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I enjoy Toronto's annual Gourmet Food & Wine Expo and attend almost every year, assuming that I'm in town the weekend it takes place. In the past, however, I've been frustrated by how little attention has been paid to beer, which one might assume from years past the organizers don't consider worthy of the adjective "gourmet."
I've been avoiding this topic for all of its run thus far (here and here and here and here and, sigh, here), mainly because of its Ontario-centricity. But I can hold my tongue no longer. We must now wade into the unspeakable morass that is beer sales in my home province and confront the beast that is...
Last evening, I sat down to sample a few beers with a friend of mine by the name of John Szabo. He's a wine guy, a Master Sommelier, in fact, but a nice fellow nonetheless and someone with a terrific palate. We opened several bottles over the course of a few hours, including some very local stuff -- a few homebrews from John's cousin -- a couple of more obscure offerings -- two large bottled ales from Birrifficio Bruton in northern Italy -- and one extraordinarily rare brew -- a single bottle of the 2005 vintage of Pannepot Grand Reserva. But it was a pair of semi-related black beers that stole the show.
If you're lucky, you'll never visit a bar like the Toronto locale my wife and I happened to wander into a short time ago. Actually, let me change that: not "wander into," but "were sucked into." Or "suckered."
Toronto has been an unusually busy place for beer events of late, with dinners and tastings and such popping up with astounding regularity. One you likely will not have read about elsewhere, however, was a dinner I attended last Wednesday at Morton's Steakhouse in Yorkville, which is certainly not one of the first locales a person would associate with quality beer.
It was my pleasure and honour last night to host the Canadian Brewing Awards, an annual industry celebration that has grown from a somewhat suspect endeavour into a legitimate recognition of some of the best in beer this country has to offer.
When Philadelphia, the self-styled "Best Beer Drinking City" in the United States, held its phenomenally successful and inaugural Philly Beer Week earlier this year, I observed that San Francisco had held a de facto "Beer Week" for years, and sure enough, the San Franciscans have adopted the term and set up a site for their ten days of beer fame.
You may never have been to Quebec City, the capital of the province of Quebec. Hell, you may never even have been to eastern Canada! But I'll give you a reason to want to celebrate the city's birthday in two French words and one hyphen: Quatre-Centieme.
Here's a great reason to contemplate visiting the Big Apple in October: The Organic Beer Bash at Counter in New York's East Village. Coming on the heels of last year's successful first edition, this fest will feature over thirty organic ales, lagers and ciders -- last year's poured 34 total, plus some organic beer cocktails -- along with organic beer cuisine.
In the wake of last week's rant on underage drinking hysteria in the United States comes this report from CNN identifying a group of academics who are actually -- gasp! -- in support of the government considering the potential benefits of lowering the drinking age south of the border! Not quite worthy of Ripley's, perhaps, but certainly surprising in this day and age.
A beer discussion board I occasionally visit, the Burgundian Babble Belt, alerted me recently to a minor brouhaha underway in New Hampshire, once more bringing to light the idiotic and backwards attitudes Americans and, let's face it, many Canadians have towards drinking. The story is documented in two parts, but you can get the gist of it by skimming Part One. (If you want to follow the sordid tale further, Part Two is here.)
I've been sitting on this review for some time because, frankly, I simply have not been able to figure out what to do with it. And I still haven't, so I'll just throw it up here and see if it sticks.
What with all my running around this month -- wedding in Mexico, Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans -- I didn't even realize that this weekend marks the 21st annual running of my personal favourite U.S. beer fest, the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland.
I'm not in the habit of giving beer events extensive advance play in this space, but Montreal's upcoming Bieres, Flaveurs et Caprices is no ordinary beer fest.
The numbers are in for the 2008 edition of Oktoberfest in Munich, and thanks to the online edition of Der Spiegel, we've got 'em!
As regular readers of beer blogs will know, the first Friday of every month is The Session, when we all collectively blog on a specific theme. On the day of July's Session, however, I will be basking in the glow of being newly wed, relaxed and computerless on a beach in Mexico's Mayan Riviera. So rather than miss it entirely, I thought I'd simply post a week early.
It's small. It's out of the way. It's more than just a bit frayed at the edges. But if you ever make your way to Helsinki, don't you dare miss it.
"It" is the One Pint Pub.
Anyone familiar with my writing will know that a common refrain of mine is the complaint over how difficult it is to find places that combine good beer with a food menu that ranges beyond burgers, wings and fries. Not that there's anything wrong with those foods -- that trio pretty much describes my dinner of last night -- but sometimes a little creative cuisine is nice, and with it a decent beer or two.
The theme for this month's edition of The Session, our beer bloggers day, is beer festivals, and so I thought it apropos to revisit here last weekend's Mondial de la Biere in Montreal.
I had a bit of a jolt yesterday as I walked up John Street in the heart of Toronto's Entertainment District. There, erected just north of Nelson Street between Richmond and Adelaide, were construction hoardings, workmen and welders, and a large banner which read "Coming Soon: Jack Astor's," or words to that effect. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be worth so much as a second glance, except that the structure under what appears to be rather extensive renovations was once home to this city's first modern brewpub, the Amsterdam Brewing Company.
