The Bar Towel

The Black Oak Nutbrown Ale as of today has not been tapped so I tried (after a lapse of some time) the Signature Ale of Durham. A very fine pint it was, made me think I was in Manchester drinking Boddington as it was "way back when". The Signature is also reminiscent of Ron Keefe's very go...

Well put from a pro who knows. In fact, I am surprised that most bottle-conditioned or unfiltered beers are as good as they are! All the Belgian and French unfiltered or lightly filtered beers I've sampled in recent months have been fine, e.g., all the Chimays, Orval, and the Asambock and other Germ...

I looked in today but it appeared the Durham ales only are on hand pump. That is, the ESB and Signature. I do enjoy those but would like to try the Black Oak brown ale in cask form, and look forward to its availability at the bar. <font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: old faithful on 2004-02-1...

Fair comments. I agree this is somewhat like a weaker old ale, but that is what the first porters were. They were brewed "entire" to emulate the blends of strong and mild brown ales, sometimes with an amber or pale ale thrown in, that were drawn in the pub from different casks. They were d...

Found this in an Ottawa LCBO but have not yet seen it in Toronto. This is the real thing: the label announces it is blend of young and old ales, and as we know porter started by being a blend of beers. There is a rich brown ale flavour, not sweet but what used to be called "luscious". Comp...

I had two excellent meals, served very nicely to boot, at beerbistro, and I look forward to returning as soon as possible. As I said to Steve Beaumont recently, these newspaper reviews often become a kind of alternate world where the real-life experience of dining, supping and socializing seems lost...

All the bottles I bought of this beer (Burton Porter) gushed and had a wild yeast-type taste. I believe these bottles were spoiled due to wild yeast infection. Bottle conditoned beers can be tricky in this regard especially when exported. Some people report no problems but I wonder if the palate was...

I tasted this recently and thought it was really good: rich, heavy, heady, clean-tasting with good carastan malt-type flavour. Having said that, I thought this year's urBock from Creemore is as good. It is similar in style, but weaker by about a point and a half. As an experiment I added enough High...

The comments about the difficulty of marketing interesting beers are saddening. While I don't disagree as such, I think there are a number of specific reasons why this is so: 1) there seems no rhyme or reason to the import policy of the LCBO. Why is Rainier Dry sold (seemingly for years and years) b...