Every shorter guide to Oktoberfest should mention that Munich’s annual beer festival is the world’s largest fair; the beer is called Marzen because it was traditionally made in March and cellared over the summer; and most of the sixteen-day stretch actually falls in September. Jump over to PostCity.com for the rest of this week’s column.
Post City
standard Toronto Beer Week 2014 Guide
The idea of holding a beer week is to make it so that the uninitiated, the pitchers-and-wings-after-softball crowd, can’t possibly avoid the fact that something special is happening. With saturation comes awareness, I suppose. The rest of the guide is over on Post City.
standard Muskoka Harvest Ale
“A beer for every season and a season for every beer” would be a great way to think about the beer calendar, except that autumn gets a disproportionate share of the pie. As the trees start to think about dropping their leaves, pumpkin beers, porters, and Oktoberfest lagers pop up on shelves. The dry hopped harvest ale is a comparatively smooth transition from refreshing and bitter summer beer into the more substantial fare. You can find the rest of this week’s First Draught story on PostCity.com.
standard Beau’s Kissmeyer Pale Ale
Many craft brewers started brewing at home or had a great marketing idea they used to find a niche in the beer market. A small, exceptionally well-trained group left a career with a macrobrewery to open their own operation. After 16 years at Carlsberg in Denmark, master brewer Anders Kissmeyer joined this last group when he founded his own Copenhagen brewery, Nørrebro Bryghus in 2003. Read the full article here…
standard Great Lakes Canuck
Etobicoke’s Great Lakes Brewery has rebranded their well-regarded American-style Pale Ale. The “Crazy” has been dropped from the name and Canuck Pale Ale has a new can design. The kitschy Canadiana has been replaced with an image of Gordie Levesque, who was introduced by a brewery press release as “a burly lumberjack that enjoys a good pint in the great outdoors.” Read the full article here…
standard Drake Devonshire
Believe it or not, there was a time in Toronto when opening a bar or restaurant on West Queen West seemed like a foolish thing to do. And then, just over 10 years ago, the Drake Hotel turned the corner of Queen West and Beaconsfield into a destination. When it opens for business on September 15 in Wellington, the Drake Devonshire hopes to emulate the original’s triple threat of food that playfully remixes classics, thoughtful and contemporary design, with upscale accommodation. Read the full article here…
standard Wild Burger
Every so often, a Toronto restaurant or pop-up vendor creates a new burger that features an unusual meat. After last week’s opening of Wild Burger, residents and office workers in the Mount Pleasant and Eglinton neighborhood no longer need to travel for a grilled patty of ostrich, kangaroo, or camel anymore. Follow the link for the full story.
standard Southern Tier Compass
During his prodigious career, Michael Jackson wrote several of the most interesting and educational books about beer. I’m dutifully working my way through all of them, but somehow the idea of his that floats to the top of my memory is his suggestion that unsweetened fruit lambics are the ideal drink to hand to guests as they arrive at a summer party. Head over to Post City for the full review.
standard Mamakas Taverna
“This is not your typical Danforth taverna,” stresses Thanos Vrettakos Tripi about Mamakas. “At all,” he adds. “This is a much more sophisticated approach to taverna food.” Follow the link for the full story.
standard Side Launch Wheat
For a while, the top-rated German hefeweizen in the world was made in Ontario. Michael Hancock’s Bavarian weiss — formerly known as Denison’s Weissbier — has been renamed Side Launch Wheat,and while it has slipped to number three on RateBeer, it’s still a textbook example of the style. Find the full review on the Post City Magazines site.