OMG! They’ve Delisted Screech
I’ve had Screech in my cabinet for I-don’t-know-how-many years. I’ve replenished it regularly, and now I’m told that it doesn’t sell…
Cocktails
Cold As Ice
Nestled in the Niagara region of Ontario are many vineyards that produce some of the world’s best ice wines.
What came first, the egg or the nog?
The holidays are upon us, and what better way to welcome in another Christmas season than by enjoying a glass of eggnog?
Exploring a classic French champagne—Moët & Chandon
“Champagne is the only wine in the world that makes every woman beautiful,” a rather famous quote by a rather infamous mistress.
The Bubble Life: Pretty In Pink
Rosé Prosecco was first launched on the market in 2020 and the alcoholic drink has gained popularity as a special occasion drink.
Yoda Soda
Use any green soda to get a this Star Wars inspired “Yoda-looking” soda./ Vodka is optional, but highly suggested, when age appropriate.
Parmesan and Spruce Tip Shortbreads
Ever eat from a package and think, “Huh. I could make that.” I sampled pricey Parmesan &rosemary shortbreads, I tried spruce tips instead.
Birthday Pairings, Campground Treats
Jennifer’s (Free Pour Jenny) cocktail and an appetizer. The cocktail’s bright, sharp and tart. Something cheesy immediately suggested itself.
Bloody good cocktails
Being that we can’t travel to a warm climate where oranges and lemons grow, it seems fitting to pay tribute to those lovely flavours now, during one of the coldest months.
Light and lovely
Need to go for something light. Try this simple recipe for January. I shall call a “Vodka & Soda That Doesn’t Suck.”
A Calling for Cocktails
Many took up drinking as a hobby during the pandemic, but for the amateur mixologist, it’s all about quality over quaffing. Lise Farynowski has been interested in the art of cocktails for more than a decade. Craft cocktails typically refer to drinks that include fresh ingredients, homemade syrups and small batch spirits (no margarita mix!). …
Cheers to a new year
This month’s cocktails are an eclectic bunch, but they’re all aimed at celebrating the season, in particular, the impending completion of 2020.
Warm Winter Drinks
Here we are, with the holiday season fast approaching, and it’s quite likely that you will want to celebrate with a few festive drinks. For me, winter with its cold makes me feel the need for warming ingredients such as ginger, cloves, molasses, and chocolate. The recipes that follow are full of these warm flavours.
Spookily-delicious Halloween cocktails
Halloween-inspired cocktails: a grown-up pumpkin spice smoothie, a blood-red warming toddy and drinks that put extra treats to good use. Boo!
Crisp, colourful autumn cocktails
Challenged to create cocktails with the obscure bottles in the back of a liquor cabinet. That social media challenge became a monthly recipe.
All About Bubbles
In March, I challenged myself to publish a cocktail recipe every day, for 14 days, on social media – the challenge was that I had to use spirits I already had at home, and that I could not make any extra/unnecessary trips to the grocery store for mixer, etc. This challenge became Free Pour Jenny’s …
Gin, Gin, Gin-ity Gin
This selection of cocktails is, you guessed it, inspired by gin, but really, it’s inspired by the Prohibition era cocktails of the Roaring Twenties.
Muddling Our Way Through May
Here are a couple of recipes here that are, quite literally, muddled. What is muddling, anyways?
Quarantinis: Or, When Life Gives You Lemons
I recently challenged myself to publish a cocktail recipe every day, for 14 days, on social media – the challenge was that I had to use spirits I already had at home, and that I could not make any extra/unnecessary trips to the grocery store.
Old Fashioned
One can never go wrong with an Old Fashioned, and you can make one with just about any type of whiskey – it’s really up to you. I prefer bourbon, but you can use rye.
When Life Gives You Lemons
We are all feeling this way at the moment, and because the lemons are so lovely now, and in the same springy theme, I give you a refreshing, sassy, and springy gin sour!
Boozy maple eggnog
Think of egg nog as a way of preserving the summer’s bounty (dairy, eggs) for the winter.
Hot Dickens Cider
The holiday season ushers in all kinds of warming specialty drinks to cozy up with around the house. This Hot Dickens Cider is named after A Christmas Carol author Charles Dickens. I have no idea why, as it’s a variant of the original recipe “borrowed” from my brother. It’s a wonderful warming drink that carries …
Yukon’s version of Oktoberfest
The Yukon Beer Festival is returning for its fifth year on October 13 and 14, with proceeds benefitting the Boys and Girls Club of Whitehorse. Local beer aficionados will be able to taste beer from more than a dozen brewers and distributors travelling to the festival from across Canada, as well as local Yukon brewers …
Wines With a Cause
Wine-lovers will descend on the High Country Convention Centre on Thursday, October 19, for the 26th edition of the Rendezvous Rotary Wine Festival. These grape connoisseurs will have over 200 wines available for sampling and tasting. Those lucky enough to hold one of the 100 priority tasting tickets secured one of the hottest tickets in …
Happy Beer-day to You!
