The Bar Towel

I fairly regularly head to Ryan's when I'm visiting family in London. It's a good place with a good selection of Belgian beer, as has been said, and it's where I stock up on Bell's products. The staff is great. Helpful and very nice.

It's decent and drinkable, but it was the citrus rind and resin that make this beer once so special in our market. Now it's whatever...a lot like many other English-style ales, but more bitter. Like Belgian said, it's not Perry's IPA anymore.

Aside from the Liefman's stuff and the St. Ambroise (which I've never had before), I can't say I'm in any way excited by this list. Not to mention how repetitive it is. Way to go, LCBO.

Yes. Chaucer's. Seconded.

Yeah, I'd be interested to try one that had been seriously aged. The one I had, I got at the Rhino, and I found it pretty unenjoyable. Way too boozy. Not my speed.

The label now proclaims it as the strongest lager in the world. At least on the bottle I had.

I never want to have one of those again.

My comment was more to make the point that, for a beer that calls itself "Orange Peel Ale", I found it hardly all that different from many other English-style pub ales, except for a very faint orange character off the top. Not that I wanted it to be some concentrate-tasting fruit beer, but...

That's okay. Nobody can.

Agreed. Very tasty, sessionable stout.

Also - take this, turn up the volume, and you'd have one killer Imperial.

That would mean, I think, March 13, 2007. So about a month old. There should be newer batches about by now I'd assume.

I suspect the LCBO has been scrambling to put it together properly, since it all got bungled up when they decided to reject Esprit's stuff.

For my money, I'd say that the Black Oak Hop Bomb is the best and closest thing to a really hoppy, grapefruity, American IPA in the province. If only they would bottle it finally...at least as a seasonal. It'd be so great to be able to pick up a couple of cases of that for the summer. It'd be perfec...

Some good news is that, at the Magpie I recently had a pint of the Corporal Punishment and it is still in very good shape. Maybe not *exactly* what it was before, but nowhere near as damaged as the IPA. I was relieved, because after some really dissapointing pints at Volo, I thought it was a goner t...

The Sarge is absolutely not the same beer that it once was...no confused taste buds here. It's hardly even a shadow of that great beer. As was said, it's gone from being one of the best beers in the province to another standard, almost non-IPA, ubiquitous "english ale" style thing. It's a ...

If the LCBO takes any for General Listing, they'll likely only take one...so I hope it's the IPA. Because damnit if we don't need one badly! The LCBO doesn't seem to understand that the American IPA is an extremely popular style. But we've been down this road before...

FINGERS CROSSED!