Toronto Star Writer Katie Daubs Talk at the Toronto Reference Library

This afternoon I went to the Toronto Reference Library to hear a talk given by Katie Daubs, a Feature Writer for the Toronto Star called On Researching Feature Articles.

Katie Daubs, a Toronto Star features reporter, will talk about how she researches and writes stories about Toronto's history, using both online and offline primary source material and other resources.

Examples of some of her articles: 

• An ostrich in the study, a carousel in the backyard: the wickedly funny woman whose Toronto parties were epic. 
• Toronto Public Library home to long forgotten Valentine's Day postcards. 
• This Etobicoke home was hiding secrets in its basement. The family who lives there dug them up. 
• "I ran into the hall screaming, she's not dead!" The last nursing graduates of Women's College Hospital have seen it all.

She used a story she wrote for the Star in 2015, Beatrice White, the girl who killed half a million flies for Toronto, as the example of how she researched the article. I gained some useful information on her research techniques but was really fascinated by the story itself. I found it in the Star Archives and it's a fun and interesting read.

In short, the city of Toronto in 1912 was a cesspool of muddy water, garbage and animal manure. Flies were everywhere and spreading disease, especially in the city slums, which ran from the new Toronto City Hall up to College and over to Bay and simply known as 'The Ward'. The city needed a way to get ride of the flies so they ran a contest for the kids. $200 of prize money was available, $50 to the winner. Beatrice White, 14 and pictured below with her traps, won first prize by a landslide with 543,360 flies caught. The runner-up had less than half of that, 234,400.

It was a great hour. I learned and was entertained at the same time.

Canadians’ Love Affair with India Pale Ale

I found this interesting article on the Macleans magazine website.

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Behind the colourful name of India Pale Ale is a colourful history: from the 1820s, the beer was brewed in the English Midlands and shipped in casks down to Brazil, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up to India, where, having aged over the rough journey, it was enthusiastically quaffed by English colonists. Nearly 200 years later, in another former colony, it’s surging in popularity. But why are so many Canadian brewers now making IPAs?

Ironically, given its imperialist history, the style has become a symbol of rebellion. It’s a bold beer, with a copper-to-amber colour, moderate-to-high alcohol content, and, crucially, a hoppy aroma and taste. For craft brewers, it’s a statement against the blandness of mainstream lagers, whose drinkers are slowly catching on—despite their often startled first impressions.

Ralph Morana, owner of Bar Volo in Toronto, recounts his first experience of craft IPAs at a beer festival in 2002. “I went, ‘Oh Christ, how can anybody drink that?’ I was a Coors Light drinker.” Nonetheless, he says, “Once your palate adapts to the bitterness, all you want is more and more and more.” To further his quest for hops, he converted his Italian café into a craft beer bar, where IPAs are his biggest sellers—and not just to stereotypical bearded, pot-bellied craft beer enthusiasts. “If you give it to a girl, they love it: ‘It’s neat; it’s floral.’ ”

India Pale Ale has caught on across Canada, with brewers such as Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal, Half Pints in Winnipeg, and Central City in Surrey, B.C., all gaining accolades for their IPAs. Morana and other local brewers have started crafting their own at Volo, and since 2009, the bar has hosted an annual Cask IPA Challenge, where judges and customers pick the best of a hoppy crop from across Ontario. The competition’s first year featured five or six legitimate entrants (among ambers and other pale ales); this year, there were 26. “Now everybody’s going on that bandwagon,” says Morana.

The IPA does have a history in Canada: in the second half of the 19th century, Molson and Labatt brewed popular IPAs for domestic consumption. But strong-tasting ales fell out of favour after Prohibition, and neither brewing giant now brews hoppy beer. Labatt does, however, own Alexander Keith’s in Halifax, which exported its “India Pale Ale” to Ontario and Western Canada in the late 1990s with great success—its name is a long-standing brand, but craft beer fans have argued it’s not technically an IPA.

Despite the fact that, as Keith’s brewmaster emeritus Graham Kendall notes, it’s a “higher hopped product” than mainstream lagers, the beer doesn’t have what the Beer Judge Certification Program considers the “moderate to assertive hop bitterness” typical of an English IPA (much less the stronger bitterness of an American IPA). Not that Kendall is concerned: “We don’t see a need to hop it more. It would so change the character of the beer that it would drive people away.”