If you’re feeling dapper this weekend, you’ve got an opportunity to dust off your best prohibition era outfits and celebrate the Yukon Brewery’s 20th Anniversary. The brewery is throwing a shindig to celebrate, offering the public 20 per cent off stock in their retail store (off everything but the booze. Bummer, I know). There will …
Surimi (Fake Crab) Salad Rolls
Surimi Salad Rolls Makes 6 Rolls INGREDIENTS ½ cup shredded, flaked imitation crab ½ cup shredded iceberg lettuce ½ cup thinly sliced cucumber 6 rice paper rolls Dipping sauce (Thai-style peanut sauce, soy sauce, chili sauce, etc.) to garnish Sliced green onions, to garnish Toasted sesame seeds, to garnish METHOD 1. Bring a skillet of …
Dreamtime, Bourbon Time
I’ve always loved the stories where people slip out of the present and into a different time; kid’s stories like Tom’s Midnight Garden, or the Narnia series, or, in adult fiction, The Time Traveller’s Wife. There’s something compelling about the notion of arriving in another time, unmoored from the present, where the universe bends and …
Making All the Right Stops for a Delicious Evening
Let’s make this as easy as possible. No cooking and no fussing, follow these directions and you will arrive at a delicious dinner destination. First stop, sushi night! Sushi is one of these tricky food-wine pairing combinations. Wasabi, pickled ginger, soy sauce, raw fish, sweetened rice – gah – it is a pairing nightmare. Luckily, …
Making All the Right Stops for a Delicious Evening Read More »
Benefits of Boxed Wine
If you drink wine in the Yukon, certainly you have had a glass of Copper Moon wine. Maybe out of a glass bottle, but probably out of a box. I personally love that the Yukon wine drinking community has embraced alternative packaging and the pile of benefits that come with it, but there is more …
Sweet news: Northern bitters make beautiful drinks
Yukon concocters, experimenters, cocktail lovers and fans of northern botanicals, take cheer! A kindred spirit walks among us. She is Jennifer Tyldesley, and as you will have recently learned in these pages, she makes her own small-batch bitters and sells them under the brand name Free Pour Jenny’s. Tyldesley’s philosophy is similar to my own: …
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The Best Trend in Wine
This is a wine trend that anyone could enthusiastically embrace – wine and chips! Planning a casual night of watching a show or reading by the fire welcomes a glass of wine and a little snack into the evening. But the snack suggestions with wine are often fussy and complicated. Hard-to-find ingredients and instructions that …
Something different is always brewing
Winterlong Brewing Co. is absolutely, positively, not a mass production brewery — in spite of market forces. The owners, Marko and Meghan Marjanovic, call market research “playing around.” They call complications “the fun part” and frustrations are “challenges.” And, when they have finished playing around and overcoming the frustrating fun parts, yet another beer is …
Cutting the Cost of Wine
Everything about wine is fun. It is delicious on its own and it is wonderful with food. There is a wine to match every mood, celebration or weather. All of this fun isn’t exactly free, though. Wine costs dollars and calories, two things that many of us put great effort into managing. With a little …
Bordeaux vs Meritage
Picking up a new bottle of wine can be as difficult as cracking a secret code. What do all of these symbols and words mean? What mystical juice is hiding inside the bottle? At the end of the day, we just want it to be tasty – right? Let’s decode one of these mystery words: …
Making Sangria While the Sun Shines
I bought a nectarine in Juneau a couple of weeks ago. It looked large and rosy and promising. The flesh was firm and yet it gave slightly under the pressure of my fingertips and I thought, “Wow, a real nectarine.” But when I cut into the fruit, the flesh was mealy and dry, lacking even …
From the Ashes of A River Fail: Two Cocktails
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about heading off on a trip down the Wind River. I was concerned that our group, with all our goods and chattels for the 17-day journey, was going to be overweight for the flight to the put-in at McCluskey Lake. Well, turned out there was no need to …
Sherry, Baby
I developed an interest in food and restaurants early. In this I had a companion: my friend Sarah, who at sixteen was a year older than me and even keener than I to explore everything culinary the city of Toronto had to offer. In 1971 the mainstream Toronto restaurant scene was emerging from its love …
Sprucey French 75
The spruce tip harvest was early this year; green buds started appearing at the ends of spruce branches around mid-May in Whitehorse and continued being harvestable well into the first week of June – on higher ground at least. Best-laid plans notwithstanding, I never did make it out for a concentrated session of picking, but …
Mai Tais at the Whistle Stop Pub
Most of us who came of age in the 70s have a Tiki experience somewhere in their cocktail history. Mine was in Jasper, Alberta in the winter of 1975, when I was working at Jasper Park Lodge. My pals and I celebrated every major event – birthday, break-up, good ski day or payday – with …
The Dark and Stormy
I just returned from a trip to Seattle, where I didn’t go to a single cocktail bar. Nor did I enjoy the happy hours for which Seattle is famous. Instead I enjoyed cocktail hour with my travelling companion and our mutual friend at our friend’s house in Phinney Ridge, where there is both a sauna …
This Parrot Delivers
Cigar lovers: get ready to drool. In the heart of Philadelphia there is a posh cigar lounge called Ashton Cigar Bar. This trendy hub spot features over 300 whiskeys and 200 top brand cigars. The atmosphere is just as decadent as the cigars, featuring gold accents and plush chairs. Ashton has prided itself in creating …
Healthy Drinks
answer is the often vague and elusive response that is elicited by so many nutrition questions: it depends. A smoothie is only as good – or bad – as what’s in it. Smoothies can be an easy and taste bud-friendly way for kids and adults to up their servings of fruits and vegetables. They offer …
The Cocktail Family Tree
I have a Cocktail Confidante to whom I turn when I need inspiration or advice. He is an amateur beverage scientist who approaches his subject with the curiosity, passion and dedication of a Marie Curie or Frederick Banting. He spends hours on applied research in his laboratory, and many more hours studying cocktail theory and …
The Old Fashioned
The Old Fashioned takes us right back to the beginning of the history of cocktails. In 1806 a reader wrote to the editor of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper published in Hudson, New York from 1801-1807, asking about the meaning of a new word: “cocktail.” The editor replied, “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, …
Raspberry Ultimatum
At the beginning of January I set myself the task, for 2016, of clearing the cupboard of experimental aquavits, infused spirits and liqueurs. A task that was easier set than done, especially when the experimental beverage, put up with such hope and optimism two years before, turns out to be nasty and medicinal-tasting. Such was the …
Taking Stock
In Scottish households it’s a New Year’s tradition to scour the house clean on December 31st to prepare for the coming year. My household has a fair whack of Scots’ influence, and I will say we passed the vacuum over the rugs on the 31st, but it wasn’t until January 3rd, when I broke a …
Punch
A familiar sight at many a gathering during the holiday season is the punch bowl, ranging in formality from fine, etched crystal to battered salad bowl, filled to the brim with a fruity, bubbly concoction, set on a tablecloth stained here and there by the berries that slipped ‘twixt cup and lip and surrounded by …
Tea Time
Named one the hottest food trends of 2015 by Canada’s Hospitality Business Magazine, Canadians are drinking almost 10 billion cups of tea each year. Second only to water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, and with good reason. With endless combinations of healthful herbs, spices, and fruits, there is a tea to …
Switching Up the Drinks Menu
In the world of beverages, everything old is new again. The cocktail revival of recent years has been matched by a revival of interest in old-fashioned, non-alcoholic refreshers. On food blogs, in restaurants and in modern cookbooks you’ll find recipes for herb or fruit-infused waters, fruit and vinegar combinations like shrub or schwitzel, fermented drinks …
Here’s a tip: spruce makes for a great cocktail
Like so many Yukoners during this crazy low-bush cranberry season, I’m clearing out the freezer to make room for berries. In the process I’ve unearthed several treasures: 10 kilos of pork bones, 3 duck carcasses, 2 whole Taku River sockeye, undated, and best of all, 3 bags of spruce tips, harvested in 2014, that I’d …
Crabapples and Calvados
It’s August 31 and the snow is halfway down Gray Mountain. In downtown Whitehorse the leaves are still on the trees and many of them are green. This morning I talked to my sister, who lives in Parksville but used to live here, and she said that in 1992, the snow fell on September 13 …
The Appropriate Road Trip Beverage Strategy
Key to the success of the summer road trip is an assortment of the beverages appropriate to each occasion, and the necessary equipment to concoct and serve them. Take this morning, for instance I am sitting on a camp chair outside Pinedale Auto Wreckers on the outskirts of Prince George, British Columbia. The fence beside …
Not Just Heineken
I recently re-visited Holland, the country I grew up in. I have learned over the years, in speaking to fellow ‘Dutches’, that how I experienced things in my childhood – or, for that matter, when I go back to the place I spent my childhood – these are just my experiences, not necessarily something uniquely …
Porter for Your Stout?
