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Beer, Beats & Bites (72 items)

July 20, 2008
21:20
Molson Presents a Beer School for Bloggers
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Due to the fact that I write about beer (and occasionally other things) in a number of different places, I get a lot of press releases and invitations and freebees. This is nothing new to me - I spent many, many years as a music writer and DJ, and received an absolutely insane number of [...]
July 02, 2008
23:43
The Return of Unibroue
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(Sorta creepy photo borrowed from evilloop.com) The title of this post is a bit misleading, as Unibroue never actually went anywhere. But for the last couple of years, their presence was on the wane in Ontario. Their products were being delisted from retail outlets, and while Blanche de Chambly was still a popular draught choice at [...]
June 24, 2008
15:32
Duvel acquires Liefmans
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Unlike some of the more popular beer blogs, I don’t report much in the way of industry news here, instead taking a more personal approach and writing about beers I’ve tried or events I’ve attended. I’m making an exception today, though, because this is some pretty big news (and pretty good news) that’s been in the [...]
June 23, 2008
23:08
I Heart Hopfenstark
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As I mentioned in my infamous “Ass Sandwich” post a while back, one of the highlights of my trip to Montreal in February was meeting Fred Cormier of Microbrasserie Hopfenstark. It was a highlight not only because he’s a great guy with a lot of passion for beer, but also because he’s a very generous [...]
June 17, 2008
7:36
TAPS Magazine - New(ish) Issue & Old(ish) Column
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As I was finishing up my contributions to the upcoming Summer issue of TAPS magazine last week, it occurred to me that I’d completely forgotten to post a mention here back when the Spring issue came out back in early May. So, here’s the mention: The Spring issue of TAPS magazine came out in early May. [...]
June 16, 2008
15:13
Dogfish Head Dinner: Hot Damn!
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Working at the same place for almost 20 years generally means you get some nice perks (assuming you work at the sort of place that provides perks, of course), which is why I am lucky enough to have five weeks of paid vacation a year. The problem, though, is that I’m really slack about taking [...]
May 30, 2008
22:52
The Very Beery Month Of May
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Wow, nearly a month since my last post. That’s a long time, even for an irregular and inconsistent blogger like myself. Lotsa things have been keeping me busy - in fact, looking back at my social calendar for the last month, you could say that I’ve just been too busy drinking good beer (+ other [...]
May 04, 2008
23:44
The Session #15: How It Started
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It seems to have become a tradition for me to post my contributions to The Session a day or two late. (Or in the case of last month, not at all - which is too bad, since the topic was an interesting one that I would’ve liked to have tackled if I had the time.) So [...]
May 02, 2008
15:39
Southern Tier Beer Dinner
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As usual, others have beat me to it, but I figure since I was a host and co-presenter of the Southern Tier beer dinner at the Academy of Spherical Arts last Friday, I should probably post a little write-up about it. This was the first beer dinner presented by import agency Roland + Russell for one [...]
April 30, 2008
0:11
Beer Stuff on Taste T.O.
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A couple of weeks ago, I sat down for a chat with Ralph Morana of Volo, one of the best beer bars in Toronto. He recently celebrated his 20th anniversary of ownership (although it’s only been a go-to place for beer for the last 5 of those), and we talked about the ups and downs [...]
April 24, 2008
18:04
You’d Think We’d Never Seen An IPA Before
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Those of you who don’t live in a jurisdiction with a nanny state style liquor board will probably find this hard to believe, but the fact that Southern Tier IPA is soon going to be available on the general stock list at the LCBO is a Really Big Deal to Ontario beer geeks. For the [...]
April 22, 2008
23:57
Earth Day: Think Global, Drink Local
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As I write this, there are just a few minutes left in Earth Day 2008, but it’s not to late for me to mention that for beer drinkers, one of the best ways to help the environment any day of the year is to drink local. Every extra mile that a beer has to travel [...]
April 18, 2008
14:29
Bavaria/Koningshoeven Beer Dinner
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This past Tuesday evening, the unofficial Month Of Beer Dinners continued with a dinner at the website-less Abbot On The Hill that featured three courses paired with beers from the Dutch breweries Bavaria and Koningshoeven. I must admit that when I first heard about this dinner, I was a bit confused by the beer selections. Aside [...]
April 15, 2008
16:48
Beer Steps Up To The Gourmet Plate
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Since starting Taste T.O. early last year, Sheryl and I have been going to a good number of gourmet food events, and as you’d expect, the vast majority of them feature wine as the beverage of choice, with the beer choices (if there even are any) often limited to one or two mainstream offerings. So [...]
April 10, 2008
23:02
Fuller’s Beer Dinner
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This past Tuesday, thanks to the fine folks at Premier Brands, I had the opportunity to attend a Fuller’s Beer Dinner at the Duke of Westminster pub here in Toronto. The main purpose of the event was to mark the official launch of Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew on draught in Canada (previously, it was only [...]
