The Bar Towel

That data is antiquated: Blue hasn't been the best seller in Canada for some time. A couple of years ago, Bud took over as numero uno up here, and that was only recently eclipsed by...(drum roll, please)...

Coors Light!

Guilty as charged, gents. My apologies if I misrepresented.

That's what happens when you sign with a publisher that shuts down operations not much more than a year after the book is published. *sigh*

Beer Advocate had his pic on the cover of their mag a while ago, and there was a lot of noise about "is this the image of craft you want to present?". Ironic, since the idea behind craft beer has always been substance over style. And while Don may not have had a ton of the latter -- save ...

I know there are at least a few on this board who have experienced the hospitality of the Horse Brass Pub in Portland, Oregon. Its owner, Don Younger, one of the earliest and truly great champions of good beer in the Pacific Northwest, and a hell of a nice guy besides, died early this morning. He wi...

Mill Street Original, Organic Lager, Creemore Springs,
Mill Street Tankhouse Ale, Steamwhistle,
Amsterdam Dark, Kawartha Lakes Raspberry Wheat,
Big Rock Grasshopper Wheat, Muskoka Cream Ale

I'm sorry, is it summer already?

That was something I heard as a bartender all too many times, Gary, "it's not skunkiness, it's the European hop taste." Which was bullshit. There is a reason Heineken failed utterly in its first two introductions as a draught beer 'round these parts: people used to the skunky flavour weren...

This past summer,I had a business meeting in a place where the best beer available was a cold bottle of (non-skunky) Heineken. I asked for a glass, poured it and continued the meeting. About half-way through the glass I had to remark out loud, "I had forgotten what an astonishingly mediocre bee...

I did read your full blog post before replying, Chris, and thought it also had a bit of an air of apologia to it -- "coming from such a large brewery I’m honestly really happy with the product." But then again, I'm a notoriously hard marker.

Shame on you, Chris! Qualifying a beer as being good "for something from brewery X' is the worst kind of apologetic beer reviewing. If it's good, it's good, no matter who brewed it, and if you'd give it a bad review were it from your favourite craft brewery, then you should give the same respon...

The average consumer is never going to know or hear about them. 'Tain't necessarily the case, Ralphus.The GABF awards are now used widely in marketing in the U.S., but breweries large and small alike. It's probably only a matter of time until the same thing happens here. (BTW, with over 70 brewerie...

Well put, Jordan.

I am no great fan of the big breweries or their beers, however... 1) To say that something like Canadian or Blue is not true beer because it contains adjuncts or is high-gravity brewed or is simply not to a true beer drinker's taste is absurd. They are obviously beers and technically very good ones,...

Way back when the Can-US free trade agreement was first signed, Stroh and, I think, Gallo posted a challenge to the Canadian system, which resulted in all sorts of changes nationwide, including the removal of the provision that a brewing company had to have a brewery in a province in order to sell t...

Duckdown, I wouldn't suggest intentionally aging any of the five special release beers, ie: keeping them for a year or more. That said, however, in cellar conditions none but the Blanche will have a problem lasting well up to 6 months and probably well beyond. (Being the lightest and most fragile, t...