The year is 1720. If you just touched down in London town, you would see a bustling city with ships docked at each port. If you were a male looking for work, you might have considered the popular porter trade. With London being on the banks of the Thames River, ships would come and go …
Brewed from the Heart
The world of suds has official definitions of what constitutes a craft beer. That doesn’t prevent Marko Marjanovic from offering his own. “For myself, it’s a beer that’s brewed by passionate people who want to create a flavourful beer that’s been hand-crafted, that’s been selected based on the flavours that they want in their beer,” …
Birch Beer!
I’ve always known Uncle Berwyn’s Pure Yukon Birch Syrup was the best birch syrup in Canada. As it turns out, our homegrown syrup, produced off-grid in a homestead on the banks of the McQuesten River by Berywn Larsen and Sylvia Frisch, is actually the second-best birch syrup in the world. So say New York birch …
Bitter Lessons and Sweet Memories
Gin is the quintessential summer spirit, especially for those of us who live above the 49th parallel. Rum, tequila, and bourbon more properly belong to the south, evoking sea and sand and dreamy afternoons under the liveoak tree. Gin, however, was invented in the Northern Hemisphere, first appearing in Holland in the 17th Century and …
Speak Easy, Drink Well
In New York, speakeasy-style bars are all the rage. Dark, guarded by doormen or hidden behind a “front” establishment like a hot dog stand or a drugstore, these modern shrines to the cocktail recall the thrill of illicit drinking during Prohibition. On a recent tour through Harlem, home to hundreds of speakeasies in its heyday, …
A Tale of Two Gardens
A Whitehorse friend recently told me about a useful book called The Gin and Tonic Gardener, by Janice Wells, a gardener and newspaper columnist in St. John’s, whose thesis is there is no gardening problem so large that it cannot be solved by a gin and tonic in a deck chair. Gardens, she posits, should …
Cocktail Hour on the Tsirku Glacier
I first encountered Campari in 1980 at a hotel bar on Alonissos, a small island in the North Sporades group of islands in the Aegean sea, halfway between Athens and Thessaloniki. Camparisoda was the favourite beverage of a group of northern Italians who returned to the island year after year, and it soon caught on …
The Emperor and Me
Peep this — the word cigar comes from the Latin word cicala, which means “large insect”. When the Spanish started discovering cigars in the 1700s, they turned cicala into cigarra, since cigars resembled the shape of a cicala. The French put their spin on it and called it cigare, and by the 1800s the English …
Bourbon and Words to Live By
On a sunny Saturday a few weeks ago I joined 70 other curious souls at a bourbon tasting and barbecue cohosted by the Yukon Chamber of Commerce and the Yukon Liquor Corporation. Seventeen different fine and rare bourbons were set up at three tasting stations in Waterfront Station, while a long table of crispy chicken …
Inspirational Cocktails in New York City
There was fog hugging the ground at La Guardia Airport. Flights had been cancelled all day. My companions and I sat in Ottawa, checking the board and watching our fl ight get delayed. We sipped Pinot Grigio. We ate nachos. Finally, finally, we boarded our plane. Two of us were supposed to be in New …
Learning As I Go
In an interview, Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead, admitted somewhat sheepishly, that yes, it was a bit embarrassing learning how to play the slide guitar on stage. All his mistakes were out there for the audience to see. Judging by the success of the Grateful Dead’s live shows from the mid ‘60s …
The Tip of the Iceberg
Like those who attended the first Sex Pistols concert, I too like to take credit for discovering something revolutionary: the iceberg. In 1996, I attended Grade 9 at the now-defunct Christ the King Junior Secondary on Nisutlin Drive in Riverdale. As the days of spring took hold, it was not uncommon for me to walk …
How Farmer Friends Lead to Pretentious Wines
This is a story about ice wine, and we will get to it in a roundabout way. Recently my husband Hector forwarded me an email from the farmer who, last fall, had sold us half a pig, four chickens, and our Thanksgiving turkey. He and Hector have developed the kind of old-fashioned, collegial relationship between …
The Long Wait for the Perfect Scotch Glass
It started many years ago. My guy saw it in a movie — a fleeting scene. It was a manly glass, big, and heavy; it said, “I take my scotch seriously.” The movie, Blade Runner, came out in 1982. Rick Deckard, arriving home after a hard day of “retiring” replicants, enters the grey chaos of …
Perfect End to the Evening
It’s 8 p.m. on a Saturday night. After finishing a delicious lamb dinner, the perfect end to the evening is found in the billiards room. So down into the basement I go, past the laundry room, sewing room, workshop, and into my richly decorated destination. To the left is the bar. Glasses made of Austrian …
Honouring the Bounty of Scotland
Up on the Alaska Highway, in the bright boîte called Tonimoes, attached to the SKKY Hotel, a quiet ritual takes place every Tuesday. Informally known as Scotch night, the weekly event “honour[s] the bounty of Scotland with the frugality of a Scot,” according to the Tonimoes website. In other words, you can get a really …
Big House Red
I was in the Yukon Liquor Corporation about six weeks ago, when I was delighted to make the acquaintance of an old friend. Looking for an interesting red, I saw a familiar label on an unfamiliar carton. On the bottom shelf of the American wines aisle, there stood an octagonal, blue and brown cardboard carton, …
Coffee Mugs and Something Larger
I’ve consumed coffee nearly every day of my life since I was 20 years old and I still don’t have a favourite mug.I’ve drank from mugs that bragged “#1 Lover” and “Life is richer in New Westminster”; I’ve drank from mugs that had little porcelain moose turds at the bottom; and I’ve even drank from …
Produce Your Own Enjoyment
It’s a rainy Sunday at the end of June; Ben Harper’s Fight for your Mind is playing loudly in Devon Yacura’s kitchen. The air smells like sweet porridge. On the stove is a wide, tall stainless steel pot. It’s a fancy pot; it has a spigot on the bottom, and close to the spigot is …
The Half-Beer Reciprocation Blues
Anthropologists need not travel to New Guinea to research the subtleties of human societies; plenty of culture can be witnessed at the local saloon. Among the chivalrous traditions, the bar-set prides itself on is its refusal to let a compatriot drink alone. “Want another one, Hank?” the bartender says. Hank, casts a glance at Stu …
The Legend of Pusser’s Rum
ROYAL NAVY TRADITIONAL TOASTS Monday: Our ships at sea. Tuesday: Our men. Wednesday: Ourselves (as no one is likely to concern themselves with our welfare). Thursday: A bloody war and quick promotion. Friday: A willing soul and sea room. Saturday: Sweethearts and wives, may they never meet. Sunday: Absent friends and those at sea. The …
Matching Wine to Cheese Fondue
I’m always interested whether when people choose the foods for dinner first, and then select accompanying wines, or vice versa. I use both methods. Several weekends ago my partner and I hosted a cheese fondue in honour of a friend’s birthday. The recipe called for a white wine to melt the cheese. We don’t really …
Some New Wines to Look For and Try
Since September there have been some good additions to the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC) shelves. October and November seem to be emerging as the wine tasting season in the Yukon. In the span of five weeks, I participated in, or organized, three events: the October Rotary festival in Whitehorse, the second annual tasting held by …
Tis the season to raise tally: Tourists give Yukoners a bad name
Now that the days are longer than the nights again (although sometime in January at –54 we thought that this might never happen this year) our thoughts at the brewery turn to Beer Season. We don’t think of the seasons here like “winter” and “summer”, as much as we think of “Beer Season” and “Not …
Tis the season to raise tally: Tourists give Yukoners a bad name Read More »
A Beeline for the Honey Brew
During my frequent beelines to the Fat Tug IPA and other craft beers at the Whitehorse Liquor Store, my eyes catch a glimpse of the solitary bottles of Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew beer, but then they move on. I’m not against honey or Fuller’s, but I do remember trying this beer years ago and deciding …
Beer in China
I wanted to write something positive about drinking beer in China. After all, they are the world`s largest consumers of beer and a major hop-growing nation. They also have the fastest-growing beer market in the world. Their beer production doubled in the past decade to around 48-billion litres of beer per year. That’s about twenty …
Scottish Beer? Ay, Laddie.
