The Bar Towel

There have been rumors of Northern Breweries filing for bankruptcy since the summer...then we see their one contracter (Agassis Catfish cream ale) pull out then just recently I had occasion to be in northern Ontario and stopped in at TBS in both North Bay and Timmins....first thing you notice is all the local Northern brews are absent from the selection board....I asked the managers and they both said the same thing...that they no longer order from Northern Breweries because it is tits-up and no longer producing its own brands....this made me wonder if they are still brewing for "Wolfgang's" alone.

I'm wondering if it's too soon to blow Taps for this once great northern brewing company....RIP Northern...born 1894-died 2006... killed by visionless executive droids from "the beverage industry".

As a former resident of Northern Ontario--North Bay to be exact--I decry the erosion of local industry and its negative economic effects. As a beer lover, I don't see the loss of Northern as significant at all.

joey_capps wrote:As a former resident of Northern Ontario--North Bay to be exact--I decry the erosion of local industry and its negative economic effects. As a beer lover, I don't see the loss of Northern as significant at all.

I liked the Edelbrau...it was a clean malty dortmunder hell that was good if I could find no Hacker-P....and the red maple was nice enough. The real loss is to the Northern community where the brewery ( formerly Doran's Northern Breweries) offered all malt beers with distinct flavor at a decent enough price to challenge and beat the Mol-Batt monster in their home turf.

I will miss the northern brews that were on tap in every little northern hamlet, Legion and Lake Superior shore tavern. Coming in from a Moose camp or salmon camp and washing down some local pickerel fillets with pan fries with a Northern lager or a Northern ale on tap at local establishments like the Wawa hotel or the Sault Locks tavern was a kind of right of passage experience in the North country.

In their heyday Doran's Northern Breweries brewed all malt beers in a Canada that EP Taylor cheapened to 300 brand adjunct sameness. The older all malt Dorans brews survived the Employee buyout but not the Buck-a-beer business plan of the breweies last southerner CEO...he knew nothing of the north or its people nor did he understand the brand loyalty they provided that kept the brewery in business...and I believe this is what killed their sales.

Northern was not really struggling before the final buy out ....they had capacity problems and some production problems related to material procurment issues...their sales were stable and generations of northerners identified with one or another of the Northern brands...there was local pride and brand loyalty......the "experts" from the "beverage industry" who killed these popular brands in favor of the fizzy bland buck a beer crap Northern produced lost the customer base that Northern had cultured in the North for generations.

I will miss the brews I liked and I will miss their tap handles in Northern taverns....another vestage of pre EP Taylor brewing tradition goes to the bone yard.
Too bad.