On holiday Monday, May 20th, the Brewer’s Backyard is hosting Queen Victoria’s Secret, a special beer and food tasting event where the specifics of the menu are revealed only at the start of the day.  Queen Victoria’s Secret marks the first anniversary of the Brewer’s Backyard, as it kicked off the event series last year at the Evergreen Brick Works.

This year, the Queen Victoria’s Secret will feature four breweries who will all be revealing their offerings at the start of the event: Great Lakes, Granite, Oast House and Left Field.  Last night, Great Lakes won the Brewery of the Year at the Canadian Brewing Awards in Victoria, B.C., so the event promised to have some pretty tasty brews this time around.  The event will also have food from FeasTO.

Queen Victoria’s Secret runs from 12-4pm at the Koerner Gardens and Holcim Gallery areas of the Evergreen Brick Works.  Admission is free, and tickets for food and beer can be purchased at the event.

MEDIA RELEASE

Amsterdam Brewery and Great Lakes Brewery Collaboration a First in The LCBO

(Toronto, ON, April 24, 2013) – The Amsterdam Brewery and Great Lakes Brewery, two of Toronto’s oldest independently owned and operated craft breweries, are set to release their award winning collaboration beer – “Maverick & Gose” in the LCBO later this month.

Maverick & Gose is a Leipziger Gose Beer that has been aged in Ontario Chardonnay barrels for 4 months prior to packaging. A rare German brew of medieval origin, this 2012 Canadian Brewing Awards Silver Medalist beer is brewed with a mostly malted wheat base, pink Himalayan salt, and spices. Notes of lemon, herbs and a slight saltiness make this collaboration truly unique to Ontario.

What is even more unique about this beer is that it is the first all-Ontario collaboration to be released in the LCBO. Brewers Iain Mcoustra of Amsterdam and Mike Lackey of Great Lakes first developed the recipe for Maverick & Gose in early 2012.

“We came up with the idea whilst playing shirtless, greased up beach volleyball, you know, like in the movie Top Gun, and we thought it would be fitting to collab on this one of a kind beer,” says Lackey. “I’m super pumped to be part of the first Canadian craft beer collaboration that will grace the shelves at the LCBO. It was a pleasure creating this beer with Iain and the Amsterdam crew.”

“We wanted to take an old world style and put our own twist on it by using local Chardonnay barrels” says Mcoustra. “We didn’t want to go over the top with any of the flavours and it’s easy for a spiced beer to get away from you. The barrel brought everything together in the end, balancing out the spices with the salt giving a nice roundness to the finish.”

“It’s always a blast brewing with Lackey and Great Lakes” says Mcoustra of the collaboration. “They’re a big reason why there has been so much collaboration and innovation in Ontario recently and it’s an honour to brew and release this beer with them.”

Maverick & Gose is available for sale in 500mL bottles from select LCBOs starting April 29, 2013 ($6.95) and the Amsterdam Brewery Retail Store (45 Esandar Dr., 416-504-6882).

About The Amsterdam Brewery
The Amsterdam Brewery is an independently owned and operated craft brewery that is deeply rooted in the city of Toronto. A pioneer of the craft beer revolution in 1986 and initially called the Amsterdam Brasserie and Brew Pub, The Amsterdam was the first of its kind in Toronto to offer patrons hand crafted lagers and ales that were brewed ‘in-house’. Today they brew over ten different beers including their flagship lager – Amsterdam Natural Blonde, the award winning Big Wheel Deluxe Amber, Boneshaker IPA and multiple year-round and seasonal brews. The Amsterdam Brewing Company uses only traditional brewing methods and their beers are made with four all natural ingredients – malt, hops, yeast, and water. All beers are GMO-free, without preservatives, and never heat pasteurized.

To learn more about the Amsterdam Brewery visit www.amsterdambeer.com
Or
Become a Fan on Facebook www.facebook.com/amsterdambeer
And Follow them on Twitter www.twitter.com/amsterdambeer

About The Great Lakes Brewery
A fiercely independent owned and operated brewery, Great Lakes recently celebrated 25 years in the craft beer business, making them one of the oldest craft breweries in Ontario. Great Lakes specializes in producing flavourful beers that will be sure to tickle your taste buds with each sip. From unique seasonal ales and premium lagers to our Project X and Tank Ten Series beers, we produce a variety of products to be enjoyed by everyone!
Based in Etobicoke, we invite you to visit our brewery for a taste of our award winning beers, including the Canadian Brewing Awards double Gold Medal Winner Crazy Canuck Pale Ale!