March 23, 2008
13:57
LCBO: Let’s Censor Bunnies, OK?
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Like most government-run liquor boards, Ontario’s LCBO has their fair share of rules and regulations that producers and agents have to follow in order to get their products into the system. Some of them have at least a semblance of logic, such as ensuring that the alcohol percentage on the label matches that of the [...]
March 21, 2008
17:30
Beer - It’s What’s For Dinner
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If you’ve been paying attention to The Bar Towel recently - or more specifically, to my news posts and the Beer Events forum over there - you’ll know that there are a crazy number of beer dinners coming up in Toronto over the next couple of months. I’ll be trying to make it out to [...]
March 20, 2008
23:55
Mixed Pack From Pennsylvania
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A few weeks ago, through an odd series of events, I found myself in possession of a mixed case of beer from Pennsylvania. I’d tried a fair number of PA beers before, from breweries like Victory, Sly Fox and Weyerbacher, but this specially assembled collection contained an assortment from three breweries that I wasn’t very [...]
March 18, 2008
23:43
My Column, Let Me Show You It
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It’s been a while since I’ve done a round-up of my recent Beer Of The Week columns on Taste T.O. So, here is a round-up of my recent Beer Of The Week columns on Taste T.O.: March 18th: Jenlain Bière de Printemps March 11th: Spring Beer Preview March 4th: O’Doul’s Amber & Labatt Blue De-Alcoholized Pilsener February 26th: Grand River [...]
March 16, 2008
10:11
Event Review: Pepperwood Beer Festival
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(Yeah, it’s a bit lame to be blogging about an event a full three weeks after it happened, but I had this half-written before computer problems and a bad flu put me out of commission for a while, and I didn’t want to it go to waste…) Located on the pretty waterfront strip in Burlington, about [...]
0:20
Um… yuck.
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So, I was checking my blog stats for the past couple of weeks, and I noticed that my provocatively titled “Montreal - Part 2: Ass Sandwich” post was visited by a couple of people who were searching for the phrase “ass sandwich” via Google. Ends up that my post is one of the top Google hits [...]
March 07, 2008
17:25
The Session #13: Organic Beer
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It’s the first Friday of the month, which means that I should be drinking an organic beer - since that’s the theme of this month’s Session as chosen by Chris O’Brien over at Beer Activist - and then writing a post about it. But I’m not. It’s not that I’m anti-organic. My wife and I actually eat [...]
February 26, 2008
14:04
Beer Academy at Hart House
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Last Thursday night, Hart House on the University of Toronto campus presented their first (and hopefully not last) Beer Academy event hosted by Mirella Amato, a woman who is a relatively new face in Toronto’s beer scene, but a very knowledgeable one. Attended by roughly 40 people - most of them beer newbies - the evening [...]
0:05
Montreal - Part 2: Ass Sandwich
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Saturday in Montreal found me suffering a slight case of The Morning After The Night Before, with an empty stomach calling for something tasty and a little greasy, so I was glad when Paul went out to grab a Coke and discovered a promising looking breakfast place just around the corner. Restaurant Mosaik (5201 St-Laurent) [...]
February 17, 2008
18:27
Montreal - Part 1: Pata-Chou!
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I’ve only visited Montreal a few times, but two of those visits have played a pretty big role in increasing my interest in craft beer. The first time was in 2000, when I attended the first instalment of MUTEK, an electronic music and arts festival that is held there every May. My time there happened to [...]
February 06, 2008
23:45
Perry Mason Leaves Heritage/Scotch-Irish
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(No, not that Perry Mason. I’m talking about the one who makes beer.) I’ve already been scooped by Troy and myself, but I still wanted to mention here the sort-of-sad but not completely surprising news that Perry Mason, the founder of Scotch-Irish Brewing, has left Heritage Brewing, the brewery that purchased the Scotch-Irish name and brands [...]
February 02, 2008
23:22
The Session #12: Barley Wine
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How sad is this: I’m so late getting my post up for this month’s Session that not only did I miss the wrap-up post, but I also missed the post-wrap-up post. I guess this means that I don’t have to go into any great detail about the barley wine style in general, since several others [...]
February 01, 2008
7:02
A Slightly Delayed Session
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Due to the fact that I’m seemingly unable to read a calendar, I didn’t get my post for this month’s Session done on time, and I likely won’t have a chance to drink and write about the beer I’m planning on covering until some point over the weekend. So watch for my late contribution to [...]
January 31, 2008
23:01
Ice(wine) Ice(wine) Baby
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Last Saturday, my wife and I took a day trip. This may not seem like a big deal, but for two people with no driver licenses and two dogs, getting away together for a whole day is a rarity. The occasion was a bus tour to the Niagara Icewine Festival, with visits to a couple of [...]
