Wandering Into the Known and Unknown
I decided to take myself for a drive to somewhere I had never been before. I ended up in the Donjek River Valley & Kluane National Park.
Camping Etiquette
Winter has released his icy grip on the Yukon, and that brings my favorite season: camping season. In early May I along with several friends pitched our campers and tents at Lake LaBerge. We lucked out and got choice sites along the lakeshore. As we settled in with dinner on the fire and a beverage …
Zombie Apocalypse? The Yukon is the Place to Be
Have you been kept awake at night by the threat of a zombie apocalypse? If you have a spouse like mine, then you no doubt have. The interesting question isn’t what will happen to the world, but how will the Yukon fare, as compared to the rest of the world, when the apocalypse happens. The …
When Less is More
I was tricked by this book, The Paradox of Choice. I was sure this book was a great marketing book. I was drawn in by a great study conducted about jam. In the first part, they sampled six kinds of jam at a food store. In the next part they sampled 24 kinds of jam …
When Did the Chinese Start Making Beer?
In perusing past entries on the Brookston Beer Bulletin blog site, www.brookstonbeerbulletin.com (a terrific forum for learning about all things beer-related), we came across a rant authored by a site visitor with the clever pseudonym, “J”. The entry starts with J describing himself as a fan of economic theory and how he has come across …
Playing Politics With Beer
News out of Birmingham, Alabama this month has a local consumer lobby group calling for a boycott of all Anheuser-Busch products in the Birmingham/Jefferson County area due to anti-craft beer legislation in that state. Free the Hops/Alabamians for Speciality Beer’s President Stewart Carter notes that the call for the boycott comes as a response to …
The Beer Police are Heroes
A new initiative in the UK’s Somerset County this summer will ensure that beer drinkers are not getting hosed at their favourite watering holes. Trading Standards Officers will be making the rounds throughout the county with beer measuring devices, ensuring that all glassware is certified to hold a true, 100 per cent liquid 20 fluid …
Smart Phones Require Smart People
Sure, it’s a smart phone. I don’t think the name is wrong, so much as how the name is understood. If you are smart, you can get this gadget to do a lot of really cool stuff. But until you’ve smartened up a little bit, it can be a real pain in the… Let me …
Mayo Campground Has the One Thing Kids Look For
MAYO 5 Mile Lake in Mayo doesn’t have a campground playground. Not right in the campground, mind you, but there is one down the short lake at the day use area. Playgrounds at the campsite have become much more important in this third evolution of camping. What the 5 Mile Lake campground does have is …
Tatchun Lake is for Us Paddlers
Tatchun Lake Campground has 20 campsites and none of them are a pull through site; there is a boat launch and a cook shelter. That’s what you’ll find in the campsite guides. But how much does that really tell you? I can tell you that those campsites are some of the most untouched campsites I’ve …
Federal Campground is Nice, Too
HAINES JUNCTION There are numerous campgrounds in and around Haines Junction. Your YTG Campground permit will let you camp at most of them … but the Kathleen Lake Campground is not one of them. The Kathleen Lake Campground is a federal campground that lies just inside the borders of the Kluane National Park: a “World …
Looking for a Kinder, Gentler Beer Drinker
With binge drinking and bar violence on the rise, the Province of Alberta has made some policy changes that it is hoping will curb public drunkenness. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission has amended policy that will no longer allow for extreme “cheap drink” specials, extended happy hours and large drink orders past 1 a.m. …
Fill the Parks
There are two things that really frustrate me — and they are related. First, the couches in my house have permanent dents from the backsides of my kids. “Go outside and do something,” I say, echoing the words from the mouths of my parents when I was a kid. Of course the same resistance exists …
You Just Can’t Put Canada in a Bottle
If you are going to play on patriotism, perhaps it is best to stay at home. Recently, brewing giant Molson Coors Brewing Company announced that it was writing off the entire brand value of Molson in the United States. The move, seen as a financial one, could have symbolic implications as well. The Molson brands …
A Cure for Those Camping Time Blues
Whether it’s the weather or the yard work, some commitment on the weekend or the fact that you have family coming to visit in a week and you have to finish the trim in the spare room, some weekends you just can’t get out camping. That’s not something we can accept easily, the symptoms of …
This Beer Really is For You
