Tag: craft beer

Danforth Shmanforth: To the Roundhouse Craft Beer Festival!

Posted on by Ben

Unless you live in a cave, you’re probably aware that this weekend is the annual tribute to most things Greek of the Danforth (think more souvlaki and Greek music, less economic collapse and political turmoil).

In fact, this weekend is the 19th annual Taste of The Danforth,  Canada’s largest street festival, which, according to their website, welcomes over 1.3 million visitors (I’m assuming that’s cumulative…).

And while I’m a big fan of gyros, the odd bottle of Mythos, and the Taste of The Danforth generally, this year I think I’ll skip it.

Instead, I’m heading to the first annual Roundhouse Craft Beer Festival, taking place, appropriately enough, at Roundhouse Park. Continue reading “Danforth Shmanforth: To the Roundhouse Craft Beer Festival!” →

Drinking Ontario – The Rifleman’s Ration

Posted on by Ben

For the past week or so, I’ve been at a cottage which is situated virtually on the beach at Lake Huron and which, for whatever reason, has virtually no cell phone reception, and no trace of anything like an “internet service provider.” Accordingly, as you might imagine, I’ve had very few decisions to make every day aside from how early I should crack my first beer and when I need to fire up the barbecue for lunch. I’ve also had ample time under the influence to create stupid word combinations–or stuwocombos–in an effort to save time.

It’s possible I got too much sun.

Anyway, in order to prepare for my vacation, I first took a trip to the Summerhill LCBO, aka my happy place. As a sort of experiment and a means by which to drunkenly preach my own fiercely local brand of craft beer evangelism when people joined my wife and I at the cottage, I made it my mission to bring up almost exclusively Ontario-made beers. Continue reading “Drinking Ontario – The Rifleman’s Ration” →

Six Things You Didn’t Know About Steam Whistle

Posted on by Ben

20120618 - Steam Whistle tap.JPG

Arguably no beer is more implicitly associated with Toronto than Steam Whistle. Their easy-to-drink style and prominence in most bars in the city makes Steam Whistle a reliable go-to beer for a lot of beer-drinking Torontonians and the tourist-friendly location of their brewery means that Steam Whistle is a requisite stop for a lot of visiting Jays fans looking to get a bit of a buzz before surrendering to the $9-for-a-watery-macro-lager nonsense that is the Roger’s Centre. Like it or not when people think beer and Toronto, they most likely think Steam Whistle. But how much do you really know about Toronto’s biggest craft brewer?

Here are six things you probably didn’t know about that beer in the distinctive green bottle. Continue reading “Six Things You Didn’t Know About Steam Whistle” →

Your Roadmap to Craft Beer in Toronto

Posted on by Ben

There’s probably nothing more frustrating than being out in the city, suddenly struck with a powerful thirst and you find yourself surrounded by nothing but franchise bars pouring macro-lagers.

It’s these rage-inducing times–when servers offer up Blue when you ask for something local–that led me to create this, a Roadmap to Craft Beer in Toronto.

It’s just a custom Google map (so you may find it easier to navigate through Google as opposed to in this embedded map), but I endeavoured to include the finest bars offering up craft beer in the city, as well as local breweries, and Toronto-area LCBOs so that you’ll always be able to find the closest craft beer.

May you never be forced to drink a Stella again!

This should probably be an iphone app or something (if it isn’t already) but I don’t have the technical know-how or patience for that (I drink a lot). If you’re an app developer, please feel free to steal this idea so that I may a) use it and then b) sue you.

Got a great beer bar that I missed? Let me know about it in the comments section.

Beer? Cocktails? Liquor? Problem solved.

Posted on by Ben

There’s been a lot of debate lately in the world of Toronto alcohol enthusiasts over the merit of cocktails.

Toronto lifestyle publications like the Grid and blogTO seem to have amped up their cocktail coverage, and stories abound in the dailies about the complex new places that mixology is taking Toronto’s drinkers.

The mixed-libation trend seems even to have spilled over (pun!) into the world of beer.

Beer cocktails seem to have reached a new level of prominence and you can even find beer cocktail recipes from certified cicerone, beerologist, and blogger, Mirella Amato in the current issue of the LCBO’s Food and Drink magazine.

[Semi-related sidenote: Back in March the beer cocktail debate really began to rage (as much as online writing about beer can rage…) when Andy Crouch, author of BeerScribe.com called for “Death to Beer Cocktails.”

Ezra Johnson-Greenough, founder of The New School craft beer commentary blog then responded with a somewhat-less-than-subtly-titled “Andy Crouch is a Big Fat Idiot” and various other beer bloggers joined the fray on both sides.

The fracas ultimately culminated in Toronto’s own Stephen Beaumont calling for cooler heads to prevail by noting the “Futility of Either/Or Thinking.”]

In short, things seem to be getting pretty crazy in the world of Toronto libations in general and, as Christine Sismondo summed up in an excellent HuffPo article this week about how exactly we got here, the “mixology” craziness has even reached a point where “today’s professional craft cocktail makers create syrups from scratch and hand-carve ice to achieve specific levels of coldness suited to the level of dilution required.”

Uh, alright then.

Toronto bartenders, it seems, are going to great and weird lengths to one-up each other with the most original concotions and some of them seem to bringing all the annoyingly pretentious aspects of foodie-ism to my favourite past-time; namely, getting drunk.

Continue reading “Beer? Cocktails? Liquor? Problem solved.” →

Why are you still drinking shitty beer?

Posted on by Ben

Not so long ago, I started writing about beer on a regular basis.

Initially my involvement with beer was a pretty casual affair, allowing me to pair two things I’ve always loved; drinking and writing.

Though after a few months writing about beer, meeting with local brewers, attending beer events, and drinking great beer, it became clear I was becoming a little obsessed with beer.

These days I spend a considerable amount of my time reading about, talking about, writing about, and of course drinking, beer and it’s my hope this obsession will soon expand into the world of making beer–but more on that later.

So while I currently cover general beer happenings for the Toronto-centric blogTO, I thought it was high time I had my own place to collect my thoughts on all things beer and document the sure-to-be-messy process of learning how to make my own.

And so, given that I have this new forum, I thought I’d use my inaugural post to pose a question to the city’s beer drinkers: Why are you still drinking shitty beer?

Continue reading “Why are you still drinking shitty beer?” →