The problem with being a great whiskey-producing nation like Scotland is that it becomes all you’re known for, Okay, there’s also bagpipes, haggis and Caber tossing. But Scottish beer? Do they even make beer in Scotland? Yes. McEwan’s Scotch Ale was the only Scottish beer I heard of growing up. It could be seen gathering …
Beer and the noble pursuit of nation-building
What does it take to make a country? Paul Martin might say gay marriage or, maybe, a fresh scandal every six or eight months. But I think Frank Zappa had it right. Of course, according to Frank, “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if …
Thanksgiving in Haines
My friends and I spent Thanksgiving in Haines this year. We thought we would catch some fish, drink some beers and see some bears. Only one of those panned missions out. The fish weren’t jumping, or running, or whatever fish do. We saw a few dead coho on shore, but that was it. And we …
A Sexy Fall Surprise
I usually wait until Christmas to lurk around the Whitehorse liquor store in search of sexy new beer products, but September brought a surprise: Guinness Black Lager. Guinness has been throwing some heavy coin into advertising this new product. The U.S. commercials adopt the beautiful-people-cocktail-party-scene to portray the beer as a sleek, sophisticated drinking option. …
Autumn Brings Renewed Interest in Chiantis
While we had an exceptional summer, part of me welcomes the changing leaves, grey cool days, slower pace, stars, and northern lights. This change of season has brought me back to our kitchen, making pasta, pizza and roast meats. And my partner and I have rediscovered the pleasure of Italian Chianti wines from Tuscany. We …
How Pure is Your Beer?
There are the purists who believe beer should be simple. The Bavarian Purity of Law of 1516, the famous Reinheitsgebot, stated that beer could only be made with water, malt (malted barley or malted wheat) and hops. Louis Pasteur wouldn’t discover yeast for a few hundred years. Some suggest the Reinheitsgebot was just designed to …
What’s in a Name?
A Fat Tug by any other name would be just as hoppy. But the name of your beer can entice or drive your average beer drinker away. I probably wouldn’t pick up a six pack of Camel Squirt if that beer even existed, but a bottle of the Belgian beer Verboden Vrucht (Forbidden Fruit) with …
Beer and Sport
It doesn’t have to be an epic battle between the forces of good and evil. I believe beer can live in a symbiotic relationship with athletic pursuits. It’s all about balance, expectations, pacing and choosing your sport wisely. The expats in Malay had it right — drinkers with a running problem. The Hash House Harriers …
Making something illegal that used to be legal is a tricky road to manoeuvre.
Making something illegal that used to be legal is a tricky road to manoeuvre. Opium? Sure, I understand. DDT? Makes sense. But making booze illegal after being freely produced and imbibed for hundreds of years in North America — what idiot dreamed that one up? Prohibition was heavily supported by the women of Canada and …
Making something illegal that used to be legal is a tricky road to manoeuvre. Read More »
Beer Memories: The good, the bad and the ugly
I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic about beer lately. I don’t remember my first beer but I do remember my first six pack — not a pretty story. I was 15 and went to a house party — a handful of teenagers hanging out drinking and watching an old horror movie called Q about a …
No Judgement. Really.
I’m not going to tell you what you should drink. I don’t care if you ferment raisins with brewers yeast in a garbage pail. I’m a laissez-faire kind of person. You can drink your Bud Light Lime, your Wildcat or your Pabst Blue Ribbon. You don’t have to be sheepish. Why would I care? Most …
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 …
USA Hops to the Lead
Humulus Lupulus = Hops. They aren’t involved in the fermentation of beer. They aren’t even a major component. You might have 6 kg of malt in a homebrew batch but only 30 g hops. They don’t get roasted. And they occur in virtually every commercial beer. Hops are preservatives, they have sedative properties and give …
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 …
Global Warming Affects Beer Production … OK, Now It’s Serious
Just the other day while I watching the store here at the Yukon Brewing Company, I had a customer look outside our windows while I was filling his growler and remark that maybe we have global warming wrong. I finished filling his jug and turned around to see a mid-April blizzard swirling around our parking …
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The Good, The Bad and the Ugly-Affording Choices
In this new era of hyper-consumerism, there has become a culture of expectation. It is an expectation that not only can your money buy the best coffee from the farmer you know the name of, but that it also comes ensconced in multiple insulated cups and holders, that you have six kinds of sugar (at …
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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 …
Fundraising Fun avec Vin
About a year ago, I worked with Yukon Artists @ Work on a project called “Canvas Confidential,” a fundraiser to help Yukon artists if illness prevented them from working. As part of this event, we hosted a wine tasting, and had very specific criteria for the chosen wines. First, we had to order wines from …
2013 Adventures at the Haines Beer Fest
We got the stern border guard at Haines customs this year. No, we’re not bringing any firearms, plants or suitcases full of money, but I do have six beer entries for the homebrew competition. “The what? The who? How big are them beers?” He didn’t get it. Nobody warned him that several hundred thirsty Canadians …
Yukoners Mastermind a Winning Homebrew
If I was a better planner, I would have made my way down to Skagway at the end of April for the annual Craft Brew Festival, but sometimes my father’s genes kick in and I end up a little scattered. Luckily, I have friends who need to geek-out over conical fermenters, brewing efficiency, yeast viability, …
We Always Get the Community We Deserve
It’s been a little while and, I have to admit, I’ve had my first ever writer’s block. It wasn’t so much WHAT to say, because heaven knows, I can talk about coffee ’til I’m purple. It was more HOW to say what I needed to say; so bear with me, while I mumble, stumble and …
Beer From a Wide-Open Space
Marketing beer is fun. When you have a product that so many people enjoy and you are told to “Go sell this!” you can have a pretty amusing and creative time. Many of the world’s larger breweries have found a useful formula when advertising their wares: Beer = Boobs + Friends + Sports Heroes. It …
Beer By Committee (this will end badly)
How would you like to start a business with 50,000 of your closest friends, pals, friends of friends, acquaintances and complete strangers? What if it only cost you $50 to start and you had a vote in what products you sell, how you market them and where? What if the business we are talking about …
Bigger is Not Always Better
Students at McGill University in Montréal will notice a big change come fall semester this year, and frosh looking to swill back Export, Canadian and Molson Dry will have to pack it from home. The Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) was looking to sign a new deal this summer with Molson, the hometown brewing …
An Evening of Delightful Beer Pairings
The number on my phone glared at me in ugly black digits: 2,020. My Fitness Pal app wasn’t being very friend-like, accusing me of eating over 2,000 calories in a single sitting. I undid the top button of my jeans and decided it was worth every bit of gut-distending discomfort. It’s not often you stumble …
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. …
Brewmasters Get Hugs Once a Year
On July 18, while Yukoners were probably enjoying Dustball and the Dawson City Music Festival, there was one other thing to celebrate: International Brewers Day. The idea for the makeshift holiday came from a well-established beer blogger who, not long ago, saw a sticker on a San Francisco brew pub’s door asking, “Have you hugged …
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 Good Wine to Serve with Moose
As Yukoners, one of the real treats we have is access to a broad selection of game meats. While I don’t hunt, I am lucky to have friends who have generously shared portions of their moose and caribou meat. I have been wondering what might be a good type of wine to serve with game …
Experts Are Not the Only Ones With an Opinion
We are often browsing around for new beer styles that we can make. With our growler system, we are able to try new beers without the problems of designing new packages. If you don’t know what we mean by growlers, come and see us and we’ll show you. There are a whole bunch of websites …
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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Le Beaujolais Nouveau est Arrive!
