Category: Beer Education | Page 3

Are Contract Brewers Craft?

Yesterday in the Globe and Mail, Ontario-based beer writer Ben Johnson wrote a piece exploring whether contract brewing helped or hindered the growth of craft beer. You can read the original article here. Johnson offers a very balanced and fair… Continue Reading →

2017/07/07

Vue Weekly’s Beer Issue is Out!

Vue Weekly’s annual Beer Issue is out, available at racks around town and online. The venerable alt-weekly in Edmonton has offered a corner of its magazine to my beer column for over a decade now, but I always get excited… Continue Reading →

2017/07/04

Beer 101: Graduation Day

You all, simply, have gotten too smart. You know too about beer these days. So, congratulations you graduate! A couple weeks back Sherbrooke Liquor posted my final Beer 101 column on its website. You can read it here. I started… Continue Reading →

2017/06/07

The Ichorous Trinity Compared

I love side-by-side tastings. They really isolate the effects of a manipulation to a beer. Some are more challenging to operationalize than others. Blindman Brewing recently released not one, but two barrel-aged versions of its imperial stout, Ichorous. Not long… Continue Reading →

2017/05/03

An Old Time-y Beer from Olds College

I admit I am writing this post so I can type the word “Kottbusser”. It would be even better if I could say it out loud 10 times, it is such a fun word. What is Kottbusser, you wonder? I… Continue Reading →

2017/05/01

The Value of Blind Tasting and Other Lessons

This past weekend I served as the Head Judge for the Northern Lands Festival beer competition. For those who don’t know Northern Lands, it is a premiere beverage and food event profiled, exclusively, Canadian wine, craft beer and craft spirits… Continue Reading →

2017/04/24

Swap the Malt? Troubled Monk’s Malt Experiment

So lots of breweries engage in hop experiments – swapping out varieties of hops to experience the flavour effect. Most breweries are not so fast to play around with their malt. Malt is the anchor for a beer. It lays… Continue Reading →

2017/03/20

New England IPA You Say? Yes, Indeed!

A couple weeks back I introduced CBC listeners to a new kind of IPA – new at least for these parts. New England IPA. You can listen to the CBC column here if you wish. The column was inspired by… Continue Reading →

2017/02/21

The Allure of New and Why We Shouldn’t Diss Mainstays

A couple weeks back I wrote a post reflecting on my visits to Calgary’s newest and second oldest breweries (which you can read here). The visits got me pondering the similarities and differences between older and newer breweries. Since that… Continue Reading →

2017/01/31

Comprehending Collaboration

You may have noticed on your favourite liquor store shelf recently the appearance of beer made by two breweries, the so-called “collaboration brew”. Collaborations have been around for a long time, but in the past couple/few years have increased in… Continue Reading →

2016/12/09