The ubiquity of Keith’s has left some craft brewers bitter. “We’ve had complaints that our IPA was wrong,” says Stefan Buhl, brewmaster at Tree Brewing in Kelowna, B.C. “Some people are confused. But as soon as we talk to them, they are usually pretty receptive. First you have a bit of tingling from the hops, but two or three sips in, you get quite a complex profile.” Originally brewed in 2000, Tree’s Hop Head was the first bottled “American IPA” in Canada—a style that further accentuates the hoppy aroma and taste that made the original English IPAs age well across their long voyage. Like Kendall, Buhl speaks of pleasing his customers, but he wants to prod them as well. Three years ago, Tree started brewing a super-hoppy, eight per cent Double IPA, because it felt loyal customers “might want to have a different challenge.”

With names like Boneshaker and Smashbomb, Canadian craft IPAs aren’t to be trifled with. And yet, at their best, they offset their deluges of citrusy hop flavour with a sturdy malt backbone. Perhaps in the future, this balance will even bring hoppiness back into the mainstream pint. And if craft brewers achieve their bitter revolution, what will they do for an encore? According to Morana, “Sour is the next wave.”

Fire on Our Street!

This is not what you want to see on your street when you come home.

I was at work, sitting in a training session that had bogged down so took a quick look at my emails. Teena had just sent me one moment before with the title Fire! A quick look at the email explained there was a fire just a few doors down from our place and in the same building. We are in row town homes.

Teena works midtown and I knew I could get home easier so I replied that I was already on my way, stood up and told the group I had an emergency, had to go, and went. They are likely wondering what was going on but I needed to get home quick in case the fire spread and I had to evacuate Morgan and Crumpet. I had no time to explain.

We went through this just over nine years when it was the units above us which caught fire. The memory sure was vivid as I sat in the cab battling traffic, wondering how bad the fire was and was it spreading? Thankfully the fire was out when I got home and no one was injured. There were fire trucks and firefighters everywhere. The top units are a mess but fire crews did not allow it to spread. Got to love the job that they do.

I imagine now the owners of that block will need to find other places to live during the cleanup. When it happened to us, we were out for a two months. Others were out for nearly a year. Hopefully that won't be the case here but the places look a mess.

Here is a shot from CTV news

I took some pictures of the scene which are below.

Here's a view of the damage.

It was 37c with a humidex of 49c (99F feeling like 120F) so once the fire was out, it must have felt good for the firemen to get out of their gear.

Getting all the ladders down from the roof.

Soot was everywhere.

The street was closed due to fire trucks being everywhere.

I would rather that our street did not make the news.

Beer From 9,000-Year-Old Recipe Finally Available

If you like classic brews, here's one for you: a beer made from a 9,000-year-old recipe.

Dogfish Head brewery has released Chateau Jiahu , a beverage based on the ingredients that were discovered in pottery jars from a village in Jiahu, in Henan province of northern China.

Researchers say that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced thousands of years ago. This was during the same period that people in the Middle East were beginning to make barley beer and grape wine, according to the Delaware-based brewery.

"Probably, all beer thousands of years ago – to our modern palates – would have tasted spoiled," Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione told NPR in an interview. "In fact, in a lot of hieroglyphics, people are shown drinking beer using straws because they were trying to avoid the chunks of solids and wild yeast."

Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, studies fermented beverages by analyzing the ancient pots that once held them. He worked with Dogfish Head to create the brew.

For Chateau Jiahu, McGovern figured out that the vessels from China once contained an alcoholic beverage made of rice, grapes, hawthorn berries, honey and chrysanthemum flowers.

Dogfish Head brewers used pre-gelatinized rice flakes, wildflower honey, muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers in Chateau Jiahu , the company says.

Dogfish Head and McGovern also produced Midas Touch brew that's based on findings in pottery found in King Midas' 2,700-year-old tomb.

The brewer plans to brew about 3,000 cases of Jiahu. Each wine-size bottle sells for $13.

From MyFox Houston News (CANVAS STAFF REPORTS)

On the trail of some tasteful treats

Day-trippers can sample the best of Ontario's scenery, history and culture – with a beer chaser

Neustadt, Ont. – The warm weather is fading and frost is starting to lick at windows, flower tops and anywhere it can slip its hoary tongue. But that isn't such a bad thing.

Not when you consider the myriad day-trips available all through Ontario in the fall.

And especially not when you consider that many of these jaunts can include tours – and sampling – of the many area micro-breweries.

The Ontario Craft Brewers has put together information on a number of scenic routes in Toronto and around the province, organized to include local scenery, historic architecture, cultural activities such as studio tours, fall fairs and festivals, farmers' markets and pick-your-own produce farms.

At the actual breweries, visitors get to sample beers not available anywhere else and to speak with brewmasters who have dedicated their lives to the craft.

