In defence of Drinking alone at a bar
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
3w ago
  If, for some reason, you’d like to have this blog post read to you instead of reading it, you can listen to Episode 76 of the Beer and Bullshit podcast, below. https://feed.podbean.com/beerandbs/feed.xml Drinking alone at a bar is much maligned in fiction. The clichéd trope usually features our hero, beaten down by the world, having lost his family/partner/coaching career/platoon, seeking refuge in the bottom of a bottle. He’s hunched over a sticky bar on a corner stool, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray next to him, and he’s staring blankly at a game playing quietly on the TV in t ..read more
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The End of The Beer Store’s Monopoly
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
3M ago
  “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” ~Revelation 18:2 The days of The Beer Store’s monopoly are over, and I fear we are the poorer for it. For months now, we’ve known something big was coming from our Dear Premier, Douglas Clortho Ford. There had been rumblings that an announcement about the province’s retail beer system was forthcoming and my sources at Queen’s Park were increasingly troubled by Dofo’s anxious ..read more
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The Uncanceled
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
  The Kitchener-Waterloo Region is home to a plethora of great breweries — and almost none of them have founders who were charged with two counts of assault and one count of assault with a weapon. Off the top of my head, the region boasts Barn Cat, Bitte Schön, Block Three, Jackass, Rural Roots, Stockyards, Together We’re Bitter Co-op, Wavemaker, and Willibald and — to my knowledge — none of these breweries were founded by a man who was captured on video striking his girlfriend with an object and who subsequently faced charges for the act. It is unfortunate then that, when the City of Ki ..read more
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Bellwoods Brewery V. Cowbell Brewery round two, or weird vibes and cycling jerseys in Blyth
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
Bellwoods Brewery just had a nice little week. The popular Toronto brewery opened their doors to a significant and long-awaited expansion to their brewpub on Ossington Ave on Wednesday and given their track record for both beer and food, it’s a safe bet it won’t be long before the place is established as one of Toronto’s best spots for a beer and a meal. On Saturday Bellwoods celebrated their 10th Motley Cru Day — their annual anniversary beer release — this year bottling a Lambic that was three years in the making. And on top of all that they quietly won a small victory in one of the weirdes ..read more
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Why buy the cow?
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
I like Kurt Vonnegut’s work a lot. I’m not unique in this regard, of course. Vonnegut, with his darkly humorous satire is arguably one of the most important and well-read contemporary American writers. Still, as I was seeking out tattoo ideas to mark the occasion of turning 40, having a second child, and surviving a couple years of what now seems an infinite pandemic, I returned to the work of one of my favourite authors and had “So it goes,” a quote from his seminal 1969 anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five, inscribed on my forearm. I am, again, not unique in this regard. Turns out this is kin ..read more
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We don’t talk about craft beer at the Rogers Centre
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
The first rule of selling your beer at the Rogers Centre is that you don’t talk about selling your beer at the Rogers Centre. Historically, the fan experience at Blue Jays games has sucked. If you look past your pre-pubescent / adolescent Joe Carter-soaked nostalgia for the Sky Dome, you know it’s true. The stadium is a Toronto monument to the last gasps of ugly, concrete, brutalist architecture and the marvel of — wow! — a moving roof has long since lost its lustre. It was always a little too dark and, when the dome was closed, a little too quiet. It had all the charm of watching baseball in ..read more
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Ask not what the Toronto Festival of Beer can do for you
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
“The unexamined beer event is not worth attending.” From July 22-24, The Beer Store Presents The Toronto Festival of Beer (TFOB) returns to Toronto for the 24th time. Touted as Canada’s largest beer festival, TFOB will once again go down at Bandshell Park in Exhibition Place. And apparently organizers need my help. At least, that’s what the email asking about media accreditation said. Noting: “Your application does not guarantee your approval, as space for each day at Toronto’s Festival of Beer is extremely limited,” the media accreditation process includes a request to “provide us with as mu ..read more
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My neighbour brings me beer
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
1y ago
After over a decade writing about beer, I have discovered an interesting and cost-effective way to try new beers and find out what “regular folks” are into these days: I drink my neighbours’ beers.   It’s not an altogether scientific method, but, these days I find that I am more likely to discover something new by way of an unexpected beer delivery from a neighbour who puts something in my hand knowing that I’m a beer guy; ironically, sowing the fruits of my past efforts sharing my formerly-abundant “beer mail” with them*. It’s of course an inexpensive way to try new things, but it’s als ..read more
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Just Fucking Bourbon
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
3y ago
As this pandemic has evolved, so too has my relationship with alcohol. When it started, as I wrote right here, I entered into the idea of locking down with a sort of resilience. Beer wasn’t going to matter for a little while, I suggested then; this was a time to think about circling the wagons and hunkering down with family.  As it turns out of course, during the pandemic beer really, really did matter. Boy, did it matter. As with most folks, I found myself upping my intake and, as I wrote when I made my eventual return to this blog, I discovered that it has actually become easier, more ..read more
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How COVID has improved beer drinking in Ontario
Ben's Beer Blog
by Ben
3y ago
Trying to find a silver lining to 2020 feels a bit like trying to stay positive about being trapped in the trunk of a stolen Sonata speeding down the 427. We’ve all spent the last few weird and awful months wondering how we got here and where we’re going, and, just like you might if you were confined to the storage compartment of a Hyundai for a length of time, you probably feel like you could use a fucking drink. But there is an upside to this — if you’re the kind of person who can find the upside to a viral pandemic increasing our substance use – and it’s that the vigour with which we’ve a ..read more
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