The Bar Towel

I was there last year and they had 44! beers up for tasting and review...i made it thru about 22 of them before my tasting abilities were, shall we say, a bit impaired...

Great atmosphere, and people really enjoying great beers...

Friday October 12th...

goto: http://www.cestwhat.com for more info

cheers,

dave

Thanks for the news, Dave.

C'est What's fest is always a fun time - a hell of a lot more relaxing for sampling than the Toronto festival at Fort York.

One tip - get there as early as you can if you want seats, and in the past the sampling has ended at 10pm.

According to C'est What, some more interesting beers that will be available are Big Rock's Chinook Lager, their house Coffee Porter cask conditioned, KLB Alien Ale, Trafalgar's Roggen (Rye Beer), McAuslan's nitro Cream Ale and Belle Gueule from Quebec.

Probably the most interesting is Belle Gueule (not sure which one, probably the Originale). The beers from this brewery, RJ, which also brews Cheval Blanc, are currently unavailable in Ontario. Perhaps more Quebecoise brews are on their way?

A friend of mine who lives in Montreal but travels on business to Toronto every month brings me back "only in Quebec" beer every trip, and the last batch was a selection of Belle Guelle. The Rousse was my favourite,
kind of spicy and somewhat full, the Originale is a good lager, and the Pilsener was ok, not very good in my humble opinion.

It constantly amazes me that everytime I visit Montreal and Quebec City, the selection of beers seems to grow...not as amazing as Premier mind you, but still quite incredible.

Still reeling from the trip across the border to Premier...still in awe at the selection...i swear that if no one else was around, i would have kissed all the shelves...well maybe not but you get the picture !
cheers,

dave

The selection in Quebec supermarkets may be growing but if you visit an SAQ store it's getting rather sad as the their selection of imports is shrinking rapidly. SAQ has decided that they really don't want to be in the beer business since the big brewers (Heineken, Grolsch, Guiness) abandoned them to go the supermarket route and they lost all of that volume. Unfortunately, the smaller craft brewers can't afford to go the supermarket route so there's nowhere left for them in the market. The truth is, in the not too distant future, Ontario will probably have a better overall selection of premium import products available.

I have definitely noticed a serious dropoff at the SAQ that past couple of times in Quebec, compared with where it was five or six years ago, when you could really find an amazing assortment.

As envious as we are here about the variety in their domestic brews, the import selection in Quebec leaves a lot to be desired. We definitely enjoy the best selection of imports in Canada (even if we do get thirsty thinking about Buffalo).

Yeah, it is pretty sad what's been happening to the import selection in Quebec. I remember in the mid-90s visiting the SAQ Bieres store and being amazed at the selection. It was probably the first time I ever spent $100 at a single time on beer (this has since happened a few times since finding Premier in Buffalo )

Now the best beer store I can find in Montreal (the Metro Joannette) has a good selection, but really only of Quebec micros. I've heard from folks in Quebec that they are now envious of our beer selection in Ontario. How things change.

I agree that Ontario has a better imported beer selection than Quebec, but I would still like to see beer sold in independant store as it seemed when I was in Montreal that you could buy Quebec Micros in most depanneurs ( corner stores), also it was neat to find a store in Atwater market that sold only beer, wine and cheese! I think that to have a good selection of beer in this province it would have to be sold in a store that also sells Gourmet foods and fine wine, as that is the set up of Primier in Buffalo.

Does anyone have a beer list for the C'est What fest?

I'd say it will be most of their current taps & bottles - see http://www.cestwhat.com/beer.html, plus the "interesting" beers listed above. C'est What usually uses their beer fest as a mass-unveiling of a bunch of new taps.