The Bar Towel

I watched a maddening Toronto council debate and Josh's drinking in parks failed. It was replaced by a motion from Tory to talk about it again in 2023. There were some truly wild points made by councillors, such as Denzil MW saying that the folks that will truly suffer are the ones living next to pa...

An article today in the Star about Toronto's ongoing obsession with not doing anything when it comes to alcohol outdoors.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contrib ... r-fun.html

I suppose somewhat related to this is Josh Matlow bringing back the idea to allow drinks in parks. I'm happy he tries but can't help but think it will die again...

Turns out these will not be able to serve alcohol. So they're pretty pointless. Not sure why they are even doing this.

I’ve never rode on one, and probably never will, but sure. Always funny that everything in Toronto is a pilot and it can’t just be made allowed. https://twitter.com/joshmatlow/status/1520048113657991169 EDIT: this tweet was from Josh Matlow, who was making a big deal about pedal pubs, but then subse...

Breweries roughly fall into these (over simplified) categories for me: Top Tier - Are making good to great beer and are capable of competing on the basis of their product regardless of other factors. Second Tier - Okay to good beer, brewery has established a market and reputation for themselves. Th...

JerCraigs wrote: ↑Sat Apr 23, 2022 7:06 pm Edit: This is my 3000th post on Bartowel! Wow!

Congratulations! Thanks for sticking with the forum

I think some beer folks (not necessarily people here) distrust brewery owners that don't have "beer cred". The Henderson guys have marketing backgrounds, and it shows through very creative initiatives that they've done over the years. But having a marketing thrust doesn't mean that beers a...

Thanks for sharing, interesting read. I agree with Craig, it feels like we’ve been awaiting this big upheaval in Ontario beer, whether it be mergers or closures, and it really hasn’t happened in a big way, and/or what’s happened has been pretty slow as Craig mentioned. Perhaps this wasn’t known in t...

I read in the Star that GLB was issued a restaurant license on April 15. So I guess things are close!

It's possible zoning had something to do with history, which has left older, brewery-appropriate buildings in the downtown cores of U.S. cities, and similar buildings are rarer in Canadian city centres. I looked up the population of Lansing and it's comparable to Kingston & Moncton which have br...

Report from East Lansing for those who may be interested in a road trip! East Lansing is definitely a fun little city, only about 1h40m from Sarnia. It's home to Michigan State University, a large and very attractive campus with lots of classic buildings. And since it's home to a large university, t...

I've got a little beer & concert road trip coming up this weekend which I'm looking forward to. Doing a night in East Lansing and then back to Detroit. It's tricky nowadays to ask for reco's as nobody's been anywhere for quite a while! If anyone has any memories of good stuff in East Lansing ple...

Tapsucker wrote: ↑Tue Mar 29, 2022 5:46 pm Also, funny that I never saw this on their website. Did they eve have it up for order?

I feel like I don’t get as many “here’s our new beers to buy” emails from Collective nowadays, but perhaps I’m paying less attention?

Found a bottle of Founders Backwoods Bastard in my cellar and am drinking it now. Held up okay, still oaky and starts bourbon but finishes more sherry like. Remember when the LCBO was bringing in Founders for that short spell? Wish they'd cycle through some quality US breweries again. I had one of ...