Here’s a great reason to contemplate visiting the Big Apple in October: The Organic Beer Bash at Counter in New York’s East Village. Coming on the heels of last year’s successful first edition, this fest will feature over thirty organic ales, lagers and ciders — last year’s poured 34 total, plus some organic beer cocktails — along with organic beer cuisine. (more…)

In the wake of last week’s rant on underage drinking hysteria in the United States comes this report from CNN identifying a group of academics who are actually — gasp! — in support of the government considering the potential benefits of lowering the drinking age south of the border! Not quite worthy of Ripley’s, perhaps, but certainly surprising in this day and age. (more…)

A beer discussion board I occasionally visit, the Burgundian Babble Belt, alerted me recently to a minor brouhaha underway in New Hampshire, once more bringing to light the idiotic and backwards attitudes Americans and, let’s face it, many Canadians have towards drinking. The story is documented in two parts, but you can get the gist of it by skimming Part One. (If you want to follow the sordid tale further, Part Two is here.) (more…)

Still shy of brewpubs and adventuresome brewers, Toronto’s beer scene is buoyed by a healthy contingent of new beer bars.

I’ve never thought much of my adopted hometown when it comes to its beer scene. Various commercial and legal difficulties have prevented the Ontario capital from ever developing a reasonable number of brewpubs, and while bottling breweries in the GTA — that would be the Greater Toronto Area — do craft some very fine beers, the general and wide-spread conservatism of most of our brewers has created a market when anything even remotely adventurous, even if mediocre at best, is received by the local community of beer aficionados with something approaching rapturous glee. (more…)

I’ve been sitting on this review for some time because, frankly, I simply have not been able to figure out what to do with it. And I still haven’t, so I’ll just throw it up here and see if it sticks. (more…)

What with all my running around this month — wedding in Mexico, Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans — I didn’t even realize that this weekend marks the 21st annual running of my personal favourite U.S. beer fest, the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland. (more…)

I’m not in the habit of giving beer events extensive advance play in this space, but Montreal’s upcoming Bieres, Flaveurs et Caprices is no ordinary beer fest. (more…)

I’ve been avoiding this topic for all of its run thus far (here and here and here and here and, sigh, here), mainly because of its Ontario-centricity. But I can hold my tongue no longer. We must now wade into the unspeakable morass that is beer sales in my home province and confront the beast that is… (more…)