November is my favourite month of the wine year. While it is the month where we have to acknowledge, especially in the Yukon, that we are plunging irretrievably into the depths of darkness and winter, at the same time there is a day that for me is the harbinger of the holiday season. That day …
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 …
Sweet Dessert Wines For Long Winter Nights
Working the Rotary Wine and Fine Food Festival last month, I was reminded all over again why I love the world of wine. There were new wines to discover and old familiar ones that I hadn’t seen in a while. And the same was true for the people I met and poured for. For those …
Making Wine Without Getting Your Feet Dirty
As a wine drinker and (wine) lover, I was spoiled by the years that I lived in the United States. To this day, my recollection of the price ($5.99) we charged for Yellowtail Shiraz at the wine store I worked at keeps me from being able to swallow, and pay, the $14.85 asked for in …
Have Fun Learning At Wine and Fine Food Festival
Sharing wines is a wonderful experience. Coming on Oct. 23, here in Whitehorse, is an opportunity to gather with friends, try many new wines and make a contribution to the local community … all at the same time. The Rendezvous Rotary Club is holding its 17th Annual Wine and Fine Food Festival at the High …
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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 …
Holiday Gift Ideas for Wine Lovers
Sometimes, finding that special gift for someone who is a wine lover seems like a daunting challenge, so I’d like to devote this article to some suggestions for Christmas gift ideas. First of all, though it’s a nice thought, don’t feel obliged to buy a bottle of wine for the wine lover on your list. …
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 …
Good Friends, Good Food and Good Wine
The best wine experiences that I have enjoyed have been dinners with friends, often under unexpected circumstances. There was a night in the mortuary of the English Cemetery in the middle of a traffic circle in Florence, Italy, where I drank wonderful, local Tuscan reds with an Anglican nun as we shared a potluck, candle-lit …
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 …
Closing out the Old Year and Ringing in the New!
As I reflect upon the approaching year end, I would like to thank you, the readers, for providing me with encouragement, enthusiasm and support for my articles. I hope that they have encouraged you to explore new wine territory and given you new ideas of wines to try. I look forward to continuing to taste …
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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, …
The societal imperative of coffee shops
I met an old co-worker downtown the other day and, as luck would have it, I had a spare half-hour. Maybe we could grab a coffee and catch up? But I looked at him and I realized I didn’t really know that much about him and, more importantly, where he likes to drink coffee. In …
Consider an Italian For Your Own ‘House’ Wine
One of the things that I have been delighted to find, moving from the United States back to Canada, is that a much greater percentage of wine drinkers prefer red wine to white. And I find myself wondering, like many other observed behaviours, “Is this a Canadian thing or a Northern thing?” Regardless of the …
A Home Run Malbec from Cahors, France
We are familiar with names of great French Bordeaux wines like Château Lafite Rothschild, that sell out immediately, year after year, and command prices that average, for the 2009 vintage, $1500 a bottle. When it comes to Roll Royce wines, the French have never lost their touch. The problem is, I haven’t seen any Roll …
A Good Idea is a Good Idea, In Good Times and Bad
A Good Idea is a Good Idea, In Good Times and Bad Here we are, the first Buzz of 2009, and it seems like the right thing to say is “Good riddance, 2008.” Funny thing is, it seems like the beginning of that year was brimming with optimism, in stark contrast to the end. It …
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Open-That-Bottle-of-Wine Night
For 10 years, living in the United States, I read the Wall Street Journal to keep on top of developments in the business world. But it was the Friday edition I looked forward to with true delight. Every Friday was, and continues to be, some of the best writing on wine that I have ever …
A Toast to New Pairings and Good Matches
I mentioned in one of my last articles, in 2008, that I am a big fan of red wines. I have found, to my delight, that there are far more of my fellow wine drinkers, here, who choose red wines over whites. I wondered if this was a Canadian thing or a Northern thing. Having …
IPAs explained
I’m an unapologetic hophead, and consider no beer too hoppy to drink. I love the constricting bitterness. I love the resiny, citrusy, nostril-doping snort of a good, hop-filled American-style India Pale Ale (IPA). I wasn’t always this way. If you handed me an Ice Fog IPA 20 years ago I would have pawned it off …
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 …
Beer and Beautiful Music … Together
What goes together even better than peanut butter and chocolate, Laurel and Hardy, or ice cream and dill pickles? We think it is beer and music. We have been a long-time supporter of music in the Yukon, starting with our very first sponsorship of the Frostbite Music Festival. The brewery was three weeks old when …
A new and improved cultural touchstone
Blessed be the good people at Tim Hortons and their Roll Up The Rim contest. If it were not for them, how would we Yukoners know it is spring. Indeed, how would we know we are still in Canada if it weren’t for the sight of these cups in garbage cans everywhere. It is true …
Opening That Bottle Again
I have a confession. After encouraging friends and readers to participate in Open that Bottle Night, I remembered I had committed to attend the Rotary Club banquet where I found myself sipping the only red offered, a Jackson Triggs Merlot ($8.75). It’s a passable food wine and I will admit to it being infinitely more …
What’s Bubbly Without the ‘Buzz’?
For some time, my editor has been urging me to explore the world of non-alcoholic wines and I have to admit that I put off his request, perhaps not being really sure how to approach the subject. Or perhaps it was just that, to me, as a wine drinker of 30-plus years, the whole concept …
A collaborative cup of inspiration
Like all good ideas, this one began in a coffee shop. Michael King, co-owner and operator of Bean North Coffee Roasting Company, had been looking for a way to promote canned coffee. “That’s the most environmentally friendly way to package coffee,” he says. “Bags are all the fad, but there’s no way to recycle.” Joyce …
Berliner Weisse: The Champagne of the Spree
My colleague, Don Murphy, recently visited Germany and before he left, I sweet-talked him into bringing me back a special beer. Several weeks and 18,000 kilometres later, he appeared in my office with the booty: a squat bottle of Berliner Weisse. I had read about this beer but never tasted it. Known as the Champagne …
Raising A Cheer with Our Beer!