One of the things that a business in your community can do that companies Outside cannot is treat you like you — as an individual — matter. I have seen tubes of lip balm turn up at meetings or events that have the logo of the event on them, thanks to the efforts of Aroma …
700,000,000,000 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall (would take 220,000 years to sing)
We feel the need to make a few comments on the $700 billion subsidy that has been the big financial news in the US last month. We have a real hard time trying to get our heads around that number, 700 billion. It sure seems like a lot of zeros. Global beer production last year …
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Beer Bottles Make Beautiful Music
The year was 1798 and the place was Helgoland. Helgoland is located in the North Sea, 70 kilometres off of the coast of Germany. This is important, since it is the remote location that made Helgoland, in 1798, the birthplace of the beer bottle organ. The church that was located on Helgoland in 1798 had …
When Religion is in the Mix
There are few more dangerous waters for the Buzz to float down than mixing beer and religion. And yet, being the brave souls that we are, go there we must. We can do that, we think, because we are a craft brewer. After all, we belong to an industry that has spawned such potentially offensive …
Lots of Empty Barrels to Wear
In case you have been living in a vacuum over the past few weeks, apparently these are hard times. Funny how things seemed to turn around so fast … or maybe not so funny, depending on your perspective. We hear that beer is pretty much recession-proof. We have long argued that this is true to …
The Real Santa Claus Does Not Run
40 Santas donned the red and white and ran [pub crawled?] the entire two blocks of Main Street in Manayunk. Or.
European Brewers Embrace Santa Claus
Everyone in North America knows who Saint Nicholas is, right? Obviously, he is the guy dressed in the red and white suit who gives away gifts every December 25th. However, he is also the patron saint for a number of other things. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint for bakers, boatmen, druggists, fishermen, judges, longshoremen, …
Doing What Breweries Do Best
As we get nearer to our upcoming and excellent adventure, distilling, we get more and more questions about the process. So we thought we would turn the Beer Buzz into the Booze Buzz, at least for this column. We get asked the same two questions all the time. The first is, “What are you going …
Guatemala’s greatest asset is its people
Guatemala has so many great elements to it, but the highlight of our trip (if you’ve read my other stories you may notice a common thread) was the people. Every country has exotic “ethnic” foods that are critical to a good vacation. There is always beautiful, unique scenery and “traditional” entertainment. But the make-or-break element …
Unless you’re Santa, I’d say it’s one of those …
Everybody knows beer causes beer bellies, right? Why else would they call it a beer belly? Not so fast: a recent study, by German and Swedish researchers, of 20,000 people, calls that traditional wisdom into question. This was no flash-in-the-pan study but an eight-and-a-half-year period involving 7,876 men and 12,749 women. And, expected, they learned …
Unless you’re Santa, I’d say it’s one of those … Read More »
You Say Goodbye, I say Hello
This Christmas I had the great fortune of visiting Guatemala. I really enjoyed answering the question, “Why did you decide to come to Guatemala?” which I was asked by locals more than I had expected. I always answered that Guatemala was the centre of the Mayan civilization and that I wanted to have front row …
‘Moving the Coat Rack’
We heard a story a while back about an artist who had a sculpture exhibit going on at a gallery. Near the entry door to the gallery, the artist placed a coat rack. During the opening, people would come into the gallery, hang their coat on the rack and move on to check out the …
What Beer May or May Not Do – for You
During World War II, the brewing-trade industry known as the United Brewers Industrial Foundation worked with the U.S. government to create a series of ads designed to boost morale and highlight the positive aspects of beer. In Life magazine’s Aug. 4, 1941 edition is an amazing ad. Most of the body of the ad is …
The Vatican’s Bookstore Can’t be Wrong
Think about your life and the stories you might tell of it. Think of the grand adventures, great accomplishments, and life lessons. I know how most of you would like to tell the story of your life; I’ve had a look at more than a few résumés in my time. But now, think about your …
Belgian Street-Meat Heaven
Mitraillette: it’s the world’s most perfect food. Without a description of its component parts you may mistake this culinary art form for a simple hot-dog covered in French fries. Trust me when I say this is well beyond your common hot-dog doused in chips and ketchup. A mitraillette is started with a baguette. Nobody can …
Out and Away: The Camping is the Food!
