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A Sweet Secret Deal – 2000 Framework Agreement (The third and final instalment of the history of The Beer Store – to date) In 2014, Martin Regg Cohn, a political columnist for the Toronto Star, revealed the secret sweetheart deal reached between privately-owned The Beer Store (TBS) and the crown-operated LCBO. The once-clandestine deal signed...
Rise of the “Big Three” (Part two of the history of The Beer Store) Brewers Retail’s three largest shareholders (Canadian Brewers Ltd, Labatt, and Molson), were not only able to gain a stronghold on the Ontario’s beer industry, but came to dominate the national market as well. There were several key factors at play that...
From Ontario Prohibition to the Rise of the “Big Three” Prohibition in Canada The Canada Temperance Act of 1878 granted local governments the option to ban the sale of alcohol. Temperance advocates found the catalyst they needed in the First World War, with prohibition discourse centered around Canadians fulling their patriotic duty through alcoholic abstinence....
Pick Your Poison? 1900 English Beer Poisoning In 1900, a mysterious epidemic swept across the Midlands and North West England with over 6,000 people falling ill, killing at least 70. Originally misdiagnosed as alcoholic neuropathy, the actual source of epidemic was discovered several months later – arsenic tainted beer. Alcoholic Neuropathy? Manchester was hit particularly...
Sumerian Beer The history of beer begins around 10,000 BCE during the Neolithic era and the rise of agriculture. During this period, societies began shifting away from hunting and gathering to establishing roots in agricultural development, cultivating crops like barley and wheat. Some scholars posit that the discovery of the intoxicating effects of beer may...
Trappist Beer A trappist beer is an elusive brew that refers to a specific appellation rather than a beer style with a shared set of characteristics. The trappist appellation is not geographically based but instead corresponds to a legal designation where the beer is brewed under a monk’s supervision on a monastic property. Trappist beer...
Leah is taking a short holiday from Beer School. This month our feature article is about distilled beer, otherwise known as whisky. Beer School will resume next month. History of Whisky Whisky is the fruit of a northern climate. The term whisky is a derivative of the expression “water of life” known in in Gaelic...
History of Christmas Ales & Norwegian Jól History of Jól The history of Christmas ales dates back to a pre-Christian era where Vikings brewed and consumed strong malty brews to honour their Norse gods. The Norwegian term “jul” meaning Christmas, is derived from the Old Norse word “jól,” which translates to “yule” in English. This...
How Non-Alcoholic Spirits are Made Non-alcoholic spirits are most often produced as distillates or compounds. Distillation starts with an alcoholic base, employing a technique of evaporation and condensation to separate out alcohol content from the richly flavoured fermented liquid base. A compound, by contrast, refers to any combination of juices, extracts and flavor additions to...
History of Sake Sake or o-sake, is the Japanese word for an alcoholic drink, and is specifically referred to as nihonshu (Japanese alcohol), or seishu (clear sake). The process of fermenting rice into an alcoholic drink was first developed in ancient China around 1000BCE, and it wasn’t until the Yayoi period (300BCE to 250CE) that...
