Do have $500 you are thinking about flushing down the toilet or setting on fire?
If you answered yes, hang on one second. I’d like to let you know about an even more wasteful thing to do with that money.
The good folks at Stella Artois, the world’s best selling Belgian beer, have created a $500 Stella Artois chalice adorned with Swarovski crystals. Continue reading “So there’s a $500 Stella Artois glass”
Please forgive me while I drag this dead horse out of the stable so that I might beat it once more, but did you know that the practice of purchasing draught lines in bars is illegal?
Obviously you do know that, because you read my blog and are therefore brilliant, well-informed about beer, socially conscious, and, one can assume, extremely attractive physically. But if for some reason you were out of town or asleep when I wrote about the subject for Torontoist back in January, allow me to sum up the issue in a single sentence: The practice of paying a licensed establishment or providing that establishment incentives in order to guarantee a brewery’s exclusivity in that licensed establishment is illegal under the province’s liquor legislation, and yet it still happens all the time.
And, as I discovered while writing that article and have confirmed in the time that’s passed since I wrote said article, bar owners and big breweries are typically wholly aware this practice is illegal, but, to put it bluntly, don’t give a shit. Continue reading “Excuses I’ve heard for purchased tap lines”
As part of my ongoing series, The best beer I’ve ever had, I put the call out to other beer folks and ask them to detail their “best beer” experiences for me.
For today’s instalment, Sam Corbeil, Brewmaster at Sawdust City Brewing Company, shares his story.
I‘ve drank a lot of beers in my day. Many of them have been fantastic and entirely memorable, but the “Best Beer I’ve Ever Had” was completely and utterly unmemorable. The beer itself was more of a catalyst in a pivotal moment in my life–a bit player in a larger scene. Maybe a long time ago, I used to know what type of beer it was but like a smell that conjures up a distant memory, this beer lives only in the cavernous recesses of my sub-conscious. Deep regression hypnosis may be the only way to dig it up. Also, the actual type of beer is some what unimportant, it’s the fact that beer was present at this moment in my life that is more to the point.
Okay, let me set the scene. Continue reading “The best beer I’ve ever had: Sam Corbeil”
As Ontarians’ beer-drinking tastes grow increasingly locally oriented and our local options for beer keep growing, it seems something like the natural progression of the province’s current beer trends that a brewer would eventually go the extra step and make a beer that is not only made here in Ontario, but is also made entirely from ingredients grown right here.
Well, one new brewing company has opted to do precisely that and, in doing so, The Ontario Beer Company has perhaps shown why no one else has done it thus far: it’s really really difficult.
Founded by two people with some background in the province’s beer-making scene, OBC is the result of a partnership between Duggan’s brewery founder Mike Duggan and the guy responsible for the great beer coming out of the nano-brewery at Get Well, Brad Clifford.
The duo first met when Clifford, then a fledgling homebrewer, was a regular at Duggan’s Brewery on Victoria (RIP). He started helping out around the brewhouse and actually took part in brewing an early ancestor for their beers to come when they used all Ontario malt and local hops to brew Duggan’s #12, perhaps the first “all Ontario beer.”
Sometime after Duggan’s closed down, Clifford set up the nanobrewery at Get Well and the duo partnered up a few more times to brew an all Ontario pilsner, stout, and an ale. A commercially available all-Ontario beer was something they had discussed for a while but it took considerable planning to actually make it happen.
[Read the rest of this article over on blogTO where it was originally published on October 28, 2013…]
Clearly, I’m among those who feel that the province’s beverage alcohol retail system needs modernizing.
I think most would agree I’ve been pretty vocal on that subject in the past.
You’d think then, that I’d be on board with recent initiatives from the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) to lobby the province to let them sell booze.
Well I’m definitely not. Booze in convenience stores is a dumb idea.
In fact, allowing convenience stores to sell alcohol will simply give us more of the same shitty system we already have, just in more locations. And more of the same isn’t better, it’s worse. Continue reading “Allowing booze sales in convenience stores is a dumb idea”
Most people who know a thing or two about distilling have heard of the “angel’s share,” the term given to that small portion of spirits or wine that is lost to evaporation during the barrel-aging process.
Few however, have likely heard of the “devil’s cut” a term being given to the portion of spirits that’s absorbed by the barrel the spirit is aged in.
