Lost Craft Beer – Ben's Beer Blog

Warning: This post is 100% shameless self promotion and even features a solicitation for advertisers. I’m sorry.

About a month ago, it came to my attention that I might actually be the only remaining asshole in the country without his own podcast.

And so, in an effort to prevent my membership in the Self-Important Internet Asshole Association (SIIAA) from lapsing, in mid-July I launched the Beer and Bullshit podcast. In accordance with SIIAA policy (we have amazing meetings in trendy new cafes you’ve never heard of), I am now also obligated to shamelessly promote my podcast on all of my various social media channels and my pandemic-dormant blog.

As noted, the show is called Beer and Bullshit and it will feature a healthy dose of both. If you’ve come to know me from this blog, you obviously know that I am a beer writer and so I will most definitely be taking the conversation that has typically lived on this space to the audio medium to expand on those topics with the people I’ve come to know writing about the beer industry in Ontario for almost a decade. I’ve recorded a handful of shows already and these conversations include a chat with returning co-founder and CEO of Steam Whistle Brewery, Greg Taylor, and an in-depth conversation about contract brewing with Lost Craft Brewing Company owner, Shehan De Silva. I’ve also already recorded a chat with two small brewery-owners that will basically frighten anyone who listens out of any aspirations they might have to become small brewery-owners. Stay tuned! Continue reading “New podcast: Beer and Bullshit” →

Last week, I wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail about contract brewing, the practice wherein brewing companies or virtual breweries rent space from larger facilities to make their beer.

Given the constraints of the 800 words I was alotted, there was much I did not have time to dig in on and so the final piece was something of an overview of the practice, with some brief discussion of why it might be growing in popularity–especially in Ontario–with some insight from a business owner, Shehan De Silva of Lost Craft Beer, who has had success with this model, and from a bricks and mortar brewery owner, Jason Fisher of the Indie Ale House, who is generally opposed to this model for what he feels it brings (or doesn’t) to the industry as a whole.

The article was intentionally targeted at the Globe and Mail’s “general audience” and so much of the beer geekery I might have dug in on was omitted. Accordingly the responses from beer industry folks on twitter, Facebook, and my email were passionate and varied. Interestingly, the article seemed to simply confirm everyone’s beliefs no matter which side of the argument you might be on. Both virtual brewers and bricks and mortar brewers have reached out to me in the interim to say I had represented their side well (Not to toot my own horn, but beep fucking beep).

Also of interest, one owner of a contract brewing facility says he was subsequently inundated with calls from interested new brewing companies. Er, sorry / you’re welcome, Ontario?

Anyway, here are some mostly random tidbits I had hoped to include but couldn’t. Continue reading “Five more points about contract brewing” →