I want to be the Beer Mayor of Toronto” →