Now, almost certainly, so few have heard this term because it’s a clever marketing term invented by the folks at Jim Beam, the largest whisky distributor in the world–but nevertheless, it’s an intriguing concept (hey, I’m as savvy as the next big-brand cynic but a cool gimmick is a cool gimmick–especially if it has “devil” in its name!).
Thankfully, the very folks who invented a term for that booze that’s lost to the barrel have also “developed a proprietary process that actually pulls the rich whiskey trapped inside the barrels’ wood after they’re emptied.”
What luck! Continue reading “The Devil’s Cut”
Do you consider yourself a gentleman?
If so, I’ve got some news for you. On November 22nd, a show is coming to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre just for you. Indeed, it’s The Gentlemen’s Expo, designed, so their website says, for those men who’ve “ever wondered what the difference between scotch and bourbon is, how to grill a perfect steak, change your own oil, fix a leaky faucet, start a business, or put together an outfit without asking your wife/girlfriend/mom.”
Well if that sounds like you, I’ve got three important things to tell you:
1) If you don’t know the difference between bourbon and scotch, you need to turn off the computer and go make some serious changes in your life right now,
2) The slashes in “wife/girlfriend/mom” above are meant to stand in for the word “or.” If you have a person who is all of those things to you, you also need to turn off the computer and make some changes in your life right now, and finally,
3) I want to send you to the Expo, for free! Continue reading “Contest: Calling all gentlemen”
Cask Days began in 2005 on the patio of barVolo as a fairly intimate gathering of attendees who were enthusiastic about cask-conditioned beer. They sipped unpasteurized, unfiltered beer which had been carbonated naturally via a secondary fermentation inside one of the 21 casks on hand that day.
This past weekend, celebrating the 9th anniversary of Cask Days over two brisk days at the Evergreen Brick Works, it was clear that the event has grown from its humble beginnings on Yonge Street to become a full-blown beer phenomenon.
Here’s how the Morana family, those crafty organizers of Cask Days, did it.
For starters, they’ve steadily increased the amount of beer available, upping the amount of casks available ten-fold. This past weekend saw 230 different casks of beer from 124 different brewers offered over the course of three sessions. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly 9200 litres of beer — enough to fill five of these sweet kiddie-pool-and-slide combos available at Walmart (idea for next year’s Cask Days?).
(Read the rest of this article over on blogTO where it was originally published on October 21, 2013…)
In case the title didn’t tip you off about the content of this post, I’ll cut right to the tweet-worthy and SEO-friendly portion of today’s entry: the delicious vanilla porter that Joel Manning and co. have been releasing seasonally on draught for the last four years is slated to come to a store near you. Yes, Mill Street Brewery’s Vanilla Porter is coming to the LCBO.
This is–speaking frankly as a person who loves a good dark, rich, winter beer–great fucking news. This is a delicious beer.
And, since I’ll take any occasion to hop on my soapbox, I’d also like to point out that, like a lot of beer brewed by those folks out in the Distillery District, Mill Street’s Vanilla Porter doesn’t get enough love from the city’s beer fanatics. I mean, it’s undeniable that it’s a good beer, but people always seem hesitant to put it up on a pedestal like they would something from say, Great Lakes Brewery, perhaps owing to the fact that Mill Street is generally seen as something like a new mid-level category of brewer one might call “big craft.” Continue reading “Mill Street Brewery’s Vanilla Porter is Coming to the LCBO”
As part of my ongoing series, The best beer I’ve ever had, I put the call out to other beer folks and ask them to detail their “best beer” experiences for me.
For today’s installment, Erica Graholm, Brewer at Steam Whistle, shares her story.
I‘m really lucky, I’ve had a lot of beer “moments” in my life. Trying my first Weissbier in Germany 10 years ago is the earliest one I can remember. I didn’t know beer could taste like that!
It’s the experience that turns a great beer into a beer moment though, and I’ll even go one step further and suggest that the experience is heightened when there is an element of surprise involved. Don’t get me wrong, trying five different versions of Bourbon County Stout at a tasting led by the brewers at Goose Island last year was absolutely incredible, but I knew I was in for a great time when I bought the ticket months earlier.
I was in Chicago on vacation the year before and my partner told me the one thing we absolutely could not miss was a visit to the Three Floyds brewpub about 45 minutes outside the city. It seemed like a long way to go and transportation was an issue since neither of us wanted to DD. I had tried one or two other Three Floyds beers before and was under the mistaken impression that the reputation of the brewery was a bit inflated. Continue reading “The best beer I’ve ever had: Erica Graholm”
Ben's Beer Blog 