I had a bit of a jolt yesterday as I walked up John Street in the heart of Toronto's Entertainment District. There, erected just north of Nelson Street between Richmond and Adelaide, were construction hoardings, workmen and welders, and a large banner which read "Coming Soon: Jack Astor's," or words to that effect. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be worth so much as a second glance, except that the structure under what appears to be rather extensive renovations was once home to this city's first modern brewpub, the Amsterdam Brewing Company.
I'm just back from Savor: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience in Washington, D.C., and the National Restaurant Association's International Wine, Spirits & Beer Event in Chicago, two not-entirely-unrelated events that proved to me the future for premium craft beer is indeed rosy. At the former, a sell-out crowd enjoyed many a fine beer with select morsels of tasty cuisine, some in pairings that soared and other which struggled, while at the latter, restaurateurs battled crowds and poor sound systems to learn more about what the future of beer and other alcoholic beverages might hold. Interest in both events was reassuringly high.
According to Jim over at lootcorp 3.0: A Brewing Blog, I'm supposed to be writing about German beer for this September edition of The Session. But as I stare into my beer fridge this morning, I note that rather unusually I am bereft of German beers, which is probably not all that bad a thing since it's still only 9:30 and I've a load of work to accomplish today.
I know this entity is called the "Beer Blog," but I'd like to invite everyone to take a sojourn with me for a moment or two over to the world of wine. Trust me, we'll eventually get back to beer.
Thanks to our friends at Ontario Craft Brewers, the umbrella group for most of the province's smaller breweries, I now know that Black Oak Brewing will finally be upping sticks from Oakville, the Toronto suburb where it was born, and moving into the Big Smoke. Only just so, mind you, since their new home will lie well west of the Humber, but still within city limits in the area known as Etobicoke.
You may already have heard something about this, or perhaps you've read the article yourself, but a recent edition of Time Magazine featured a story about beer touring, highlighting Denver as "the best place for brewery touring." Best where, you might ask, as did I? There's no answer to that, but I suspect the writer must have been confining his views to the U.S. of A.
Granted, traditional lambic beer is not for everyone. The tart assertiveness of a bone dry, 100% spontaneously fermented wheat beer, aged in wood for up to three years and blended with younger lambics to bottle-ferment into gueuze, is not something our soda pop culture accepts quickly or easily.
Thanks to our friends at Ontario Craft Brewers, the umbrella group for most of the province's smaller breweries, I now know that Black Oak Brewing will finally be upping sticks from Oakville, the Toronto suburb where it was born, and moving into the Big Smoke. Only just so, mind you, since their new home will lie well west of the Humber, but still within city limits in the area known as Etobicoke.
You may already have heard something about this, or perhaps you've read the article yourself, but a recent edition of Time Magazine featured a story about beer touring, highlighting Denver as "the best place for brewery touring." Best where, you might ask, as did I? There's no answer to that, but I suspect the writer must have been confining his views to the U.S. of A.
You may already have heard something about this, or perhaps you've read the article yourself, but a recent edition of Time Magazine featured a story about beer touring, highlighting Denver as "the best place for brewery touring." Best where, you might ask, as did I? There's no answer to that, but I suspect the writer must have been confining his views to the U.S. of A.
You may already have heard something about this, or perhaps you've read the article yourself, but a recent edition of Time Magazine featured a story about beer touring, highlighting Denver as "the best place for brewery touring." Best where, you might ask, as did I? There's no answer to that, but I suspect the writer must have been confining his views to the U.S. of A.
You may already have heard something about this, or perhaps you've read the article yourself, but a recent edition of Time Magazine featured a story about beer touring, highlighting Denver as "the best place for brewery touring." Best where, you might ask, as did I? There's no answer to that, but I suspect the writer must have been confining his views to the U.S. of A.
Interesting news out of Calgary may signal that the market for cheap beer -- ahem, sorry, "value brands" -- has crested and could even possibly be slipping into decline.
Granted, traditional lambic beer is not for everyone. The tart assertiveness of a bone dry, 100% spontaneously fermented wheat beer, aged in wood for up to three years and blended with younger lambics to bottle-ferment into gueuze, is not something our soda pop culture accepts quickly or easily.
Last month, during our sojourn around northern Germany and Belgium, fellow scribe Lew Bryson and I dropped in on the Nacht van de Grote Dorst, the biannual lambic festival the name of which translates to "Night of Large Thirst." It was a remarkable event, with two tents and a pub serving all-traditional lambics from such brewers and blenders as Eylenbosch (now defunct), Drie Fonteinen, Girardin and Boon.
So what does any of this have to do with organic beer? The link lies in the one traditional lambic brewer notable by its absence: Cantillon.
Typically, when confronted with an ill-informed article about beer in the local, regional or national media, it is not my habit to point fingers and laugh. Instead, faced with such a situation, I will send a quiet email to the author informing him or her of their errors and/or omissions, and hope that the next time their content will be more accurate.
But this one is far from typical.