Congratulations to the Yukon government, in general, and to the Yukon Liquor Corporation, specifically, for passing regulations that put the new Liquor Act in play. It goes a long way toward normalizing alcohol consumption in our lives. We feel that a program of accepting the presence of alcohol in everyday situations, coupled with stronger disincentives …
Law-Abiding Beer
The Liquor Corporation in New Brunswick has created a wee bit of a stir lately (pun intended). It seems it is losing a lot of beer sales in border communities. Not to the U.S., as you might think, but to Québec. Every province and territory in Canada has their own approach to beer pricing. As …
Winter Reds
As Northerners, we are profoundly touched by the end of winter, the slow return of warmth and the rapid return of light to our lives. Suddenly, we become aware of just how set in our ways we have become, and we resolve to change our lives. We start to put away the hats and mittens and …
Spanish wines? ¡Si!
I, and the fellow wine enthusiasts I know, seem to have wandered from country to country in the process of discovering wines. We have familiar territories and sometimes work up the courage to explore new lands. I grew up tasting French wines first and, later, Californian ones. In the 60s, when I was a child …
Wait a Second, That’s Not Beer
I like beer —anything heavier and I can easily overdo it. I just don’t have the pacing right. So when I was asked to check out the Whitehorse Fine Malt Society, I didn’t respond with my usual enthusiasm. After all, I still had some foggy residual effects from a rabid Robbie Burns scotch night a …
Beef Wellington and Great Wines
Sometimes a dinner invitation can turn into a wine adventure. This past Saturday night was one such occasion. My partner and I had been invited to the home of some close friends, Mark and Jally, for beef Wellington. This puff pastry-wrapped beef tenderloin, flavoured with mustard, mushrooms and shallots is one of my culinary favourites, …
Sipping Rosé Wines for Spring
The return of the light and the steady drip drip drip of the snow melting has re-awakened my yearning for all that the Yukon has to offer us in our other, non-winter seasons. Last week, I stopped at the Liquor Corporation store to look for a couple of rosé wines (rosé meaning “pinkish”) to try …
Talk About Those ‘Craft-y’ Beer Drinkers
The renaissance of craft brewing in Canada all started with a single beer. We are not talking about the first bottle rolled out the door by Granville Island Brewing, in 1984. Nope, we are talking about that experience enjoyed by every dedicated craft beer drinker somewhere along the road … that time “the beer” set …
Craft Brew Paradise at the T&M
Andrea Pierce is a fiery creature. She is also a beer aficionado and the new face behind the bar at the Town and Mountain Lounge in Whitehorse. Pierce is responsible for the resurgence in popularity of the sleepy watering hole. The T&M lounge now has the best beer menu in town — hands down. Pierce …
Beer Packaging
Ah, sturdy and stout stubbies. Macro beer dribbling down your chin because of the bottle’s bad ergonomic design. I remember photos from the 1970s of my uncles with mo’s, long hairs, adidas shorts and Molson Canadian in stubby form. Cut to the 1980s where stubbies were essentially a third character in the Bob and Doug …
Kitchen Sink Wines
With the exception of New Years Eve, I think I drank two glasses of wine in January — not propitious behaviour for a wine writer. I even missed having something nice for my birthday, but I guess the flu followed by pneumonia is a decent excuse. I even managed to lose 10 pounds, which under …
U-Brew Basics
Not long after I met my partner I bought him a beer kit. This was in the mid-1990s, when microbreweries were starting to come into their own. I was still drinking Kokanee, but I would often pick up a six pack of Big Rock Traditional Ale as a diversion and because it was hip at …
Wine Indoors or Out
Two weekends ago, a friend and I drove up the road from Rabbits Foot Canyon, to Fish Lake, to take her dog for a walk. While the roads were mostly dry, there was still a good foot or two of snow scattered intermittently along the path that we walked. The sky was blue and the …
Hops Across the Pond
Back in March, we sent one of our brewers on a jaunt to jolly old England. Alan went there to participate in a beerfest put on by a group of pubs, J.D. Wetherspoon (JDW). At each beerfest, JDW features 50 different beers in their pubs, most of which come from around England, but some of …
Can, Is Where Your Heart Is
The camping season here in the Yukon is well underway and, so far, under lots of warm weather and blue sky. When we head out to the campgrounds, one of our favourite activities is to check out the various ways people choose to crash for the night. You can find your pop tents that look …
A Great Wine Match for Salmon
I suspect salmon and hospitality have been partners a long time in this part of the world. The salmon makes regular appearances in the artwork of the First Nations peoples all along the Yukon River and across the mountains to the BC Coast. I look at the old black and white photographs of the native …
The Italian Connection
I guess when most of us think of Italian food, we think spaghetti and those old-school straw-covered flasks of Chianti. I am channelling that scene from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp where they slurp on opposite ends of the same pieces of spaghetti and then share the meatball. So when I spent 10 days in …
The Mysterious Widget
Guinness is peculiar. It tastes creamy and has a fine-textured head you just don’t find in most other beers. You can chalk that up to the presence of nitrogen. Most beers just contain carbon dioxide. If you cut open a can of Guinness pub draught, you will discover a plastic orb with a pinhole opening …
Writing What’s Right About Beer
A month or so ago, the San Francisco Weekly published an article called The 10 Coolest Specialty Food and Drink Magazines. In that list are two magazines that write about beer, at least in a cursory manner. The magazine Imbibe generally has one (or sometimes two) articles about beer and finished No. 3 on the …
What’s ‘Fun’ in ‘Funky’
It’s full-on summer. Kids are out of school; Canada Day is past and every weekend from now until the end of August will be packed with the warm-weather activities we all love but have such a short time to enjoy. Seems I’m grilling every second or third evening (not that I mind) and looking for …
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 »
A Recipe for a Lasting Memory
What makes a vacation, at least for me, is going to a place different than what you are accustomed to. This could be a change in your physical surroundings, your schedule and even what you explore and taste. The last several weeks have been all of that for me and for my children. Even with …
What do you pair with muskrat?
