twitter – Ben's Beer Blog

“Republicans buy sneakers too.” ~ Michael Jordan

Should we refuse to buy beer from breweries whose politics don’t seem to align with our own?

That’s the question that was raised on twitter over the weekend when a handful of “beer personalities” stumbled upon the fact that certain Ontario-based breweries had donated to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. At a time when Doug Ford is helming this party and appears to be taking an axe to all manner of social service, educational, and healthcare funding, the perceived association of breweries with the PC party was not something to which the twitterati took kindly. Tweets flew mentioning the breweries by name, demanding an explanation for these donations, and even calling for boycotts of the offending companies.

As it turns out, the outrage-machine that has become twitter appears to have failed to vet their sources and, the database used to induce their rage (The National Post’s Follow The Money campaign donation database) actually only lists data up to 2017—meaning none of the donations discovered by angry tweeters actually even went to Doug Ford’s current iteration of the PC party. It’s not clear to me if this means the boycott is still on or if the torches and pitchforks have gone back into the rhetorical shed for now, but the skirmish got me thinking: Why are we so concerned about the political affiliations of brewery owners, especially when we typically don’t seem to be that concerned with the makers of other commodities? Continue reading “Under the influence: Beer and political donations” →

Earlier today, blogTO, the place where my weekly beer-related posts find their home, posted an article about The Only Cafe, noting that “the Danforth could be about to get its first big swig of micro-brewed ale if The Only Cafe’s latest expansion plans come to fruition.”

Shortly thereafter, a few beer bloggers responded on twitter, upset at the speculative language in the article–you’ll note that the article’s writer Chris Bateman sticks to “coulds” and “mights” and notes that nothing is set in stone because well, nothing is set in stone. They were also upset that blogTO appears to have broken the story before The Only was ready to go public with the news.

Now before I get into it, I want to note a few things: First, I didn’t write this article, I had no knowledge of it, and only found out about The Only’s plans when I read this article myself. (I actually wrote another fan-fucking-tastic article about the Junction for blogTO today that largely seems to have gone unnoticed–but I’m not bitter). Continue reading “The People vs. blogTO vs. The Only: On the nature of beer blogging” →