No recipes here. Too little space, too many ideas and I don’t think I have ever cooked the same thing twice
Confession of a Mustache Cheater
This is the first time in my life my upper lip has been covered by anything that could be defined as a moustache. You see, I have what might be described as a follicular disability. What some would call a 5 o’clock shadow would take about five weeks to appear on me. Movember was my …
I Love the Smell of Camping in the Morning
The first camping trip of the year is unique in many ways. For one thing, there’s the anticipation of finding out which critical thing you forgot to put in the camp box (you know the one, it’s the one thing you promised yourself you wouldn’t forget to replace … like, one year, it was the …
Quest for Fire
That is your favourite time at the fire? What makes the campfire the best place in world for you? Perhaps I am being a bit presumptuous in assuming that the fire holds the same allure for you as it does for me … but it does, doesn’t it? Is it the Moment of Ignition? Watching …
Mosquiticide
Everything in nature has a purpose. The purpose of the Noble Mosquito [Culiseta longiareolata] is to keep our campsites from becoming overcrowded. What I see as a minor annoyance in the overall experience of camping, those with a weaker constitution – or with less-developed mosquito-minimization strategies – succumb to like Kleenex on a campfire. And …
Out and Away: The First Camping Trip
What did you learn on your first camping trip this year? The first camp of the season is unique. It’s one of the only trips of the year (at least for me) with any kind of objective. Generally, camping for me is about escaping any kind of goal or responsibility. When I am at home …
Finding the Cure
Nature Deficit Disorder. Really? An official term for spending too much time not camping! The Yukon has your cure. Prescription strength!
Mambo Tanzania: Pt. 3
I made it! I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro! I’m sure I cost a few of the resort staff some betting money by doing it. When I told Gilian, the receptionist, she laughed at me. “You’re kidding, right?” I had approached the hike without any thoughts of success or failure riding on it… just eight days in …
Mambo Tanzania: Pt. 2
Mambo! Poa! Last week I explained Mambo. Poa is the proper response. Described to me as: Mambo = What’s Up? Poa = It’s cool. At the end of our visit to Tanzania, we had an opportunity to visit a local orphanage our Canadian trip organizers and our Moshi-based guiding company were involved in supporting only …
Mambo Tanzania: Pt. 1
Editor’s Note: What’s Up Yukon co-publisher Mark Beese recently embarked on the adventure of a lifetime—an assault on Tanzania’s fabled Mount Kilimanjaro. This is the first of three articles about his adventure. Mambo! That’s not true Swahili. “Jambo” is the informal Swahili greeting equivalent to “hello”. Mambo… well, that’s the colloquial greeting that most closely …
One Online Collaborative Document, Many Voices
“How can you have a collaborative work environment, where the team gets more accomplished because the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts, when you don’t share an office space?” My skeptical friend posed the question, but I am sure by the tone of it that the question mark wasn’t pronounced and the …
This Bud is For the Highest Bidder
The great, gobbling beer merger beast is, here in the summer of 2008, most definitely alive and very well. Some of the mergers that we have seen in the past are beginning to look tiny, by comparison. Remember the Molson-Coors merger of not so long ago? Chicken feed, it is now beginning to seem. Right …
Creature Comforts
Family camping is like the third evolution of camping (after being taken out to Algonquin Park with my parents) … at least it is for me anyways. My first evolution of camping involved figuring out how to fit the maximum amount of beer and people in the Tercel. Comfort wasn’t an issue, I wasn’t going …
Beer Can Be Eaten
For the most part, this column is used to keep folks abreast of contemporary beer issues and educate Yukoners in craft brewing culture. Often times, it reads as a “news of the weird in beer” type article … a defence of crazy beer happenings the world over. Today, we explore beer’s practicality in an effort …
Demand Your Officeless Office-
I see the office building being replaced by the virtual office and I see this happening over this generation. – Mark Beese, 2008