I, like many wine enthusiasts, love the challenge of finding the right wine to pair with a meal. Many people start with this simple axiom: white wine with white meat; red wine with red meat – not a bad starting place as few things taste better than a citrusy Sauvignon Blanc with mussels, or a …
Winter Beer to Warm the Cockles
The weather outside is frightful but a beer could be delightful — even if it’s not the first drink that comes to mind after a brisk day in a wintery wonderland. Most people don’t crave beer after freezing their extremities. Hot chocolate with Baileys? Maybe. Hot toddy? Yes please. Most beer can’t transition from cold-and-carbonated …
Reds for a Gathering
It’s always fun to be on the lookout for new wines to try, and this past weekend gave me the opportunity to explore two tasty and moderately priced red wines from Italy. They come from less familiar areas of Italy, that nonetheless are making excellent wines. There’s a wonderful trend in wines from countries around …
An Evening of Wine Tasting
Over the past several weeks, a number of my friends have been asking me when this year’s Rendezvous Rotary Club’s Wine and Fine Food event will take place. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a member of the Rendezvous Rotary Club and love working on the event each year.) This year, the event …
Films That Make You Thirsty
Julia Child, the late, great American cookbook writer and chef, was profoundly moved by her first French meal when she and her husband arrived by ship, in Rouen, France, in November of 1948. She wrote: “We began our lunch with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell. Rouen is famous for its duck dishes, but, …
‘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 …
Decoding Wine Names
Several weeks ago, the Rotary Club that I belong to held its 18th annual Fine Wine and Food Festival. We had a record turnout and everyone who attended seemed to have a lot of fun. I was working one of the tables, talking about the wines while I poured them. While there were some number …
Pairing the Sweet with the Sweet
I had some friends out to my cabin this past weekend for a great fall dinner with pasta and several good Oregon pinot noirs to try with the main course. For dessert, one of my guests brought a wonderful, home-made Tiramisu. I recently read an article that called it “heaven in your mouth!” All those …
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 …
Gifts for Wine Lovers
As the Christmas and holiday season roll around, several friends have asked me for gift suggestions for the wine enthusiasts on their gift list. Without knowing the wine tastes of their enthusiast friends, I am hesitant to suggest a particular wine, but often suggest wine-related items that have caught my attention and are available locally. …
A Toast to a ‘Sparkling Season’
With the drop in temperatures, the shorter days and the recent snowfall, I am reminded that we are headed into the holiday season. Few places give me more of that happy feeling, of the anticipation of Winter Solstice, Chanukah, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years … the whole stretch of holiday celebrations and events, than the …
A kinder, gentler red square
Friday at 4:30 p.m. It is a time that belongs to the working man and the working woman. It is a time when the boss — “the man” — has no influence and the workers can freely enjoy good company, good beer and good talk. In Whitehorse, the workers have a place, too. It is …
Not just any ol’ sandwich
“It’s a meal.” “It’s a work of art.” I had never heard so much gushing over a sandwich. A sandwich. Its very creation began as a flirtation between meat and bread in the same meal until it was finally used as an edible plate. The Earl of Sandwich liked to play cribbage without getting his …
Wine Throughout the Year
As we race toward Christmas and the new year of promise that follows, I can’t help but reflect on the wonderful and poignant experiences that have transpired over these last 12 months. Post-Christmas, last year, began with a wonderful evening among friends at a cabin in Tagish, meeting and making new and special friends and …
Get Thee to the Brewery
I was lucky enough to “help” Rob Monk tap off a cask ale at Yukon Brewing a few weeks ago. Truth be told, there was a bit of spillage as the spigot flew from my hand, but Rob is quick on his feet and he deftly rectified the situation with minimal loss. The cask was …
Wine for a Winter’s Eve
So now the rich, velvety darkness of the Yukon winter has descended and the temperatures at my cabin have dropped below minus 20, several evenings. And yet, it is probably my favourite time of year here. The blue lights are strung in the trees along Main Street and are alight by 4 p.m., as the …
Old and New Offerings Keep Brewery Dynamic
Rob Monk is head brewer at Yukon Brewing Co. in Whitehorse. He was born and raised in Whitehorse, started working at Yukon Brewing at the tender age of 19, and then moved Victoria. He worked at Spinnakers brewpub in Victoria for 10 years before being approached by Bob Baxter, president of Yukon Brewing, who asked …
Considering the Glass … of Wine
I was introduced to a neighbour who is planing to open a restaurant and it got me thinking about wine glasses. The restaurant is expecting to serve red and white wine, something bubbly, and some port-style wines. This covers pretty much the range that any basic wine drinker might expect to taste at home. It …
Special Wines for a Special Night
Several weeks ago, I mentioned OTBN, or “Open That Bottle Night”; on Saturday, Feb. 27, I had a small dinner at my cabin to celebrate it. Many of us have a special bottle that we have bought, or been given, and saved for a special occasion; so the intent of the evening was to gather …
Thai Food: A Delightful Challenge
Last Saturday evening, a friend of mine invited me and several of my co-workers to dinner at her cozy little apartment. My friend is an artist, and her work and her exploratory nature have taken her all over the Pacific Rim. Along the way she washed dishes in tiny island restaurants, trading her scrubbing skills …
Two Chilean Reds and One Surprise Ending
Sometimes you set out to explore one thing, and end up discovering something completely different. Such was the case, recently, and I wanted to share what I found. I had been thinking that I have not devoted enough time to getting to know South American wines, and felt that an article on those might be …
Wine Ephemera
Our copyeditor for What’s Up Yukon recently sent an e-mail to me, where she related that she had stumbled across an alternate definition for the word “Methuselah”. She cited the online dictionary where it said: Methuselah PRONUNCIATION: (meh-THOO-zuh-luh) MEANING: noun: 1. An extremely old man. 2. An over-sized wine bottle holding approximately six litres. ETYMOLOGY: …
A Bold, Brassy White – Organic, Too
Over the coming months, I hope to explore some new wines that I have not tried before, and also make a concerted effort to look at wines by country. A recent dinner I had with friends in Tagish was the perfect opportunity to explore some wines from Chile. When invited to dinner, I always ask …
In Search of a “Local-ish” Organic Red
I noticed, when I worked as a wine merchant, that wine enthusiasts love a challenge. Occasionally a customer would come into the store, and relate a menu he or she was planning for a dinner, and ask for advice about wines to serve. Invariably, two or three of us would huddle, pose more questions of …
Coffee: A Love Story
When I lived in Toronto (back when there was still factories in residential areas), I witnessed the Hershey’s Chocolate factory go up in flames. The plant was two city blocks long, and as high as it was wide. The smell of burning sugar mingled with the smell of the coffee roasters down the street, and …
Sugar and Spice and … Bacon
Most people know that beer is made from water, barley, hops and yeast. The big four. If you were to glance around the shelves of the local liquor store, you might of course notice that some styles, such as Hefeweizens, are brewed with a fifth ingredient, wheat. But that’s it, right? Just those five? Luckily, …
Yeast Wheat (But way cooler if you call it Hefeweizen)
Hefeweizens are fantastic for a number of reasons, but we would like to start off with what Rachel thinks is the most important: they are riddled with scandal and intrigue. That’s right folks. Remember when we talked about the Bavarian Purity Law maintaining that beer must be made with only hops, barley and water? Well, …
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Organic Beer: Beer Cache Gets Serious
Want to proudly face your beer bottle label forward at parties this summer? Purchasing an organic beer is one way to do just that. When it comes to the environmental impact of drinking beer, the three biggies are transportation of product and ingredients, water consumption and the production of ingredients. We will hit up the …
The Ideal Wine Collection?
