The Bar Towel

The Canadian Amateur Brewers Association (CABA) is pleased to announce the Great Canadian Homebrew Competition 2012. Open to all styles, the Anything Goes! competition is now accepting entries -- and will do so until June 30. As with previous years, the Best of Show winner will have the opportunity ...

Awesome! Good luck. I'll be buying some malt from you soon, your markup is reasonable given I won't have to drive to Fergus. Maybe I'm missing something, but why are you driving to Fergus to get malts? There are places in Toronto to get 25kg of base malts and smaller quantities of specialty malts. ...

I helped Troy out around the judging table for the finals, and based on a few samples and the deliberation between the judges, it looked like there were a lot of great beers in the finals. It must have been a tough decision. Congratulations to the winners. And shameless plug... If anyone wants to en...

I've bottled beers that looked fairly murky on bottling day, but after two or three weeks of conditioning, they typically improved a lot in appearance. As for auto-siphons, I'm a fan. I apparently can't make simple physics work, so I struggle with racking canes. I only brew a handful of times a year...

It seems unlikely, but if another order is placed and there's room, I'd be in for a bottle or two.

Chris

note for anyone that hasn't figured it out yet: they call all their stuff "farmhouse ales", they aren't actually all representatives of the "farmhouse ales" styles (saison/bier de garde). it's just a representation of their barnyard theme. Right. Sorry, I should have been specif...

We were drinking their farmhouse ales at the CABA AGM/bus tour, and they're actually not too bad. Next time I'm in the U.S., I'll probably pick some up for future consumption.

Chris

Despite being a bit concerned about the price, I ended up grabbing two bottles of the Mill Street Barleywine over the weekend. I have opened either bottle yet. I feel like I need a special occasion to crack it -- or at least others interested in sampling.

Chris

Personally, I don't understand the popularity of this Keg place. I always thought it was a slightly more upscale version of a family restaurant, and any "class" it purports to have is dampened by the fact that it's usually embedded in corporate office blocks and strip malls. Oh, good, I'm...

Belgian wrote:In short - how much money are we worried about penny-pinching, five bucks all year for this rare & interesting product?? Not worth debating over is it.

It is when you have too many hobbies ... like me.

Chris

I've never tasted or purchased barleywine before. Is $10 for a 500mL bottle about standard?

Chris

I picked up a couple of bottles last week and then opened one up one night. It's tasty, but only to a point. For my tastes, it would have been better as a standard-sized 340mL bottle than the 500mL bottle it's in. I like the spiciness of it, but it starts to get a bit sickly sweet after awhile. With...

Bobbyok wrote:On a more "personal peeve" note, with all the money the OCB is getting from the government for marketing, couldn't they get a better proofreader?

What exactly are "tasing notes?"

Chris

Uh ... right. And now a post that's back on topic... I stopped into the Pickering Brock Road LCBO on Hallowe'en in the hopes of scoring another bottle or two (I'd shared what I still had a few days before -- I should note everyone I introduced it to thought it was great). I asked the store's beer gu...

The Pickering LCBO on Brock Rd. had some of this in stock when I dropped in on Saturday, so I picked up a few bottles of it. I cracked one that night, and while it wasn't quite what I expected (I thought it would be sweeter), it was quite tasty.

Too bad this only comes once a year.

Chris