To learn more about Great Lakes, visit www.greatlakesbeer.com.
We love social media, so join in on the conversation!
www.twitter.com/greatlakesbeer
www.facebook.com/greatlakesbeer

Come celebrate Earth Day with Great Lakes at Morgans on the Danforth with an intimate candlelight beer dinner.

Join us for a four course, four beer wonderfully paired meal that will be a night to remember! We’ll be turning down the lights and bringing out the candles for the event. Brewery representatives will be available to answer any questions about GLB that you may have and each pairing will be discussed between each course.

Tickets can be purchased by calling Morgans at 416.461.3020. $50+ tax and tip. 6:30pm

GLB Beers:
Pompous Ass EPA
Orange Peel Ale
My Bitter Wife IPA
Harry Porter & the Fair Grounds Coffee Bean

He must be thinking about the beer issues of the day.

The Bar Towel is proud to present our annual preview of the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC), taking place from March 26th to 29th in Washington, DC. Part One of our preview covered our picks for some of the beer bars and cultural highlights to see in the city, and Part Two covers our picks for the conference seminars.

The Craft Brewers Conference seminar lineup, along with the industry trade show, forms the heart of the conference. The seminars cover a diverse array of lectures, presentations, pitches, panels and discussions covering a huge range of topics. Depending on what you do in the industry there will be something for you – topics include Brewery Operations, Brewpubs, Export Development, Government Affairs, Packaging Breweries, Quality, Selling, Start-ups, Sustainability and Technical Brewing.

It’s impossible not to come away from the conference seminars with something new, something inspiring or something to get you thinking about the beer industry. But with so much information over just three days, there’s a lot of overlap and you need to pick and choose accordingly to get the most out of the seminar schedule. So without further adieu, we present our picks for the seminars at the CBC that we feel can’t miss.

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Yep, the White House.

The Bar Towel is proud to present our annual preview of the Craft Brewers Conference (CBC), taking place from March 26^th to 29^th in Washington, DC. Part One of our preview covers our picks for some of the beer bars and cultural highlights to see in the city, and Part Two will cover our picks for the conference seminars. 

For those going to the Craft Brewers Conference this week, Washington, DC will be a city that you are very familiar with.  You’ve seen the buildings, the monuments and the landmarks through numerous movies, TV shows and the news.  It’s a bit of a strange sensation when, after being so familiar with a place, you finally see it with your own eyes.

Washington, DC is the capital of the United States, a top-notch tourist destination and an emerging and evolving beer city.  It’s not quite at the level of heavyweights such as San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, Denver, New York or Philadelphia, but DC has a lot going on for it.  And this week is our chance to discover and drink.

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It’s still a bit chilly outside, and it’s still 6 months to go until Toronto Beer Week, so what better time to have a pub crawl!

Reviving a tradition that we started a couple of years ago, we’re going to host a pub crawl on Wednesday, March 13th to some of our Toronto Beer Week venues to mark the 6-month countdown to the main event.

Everyone is invited, there’s no tickets nor admission fee.  All you need to do is show up and join us for the fun!  The pub crawl is being hosted by Toronto Beer Week executives Troy Burtch, Chris Goddard and myself (Cass Enright), along with a number of other TBW folks. We’ll have prize giveaways along the crawl, including TBW t-shirts, gift certificates, pint glasses and other brewery swag!

Here’s our schedule for the pub crawl:

Beer Academy, 75 Victoria Street – 5:15pm
C’est What, 67 Front Street East – 6:15pm
beerbistro, 18 King Street East – 7:15pm
Bar Hop, 391 King Street West – 8:15pm
Wvrst, 609 King Street West – 9:15pm

We hope to see you on the pub crawl – feel free to join us at any of the stops!  Follow us on Twitter @torontobeerweek and @bartowel to find out our real-time location.

The Bar Towel is happy to bring back a classic feature, “On The Road” reports, detailing (non-comprehensive) beer experiences from destinations outside of Ontario.  In this article: a recent excursion to central Vermont, including Burlington, Waterbury and Montpelier.

View from the top of the Stowe ski area.

