2003 Wine, Beer and Spirits Guide from Toronto Life mag...

DAN-D-MAN · Post by **DAN-D-MAN** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 9:25 am

Within every issue of Toronto Life, there's a separate little red guide included covering topics such as best restaurants in town, best place to get bargains and so on.

This month, the guide is titled Wine, Beer and Spirits. While looking at it, I noticed that Stephen Beaumont was involved in compiling this guide. And sure enough, this guide is awesome!

It covers every genre of beer, such as dry stouts and porters, strong ales, wheats, brown ales and so on and gives example beers of each style. The breweries mentioned range from Cameron's to Unibroue, Chimay, Granite, St. Peters, Anchor and so on.

And the best part is there's only one or two MolBat products mentioned! The guide is quite comprehensive and an excellent boost to micros and imports.

The Toronto Life website has a short listing of what's contained in the book as a teaser:

2003 Wine, Beer and Spirits Guide

Great job Stephen!

GregClow · Post by **GregClow** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 9:42 am

I agree, it's a nice list, especially for newbies. I like the fact that it avoids breaking things down into styles that "normal" people may not be familiar with (or that they are familiar with in bastardized versions, such as Pale Ale and Pilsner), and instead uses simple and descriptive catagories like "Medium-Bodied Hoppy Ale" and "Full-Bodied, Strong Lager".

Rubaiyat · Post by **Rubaiyat** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 1:02 pm

It's a nice guide and cudos to Stephen for the beer section but ... and I KNOW this is out of Stephen's hands but it could be better by leaps and bounds if the editors and publishers would allow him to include at least SOME of the seasonal releases -- even Consignment product for that matter.

That really is just to bad, Toronto Life.

For the record, I have been a Toronto Life subscriber for at least 15 years ...

Cheers,

Paul

Josh Oakes · Post by **Josh Oakes** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 3:26 pm

Interestingly, under the section "Treasure Hunt", he mentions that oft-rumoured Mill Street Barley Wine. Given that last I'd heard it had not yet been brewed, I'm thinking either that was incorrect or they're going to be releasing a really young barley wine (aka rocket fuel).

Anyway, it was good to see this committed to print, and I'm hoping it's a good one.