Read the rest of the Toronto Star article here.

Small brewers a bit swamped

You could be forgiven if you missed Andrew Stimson at Fort York last weekend.

Though Stimson was pouring some tasty suds during the Toronto Festival of Beer, the owner and brewmaster at Neustadt Springs Brewery was doing it in the shadow of some of the biggest breweries in the world.

From his tiny booth at the raucous festival, Stimson admitted it was a little hard to compete for attention with the marketing muscle and giant advertising displays of behemoths like Budweiser and Guinness. Budweiser brought a massive trailer and booth and had its logo plastered all over the main music stage. In the Sleeman's "brand experience" area, there was even a beach volleyball court.

Click here to read the rest of the Toronto Star story.

Best beer bars, bar none

Our beer writer takes you on a summer cruise through the GTA's best chill spots.

Source: Toronto Star

When you write about beer, you tend to get people asking where to find a good place to pull up a bar stool and research the finer points of barley and hops.

Sometimes the question is in a polite email from a reader. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a tipsy shout across a noisy bar.

To all, here are my top picks for where to enjoy a good beer or three in the Greater Toronto Area.

Most of the places are in Toronto proper. That's not bias. The sad fact is that, for large swaths of the 905, good beer bars aren't part of local life. Some decent local pubs, sure, but nothing rising above the crowd.

And rising above the crowd is what these places do. Whether it's stocking a beer you can't get elsewhere, or the size of the beer list, or great food, these places each have something special going for them.

Read here his list of bars.

Petition protests beer monopoly

Open up competition, 'just a private citizen' urges in online appeal

Derek Forward, who describes himself as "just a private citizen," has started an online petition in hopes of forcing the Ontario government to break up The Beer Store near-monopoly.

"Everyone I know has long thought this thing should be changed," Forward said, adding that the now-foreign-owned chain enjoys a virtual monopoly over beer distribution in Ontario with very little government oversight.

In a bid to get things moving, the 49-year-old machinery broker from Burlington has set up an online petition asking people to support his call for change.

"I was going to do the petition the old-fashioned way. Collect signatures on paper. Round up a bunch of people and stand outside every beer store in Ontario for a weekend. Have a weekend protest. Supply them with a sign and then present it to the Ontario government when they resume sitting in September," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. He may still do that as well, he said. For now, though, he's testing the waters at ipetitions.com/petition/nobeerstore online.

Read the entire Toronto Star article here.

Ontarians thirsty for answers

We've been buying at The Beer Store and the LCBO for so long, it seems natural. But there are alternatives.

Is there a better way to sell beer?

That's a question that some corner stores, small brewers and bar owners have asked repeatedly over the years.

Each time, the provincial government, which is responsible for alcohol sales, has said no.

Citing concerns about public health and safety, governments of the day have repeatedly endorsed the current structure.

Read the Toronto Star article here.

Express stores hurt small brewers

The man who rejected an invitation to join Ontario's exclusive beer club

More than two decades ago, Jim Brickman had the opportunity to buy an ownership stake in The Beer Store.

Brickman says he's now kicking himself for saying "no."

The owner of Brick Brewing Co. Ltd., Ontario's biggest little brewery, says he didn't realize how important – or lucrative – membership in that exclusive club would become as time went on.

"Walk into any Beer Store. All you see is Molson, Labatt and Coors," he says, referring to the fact the most prominent brands belong to the store's two biggest owners.

Coincidence?

Brickman and other beer store critics think not.

Read the Toronto Star article here.

The real reason your beer costs more than it should

Monopoly boosts prices, limits choice, critics say

Imagine a store where most of the products are kept in the back.

You order from the cashier. The products can't be sold below a legislated minimum price. And the overwhelming majority are made by one of three large companies, which also own the store.

In Ontario, that is how $2.5 billion worth of beer is sold each year.

Surprisingly, few consumers know this is the set-up.

Read the Toronto Star article here.

Cornering the beer market

Quebec's corner-store beer sales translate into better deals than those in Ontario

Every week, says Chris Wilcox, his neighbour in Ottawa drives over the bridge to Gatineau, Que., to buy a case of beer at the Costco warehouse.

Why? Because he can get 24 bottles of Coors Light, or any other popular premium brand, for just $28.20, including taxes and deposit. That's a savings of nearly $9 a case over the regular price of the same brand in Ontario, or the equivalent of 25 per cent off.

Read the Toronto Star article here.

Red, White and Brew

Interesting article in today's Toronto Star about American craft beer.