It was quite amazing that through all my travels I had not yet made it to Vermont.  It’s only a state and a province away, shares a border with Canada yet it seems far away.  But luckily, at the end of December 2012 and early January 2013 I was finally able to make my first trip to the Green Mountain State.  And I am sure happy I did.

Vermont is truly is a unique place, a state that feels unlike anywhere else in the U.S.  It’s as if the wide-spread commercialism that has permeated our culture hasn’t arrived there yet.  It’s friendly, quaint, pretty, honest, and remarkable in how much good beer is there considering the state’s small population size (ranked 49th out of 50).

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When I moved to BC in 2010, I intended to report on this vibrant brewing scene and post all of the interesting new beer releases. It quickly became apparent that there were far too many, so I started putting them together in monthly updates. It has been a few months since I’ve posted (new baby in the house), but I assure you that this scene is not slowing down.

The Canadian Brewing Awards were held earlier this year, and the BC craft brewers took home an astounding 40% of the awards. Their proportion has gradually increased every year that I’ve been here. Moreover, as Joe Wiebe reports in Urban Diner, the number of craft brewers has steadily increased as well. There were about 40 craft breweries when I moved here, and by the end of 2013 we’ll have close to 60. That’s about a 50% increase!

One the new breweries to watch is Parallel 49. Their head brewer, Graham With, has been experimenting with homebrews for years. Now he’s churning out some interesting stuff. Their regular lineup includes the excellent Hopparazzi India Pale Lager, while recent seasonals have included the sessionable Ugly Sweater Milk Stout and a divine Salted Caramel Scotch Ale.

In addition to all of the new breweries popping up, others continue to expand. The most notable is probably the Central City Brewing Company. They’re finally moving equipment into their new brewery, which will provide much more volume, and hopefully some more diversity as well.

Happy New Year!

The Brewer’s Backyard returns for its 2013 season on January 6th with its first event, Brew Year’s Day.  This event, first put on in January 2012, is a celebration of winter with exclusively strong, robust and winter warmer-style beers.  It marks the largest number of breweries at a single Brewer’s Backyard to date, with six breweries each bringing rare beers to celebrate the occasion:

• Amsterdam Brewery Full City Tempest Imperial Stout
• Cheshire Valley Brewing Oak Aged Scottish Pale Ale
• Grand River Brewing Russian Gun Imperial Stout
• Great Lakes Brewery  Apocalypse Later Double Black IPA and Witch King Baltic Porter (collaboration with Biergotter)
• Indie Alehouse Christmas Spiced Porter and Jump the Shark American Strong Ale
• Nickel Brook Brewery Old Kentucky Bastard Imperial Stout

Big E’s Grinds will be providing Hawaiian style street food to complement the selection of beer, including grilled shrimp, pineapple and pulled pork.

Brew Year’s Day is an all-ages event and will take place on January 6th in the Young Welcome Centre of Evergreen Brick Works from 12-4pm.  Admission is free, and tickets for food and beer can be purchased at the event.  More details about the event can be found at the Brewer’s Backyard website.

The pending limited-edition retail release of the world famous Westvleteren 12 in Ontario is causing a “beer frenzy” amongst local beer aficionados.  The release, consisting of a six-pack of the beer plus two branded glasses, is selling for $76.85 at the LCBO in selected stores only.

The news that Westvleteren 12, or “Westy”, first hit the beer community in June with a lengthy thread in Bar Towel’s discussion forum.  More recently another thread started up in late November with the discussion about Westy hitting the shelves mid-December.  The discussion in the recent thread has been tracking the stores where Westy will be available, plus accounts of what LCBO stores have been telling customers, some of which is contradictory.  Many stores that are receiving stock are anticipating morning lineups of eager consumers.

The enthusiasm for this beer release is arguably the most anticipated ever in Ontario, so much that yesterday (December 10th) the Bar Towel web site experienced its highest level of single-day traffic for all of 2012.  Other high-profile beer releases through the LCBO in the past include Ola Dubh 40 in 2009, Sam Adams Utopias in 2010 and 2011, and probably the first Ontario beer frenzy, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA in 2008.

This isn’t the first appearance of Westy in Ontario, however, as a couple of years ago a limited amount was distributed to selected bars in the province.  This time, however, is the first time it’s been available for home purchase.

You can stay up-to-date on what’s happening with Westy, and pretty much everything else in the Ontario beer scene, in our discussion forum.  Please join in on the fun, and good luck to everyone hunting Westy this week!