Top five places to drink beer in my house

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For roughly five years, covering the province’s craft beer scene from my condo in Toronto’s downtown, I was often called upon to write lists of the best new local beers, the best places making beers, and the best places to consume those beers.

Last year, I left the cozy confines of my shoebox-sized condo in the big city in favour of a house in London, Ontario with ample room to chase a toddler around. As such, I have less places nearby to go enjoy a beer and, truth be told, less inclination to even leave my property to do so. And so, because they say you ought to write what you know, I thought I’d offer up an insider’s guide to the places I tend to do most of my drinking these days. Here are the top five places to drink beer in my house. Continue reading “Top five places to drink beer in my house”

A beery list of beer lists

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In case you weren’t aware, I also write about beer for local website blogTO. Often, that website asks me to write posts for them in list format. And so, for no reason other than to cure your Monday blues, I decided to compile a collection of them here for what is surely the ultimate in internet entertainment: A list of lists.

Why the hell not? 

20141311-LouisCiferfridge 10 breweries where you can buy growlers in Toronto
20130503-590-MillSt7 The top ten local beers in Toronto for summer 2015
2015425-breweries-toronto The top ten breweries to visit near Toronto
05062013-castros590-02  The top 30 places to drink beer in Toronto by neighbourhood
20121217-old-breweries-toronto-ed The ten oldest breweries in Toronto
2015218-toronto-brewery Five Toronto beer brands you probably haven’t heard of
20111229-craftbeers5 The top ten ways to learn about beer in Toronto
06252013-wren590-05 The top ten underrated beer bars in Toronto
20111221-beer Five Toronto beer trends that need to die in 2015
20111227-parkdale-beer NOSTALGIC BONUS LIST: The top Toronto beer news from 2011 (My first ever list for blogTO. Smell the earnestness!)

 

 

 

The top 10 local beers to drink this winter in Toronto

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It’s that time of year, when the neighbourhood-branded toques come out and we snuggle that slightly stinky stranger on the subway just a little closer to stay warm. It’s also a time when our taste in beer migrates toward the darker, boozier offerings to keep Jack Frost from nipping at our noses – among other extremities.

Here are my picks for local beers to drink this winter in Toronto.

Bellwoods Brewery’s Bring Out Your Dead
Bellwoods Brewery’s ridonkulous imperial stout, aged in cognac barrels for over a year, is rich, warming, and scarily smooth for its potent 12.2% alcohol content. Save this one for one of those days you drop your gloves in the slush and get splashed by the streetcar and need a magic elixir to turn things around. This is it. Available at the Bellwoods Brewery retail store in 650mL bottles.

Mill Street Brewery’s 100th Meridian
Who says winter beers need to be as dark as Frosty’s eyes and as strong as the smell of your hockey equipment? 100th Meridian is the newish organic lager from Mill Street and with just a slightly heartier malt profile than most lagers, is the perfect refresher for after-snowman building or post shinny. Available in 341mL six packs at the LCBO and Beer Store.

Indie Alehouse’s Zombie Apocalypse
Dark, boozy, and a little scary, Zombie Apocalypse is a lot like your twice-divorced uncle on Christmas Eve. For a getaway from family this season, shut the blinds, put on sweatpants, pretend the world no longer exists and enjoy the brief silence with this roasty 10% imperial stout. Until the undead/inlaws come knocking… Available in 750mL bottles at Indie Alehouse’s retail store.

Read the rest of this post over on blogTO…

My Top 10 Beer Lists

If writing for and reading blogTO has taught me anything, it’s this: People fucking love lists.

Accordingly, in what might be the smartest, laziest, SEO-ist thing I’ve ever done, I thought I’d post the ultimate click-bait this Friday afternoon in a blatant attempt at attracting some traffic to the blog while doing as little work as possible: A top ten list of  lists.

Brilliant, right?

Below is a linked list of my favourite lists that I’ve written. And while this is an exercise in supremely lazy writing, it turns out that this is actually pretty damn informative, and not a bad way to get you in the mood to drink a few beers this weekend, if I don’t say so myself.

Now I’ll just share a link to this post on twitter with some trending hashtags and badaboom bada bing, I win the internet today. #bonerpatrol Presumably if this goes well, I might one day conceive of a top ten list of lists of lists, but I assume the universe would implode if I did that so let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Enjoy! Continue reading “My Top 10 Beer Lists”