January 23, 2008
23:33
OCB Winter Beers - A Review Round-Up
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Back in mid-December, I received a media pack from the Ontario Craft Brewers containing eight holiday/seasonal/dark beers. For a number of reasons, I was pretty slow to drink them all, with the final bottle finally being cracked a couple of nights ago (although I wish I had opened it sooner, for reasons noted below…), so [...]
January 20, 2008
19:04
Can It!
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Recently, a thread was started on the Bar Towel forum that was intended to be a place for people to discuss what they saw as positive developments in the beer selection at the LCBO. Given that hating the LCBO seems to be considered by many as a prerequisite for being a craft beer drinker in [...]
January 16, 2008
0:14
Dark Duo from Down Home
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Like most people who live in Toronto, my wife and I weren’t born here. My family is from Summerside, Prince Edward Island (although I only spent a few years there before we moved to a small town in Ontario), and Sheryl is originally from Halifax. We both ended up in Toronto around the same time [...]
January 13, 2008
15:17
Celebrating a New Web Site
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I’m not sure exactly when the changes happened, but I recently noticed that Celebrator Beer News have updated their website with a very spiffy new look and a lot more content. This is great news for those of us who live outside of the regular distribution area (being from California, the mag has a bit [...]
January 05, 2008
17:25
The Session #11: Doppelbocks
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In case it hasn’t been made obvious by my tendency to post event reviews and other things kinda late at times, I can be a bit of a procrastinator. I’m especially prone to putting things off when I need to write about something that I’m not overly familiar with. Hence, my day-late post for this month’s [...]
January 01, 2008
17:14
2007: My Year In Beer
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It’s the start of a new year, when people like to look back and write about what they liked and didn’t like about the last 12 months. Personally, I’ve never really been a “best of” or “top ten” kinda guy. Even when I was doing my radio show, I found it hard to do year-end [...]
December 25, 2007
9:16
Merry Christmas!
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Whether you’re celebrating with a big family gathering, or just enjoying a quiet day at home, here’s hoping that you have yourself a Merry Christmas, with some great beer to go with your turkey (or ham, or tofurky…). Cheers!
December 23, 2007
11:49
TAPS Magazine - Winter 2007/08
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During my decade or so as a music writer and reviewer, I had my work published in a number of magazines around the world. I even spent a year or so as the editor of an electronic music section in Chart, a national music magazine here in Canada. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel [...]
December 20, 2007
23:32
Last Call for Menu For Hope
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This year’s instalment of the food blogger charity event Menu For Hope is coming to a close tomorrow (Friday, December 21st), which means you’ve only got 24 hours or so to get your entry in for a shot at the fantastic prize package we’re giving away on Taste T.O. featuring the following: $20 gift certificate from [...]
December 12, 2007
0:11
Big Box o’ Beer from the OCB
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While it unfortunately arrived a bit too late to help me out with last Friday’s Session post, I was happy to receive a media pack from the Ontario Craft Brewers the other day containing some winter seasonals and other brews conducive to cool weather drinking. Now, I’ve admittedly been somewhat critical of some of the OCB’s [...]
December 10, 2007
23:41
Menu For Hope
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As I mentioned last week, my wife and I are participating in this year’s instalment of the annual food blogger charity event Menu For Hope via Taste T.O.. The campaign went active today, and we’ve got a post up now with details about what we’re giving away. We’re doing one big-ass prize package made up of [...]
December 07, 2007
11:56
The Session #10: Winter Beers
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It’s the first Friday of the month, and therefore time for another Session, when beer bloggers far and wide all make a post about a particular beer style or topic. This month, we’re being hosted by tedo at Barley Vine, and he selected Winter Beers as the topic. A bit obvious? Maybe, but still enjoyable. That [...]
December 03, 2007
13:36
Bloggy Stuff: Menu For Hope & Food Blog Awards
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A couple of things are happening out in the greater food & drink blogiverse that readers here might be interested in. First, there’s the 4th annual edition of Menu For Hope, a fundraising campaign undertaken by food & drink bloggers around the wold each December. Originally started in 2004 to raise money for victims of the [...]
December 01, 2007
17:13
When I Asked For A “Microbrew”, This Wasn’t Quite What I Had In Mind…
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For their November, 2007 issue, Wired magazine asked biologist and photomicrographer Mike Davidson to take some microscopic images of a typical Thanksgiving feast. Amongst the shots was the one on the right: an 800x magnification of beer. Or rather, beer in a slightly modified form: After evaporating off most of the water from Bass Pale Ale, Davidson [...]
November 29, 2007
17:21
Powerful Beer on a Powerless Night
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I had a fun - and partly odd - time this past Tuesday night as I hit two different beer-centric happenings. First stop was beerbistro, where they were celebrating the tapping of several Kon

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Beer, Beats & Bites (72 items)

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