I love the LCBO too.For Canada Day, my girlfriend bought me a 6 pack of Taps Premium Lager. I was going to use them in a sauce recipe for meatballs. I opened 1 bottle, and to my horror, the bottle sprayed so I put my mouth over the neck, you know you can’t spill a drop. Shock 2. The great beer, I’ve had it before, was off and tasted like malt vinegar. She got her money back, but the clerks said they don’t stock them any more due to the fact there’s no preservatives in the beer and it’s not big sellers. They also whined about having to refrigerate the beer. I’m doing my shopping at the beer store from now on.

Hey Darren
The Beer Store don’t refrigerate! and you won’t find many craft beers in there. The BRI charge us $50,000 per product just to list it and then we are just a label on the wall. The LCBO is changing slowly,we are trying to educate them. They do offer a variety of good craft (unpasturized) beers.

Hi Val

I guess it’s a case of bitterness, and not a good bitter ale at that, regarding my last post. I still use the LCBO, but I’ll keep and eye out on more then what’s in the case. I had no idea that BRI charges so much to put a pic on the wall. That’s well beyond ludicrous. I will alway pick craft brewed beers over the major labels. I just want more selection in Ottawa 8-).

Hi Val

Looking forward to it.

Darren

woah…. Mark
I love your comments, you really are riled. every one has thier opinion! For your information I have been in the brewing game for over 30 years in the UK and Canada
so I feel I know what I am talking about. I don’t feel I mislead Justin, other than the fact micro’s in Ontario are brewing Hectolitres of beer for the consumer and not the one off speciality keg that a brew pub can produce.
I am pleased that you are proud of your Saskatchewan Breweries and so you should be!I do not blame anyone for my problems, only for the media who really do knock the Ontario craft brewers.
May I ask you a question, if you live in Saskatchewan, when have you tasted Ontario brews to judge them?

Val…

Well, I don’t really know where to start with this. I guess I’ll just start writing and see where it goes.

First of all - whether you or anyone else likes it or not, it’s a fact that the craft brewing scene in Ontario is generally quite conservative in comparison to other North American jurisdictions. I’ve tried enough beers (over 1800) from enough different places (57 countries, 31 US states, 10 provinces & territories) to be comfortable making this statement.

However, I don’t say it as a direct criticism of you or any other Ontario craft brewer. There are a good number of reasons why the beers of Ontario tend not to be as adventurous or diverse as those brewed elsewhere, with archaic and stifling government legislation being one of the biggest factors.

But thankfully, things have started changing. Which means me to your assertion that “Brew pubs are the place for you to go if you want off the wall experience”. If you’ve visited a specialty beer store in the US, you’d see that this is definitely not the case. The number of different styles represented on the shelves is astounding.

And lest you think I’m bashing Ontario breweries - we’ve got breweries up here like Scotch-Irish, Black Oak, Better Bitters, Great Lakes and others that are brewing beers that are outside the norm. So it’s quite possible for a full scale brewery to produce a smaller volume of something different once in a while.

Come to think of it, Neustadt has done a few limited batch beers over the years, haven’t they? Off the top of my head, there’s been Big Dog Porter, L’Ale, VS-55 Shampoo Lager, and Manchester Bitter.

Finally, as an Ontario beer writer, I have to disagree with your suggestion that the media has nothing but negative things to say about Ontario craft beers. Sure, we may be critical sometimes, but I’d say that the coverage tends to skew more towards the positive than the negative. Any criticisms I’ve seen have generally been valid in the context of the beer(s) being reviewed.

Ironically enough, for my Beer of the Week feature that will be posted on http://www.tasteto.com tomorrow, I’ve reviewed Bruce County Lager and Neustadt Lager as a preview of the OCB’s participation at Toronto’s Festival of Beer. And the reviews are generally positive. I’ll also be at the Festival on Thursday night, so perhaps I’ll see you at the Neustadt booth.

Greg

Hey Greg…looking forward to seeing you again at the GT’s. Yourself & Cass and Alan at A good beer blog and many other great writers totally deserve the OCB’s thanks for helping to promote and foster our fledgling industry.

And as a fan of interesting beer, I hear your constructive feedback calling for more specialty beers in our market and I echo it - If Beau’s can catch up with sales of our Kölsch (in itself a bit of a specialty beer), we have hopes to have some fun with other not-made-in-Ontario styles, too.

I hope that everyone can cut Val a bit of a break too, though…I personally read the post as being more of a “I’ll let you in on some of the trials of running a microbrewery in Ontario” than a direct attack or “whining”- but written posts have a way of coming across more pointed than they were necessarily intended.

…and Greg, you are definitely not one of the naysayers!

See you Sunday!

I got into a big discussion on bartowel about this topic.

Go get em Val, this is a forum from OCB members and these are the issues we deal with. It’s the unique personalities of the OCB that make us interesting and entertaining as a group.

You should see what we have to deal with when it comes to the 9 pack at the LCBO, yikes! That said it’s a unique retail system and they are going in some good directions it just takes a while to turn a ship that big.

P.S. Val/Andy you make great beers and I have stored more than a few in my fridge at home.

P.P.S. Make the trip to Neustadt, it’s one of the coolest brewery buldings in North America.