While we doubt that Toronto’s cultural elite emptied bottles of PBR at their private clubs a century ago, we sense the local importer had a good feel for who this brew could be marketed to: germaphobes and health purists. The claims of cleanliness also make us wonder how lax local brewers were toward sanitizing their [...]

Between Ontario Craft Beer Week, the Toronto Festival of Beer, the Golden Tap Awards, CASK! Socials every couple of months, and myriad new bars, brewers, brewery markets, and sausage halls popping up every time you try to take a break to dry out, Toronto’s craft beer scene has come a long way since that first [...]

“It’s all about curry, beer, and music.” That’s how Vincent Pollard, the charming barman at Stella, describes his establishment. It’s no surprise that he’s from England, a country enamoured with all three. Pollard handles the music and beer, while back in the kitchen his business partner, Bangladeshi immigrant Ronti Hosen, tends to the curry in [...]

The 17th annual Toronto’s Festival of Beer will kick off early tomorrow with the first ever Queer Beer Festival. It will feature more than 150 brands of beer, food—including oysters, barbecue, smoked meats, gourmet hot dogs, and gourmet grill cheese, according to festival producer Les Murray—and music from the likes of headliners Ace of Base, Lucas of Canadian rock band the Cliks, and others.

A pack of about 40 middle-aged people, men and women, charge into an alleyway south of Queen Street. They are all—including the men—wearing pink dresses and running shoes. Someone produces a small insulated lunchbox, and inside are a few dozen Dixie cups of pudding. Everybody takes a cup and slurps it down. Whoever made the stuff used Baileys instead of milk. And so what's actually happening is that all these people are on the street, in downtown Toronto, at about 4:00 p.m., and they're doing pudding shots.

Amsterdam Brewery’s Katy Brown and Erin Mullally celebrate their win with writer Chris Schryer. Last night, the winners of the Ontario Brewing Awards were announced to a packed house at Dominion on Queen in Corktown. The results—just in time for patio season—in 22 categories such as North American India Pale Ales, German Style Wheat Beer, [...]

Construction underway at the first Beer Boutique. Photo by Brendan Ross/Torontoist. The Beer Store, Ontario’s largest beer retailer, is expanding into the self-serve market with a new store format to be debuted in Toronto this summer—a move smaller Ontario brewers say might boost interest in local beer, although the store’s products will remain the same. [...]

The offending Smash Bomb Atomic IPA proposed packaging. Goofy? Sure. But socially irresponsible? Late last year, the Buffalo News ran an article about how Ontarians, including a big chunk of Torontonians, were trekking down the QEW by the busload, crossing over into New York State not for NFL action or deals at factory outlets, but [...]

The two logos in question. The Whistle is a café in Glendale, Pennsylvania, located in a small building by some railroad tracks. Their logo (above left) is extremely familiar. Anyone who lives or gets drunk in Toronto (or Sudbury, or North Bay, or parts of Alberta and British Columbia) will recognize that stylized steamwhistle. It [...]

It’s one of the world’s oldest beverages: the Sumerians drank it, Charlemagne loved it, and it even played a role in a serious putsch. We are of course talking about beer, the fermented brew that’s intertwined with Toronto’s rise and development. To further explore our city’s alcohol-fuelled history, we signed up for Beer Makes History [...]

Source: New Liberty, March 1948. For at least a year, Labatt’s ran a series of public service announcements in New Liberty magazine that touted their touring psycho-physical driving test units, whose stops included the Canadian National Exhibition. While the ads showed how drivers learned how to better gauge appropriate spaces to pass and find out [...]