As I mentioned in my last article, I have been invited to develop a wine list for a restaurant that a neighbour of mine plans to open in the next four to six weeks. I was interested, and flattered, that she wanted my input. It also occurred to me that if a reader wanted to …
Legado Munoz: A Terrific Spanish Red
We’re plunging into the winter and holiday season at full tilt and for me this is a season of getting together with friends for dinner and searching out new and more robust wines to bring to the table. The falling snow outside makes me yearn for strong tasting reds to bring warmth and light to …
Not the New Kid on the Block
Nobody likes a beer snob. Even beer snobs don’t like beer snobs. So, when someone wrinkles their nose at a Bud Light and then reaches for a Chimay Rouge, it’s hard not to get your back up as they start talking about yeast strains and overtones of cinnamon and ripe apricot. To clarify immediately and …
Finnish Family Recipes
While rummaging through a few Barista magazines the other day, I came across some interesting coffee statistics. There, nestled between ads for state-of-the-art grinders and gold-plated tampers, I saw this: Finns now considered the biggest consumers of coffee in the world. Per capita, that is, which means they tie the Dutch for first place. Now …
“Le Beaujolais Nouveau est Arrivé” (Almost)
By the time this article is in print, we will be on the cusp of the Beaujolais Nouveau season. Each year I look forward to the experience and wait impatiently for this new French wine to arrive on the shelves as soon as possible after the third Thursday of November. Each year the Georges Duboeuf …
Face it, Yukoners Like Booze
American liquor connoisseurs have Canada to thank for keeping their palates wet during Prohibition, as it was Canadians who made sure they didn’t go thirsty. In fact, in its heyday Canadian-based Seagrams was the largest distiller in the world. It’s no wonder than that Canadians are always near, if not at, the top when it …
Spanish Reds and How to Order Wines from Outside
In the days leading up to the Rotary Wine Festival, I felt as if I was eating, sleeping and breathing wine. At that point it was almost a subject I didn’t want to contemplate for a week or two. However, I recently tried some very good Spanish red wines and special-ordered one from the Yukon …
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Shootin’ the Brews: Skagway Edition
Last weekend, Beer Cache had the amazing opportunity to spend the better part of a day with Trevor Clifford, head brewer at Skagway Brewing Co., Skagway, Alaska. Spring-boarding from an established ribbon-winning homebrewer to the head brewer at a brew pub takes some ingenuity. Clifford has made the most of an incredibly small space and …
Where there’s smoke, there’s porter
Full disclosure: we really wanted to compare two smoked porters for this article, but quite frankly there is so much to say about our first contestant that we don’t have time to talk about what’s behind Door No. 2. Don’t get us wrong, we drank them both, but only one made the word limit. Before …
Java Jive
Everyone already knows that music makes life in the workforce easier. It’s been proved that productivity rises in any office in the world when people are allowed to listen to music. Historically, it is how slaves made it through their days picking cotton, and how chain gangs survived their harsh environments … by singing together. …
Monk-made Belgian Brews
I would like to write about a fabulous bar I went to in Whitehorse that served a wide selection of Belgian beer but, unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. Instead, I recently went to the Chambar Restaurant in downtown Vancouver and was greeted by one of the best beer menus in miles – all Belgian. Chambar is …
Love Thy Roaster
Well, winter is on its way, and with it comes the coffee season, the one I love best. Not only because all my favorite beans are picked at this time of year (and then become available to purchase). But also because the warmth of the roaster is comforting at this time of year. I sit …
Chocolate + Porter = Genius
One of the swell new editors of WUY dropped us an email on the weekend inquiring about the status of our column, and casually mentioned that they were sipping on a Phillips Longboat Chocolate Porter at the time of writing. You know when someone mentions bacon, and all you can think about is … well, …
Love Thy Roaster
Well, winter is on its way, and with it comes the coffee season, the one I love best. Not only because all my favorite beans are picked at this time of year (and then become available to purchase). But also because the warmth of the roaster is comforting at this time of year. I sit …
Cheap Beer!
Now that we have your attention . . . . Let’s pretend that you, our readers, wrote us letters. We imagine one of them would go like this: Dear Beer Cache, I’ve been reading your article for months now, and gee, it’s just wonderful! I never miss an article. What a great addition you are …
How to Attend a Wine Tasting … and Look Like a Connoisseur
Over the last several weeks, I have been giving a significant amount of thought to wine tastings, and wanted to speak about them in more detail. Before I proceed further, I should provide the disclaimer that I am the president of the Rotary Club here in town that puts on the annual Rotary Wine and …
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The Four Secrets to a Superb Cup of Coffee PDF
Iam not one to roam around strangers’ kitchens. But on the rare occasion that people let me into their homes, the conversation swings to coffee sooner or later. In my case it might be because you have just tried unsuccessfully to hide that econo jar of Folgers (I saw it from the front door). But …
Sausage. Bier. Men in Knee-High Socks. It’s Oktoberfest!
”O’ zapft is!” cries the mayor of Munich. Translation: It’s tapped! What is tapped, where it’s tapped, and why it’s tapped is this week’s story. So dig out your lederhosen, dust off that beer stein and ready your arteries for a few links of bratwurst: it’s Oktoberfest! So … what the heck is Oktoberfest, anyway? …
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Home is Where the Art Is: Dolman on Dawson
Ihere’s your home? How do you define where you belong? Artist Mary Dolman defines home as “different places for different stages of life.” For example, as a young teenager accustomed to the big-city glitz of Vancouver, the idea of moving to a small town was chafing and “not home.” “When I was living in Vancouver, …
Tidings of Hops and Barley
It’s the season to eat, drink and be merry with friends and love ones. So what if we told you that you could kill two birds with one stone (the ‘eating and drinking’ bit), which would just leave you with the ‘being merry’ part? As our Christmas pressie to you, we have gift-wrapped a wonderful …
Wine and Wine Gift Ideas for the Holidays
As we are invited to holiday gatherings at friends’ homes and begin to realize that our runway for shopping for gifts is rapidly running out, I had a few suggestions for the wine lovers on your list. At this season, we are often dashing in to the liquor store for a bottle to bring to …
Free-thinking and Espresso: A Rich History
When was the last time you went out for coffee? I don’t mean get a coffee and run – you probably did that already twice today – I mean socially. It seems like everything else, we have sped up our lives so much that we no longer find the time to sit and chat for …
This Season, Beer Eats at the Grown-ups’ Table
This festive season, why not blow the minds of your nearest and dearest by pairing beer – not wine – with your holiday shrimp rings and Christmas desserts? That’s right. The stigma is gone. In fact, there is so much awesome literature out there on pairing beer with food that we have done some initial …
Tasting France’s Most Famous Wine
Now that the Yukon snows have finally arrived and the all-too-brief weeks of skating the magically bare icy surface of my lake are done, I am looking forward to short, early twilights leading into our the long winter nights. For me this is the time of year to reconnect with friends, sit over long dinners …
Yukon Ho! Red!
When you really, really like beer, living in a city with its very own microbrewery is a daily kind of ‘pinch me’ phenomena. So when your local brews (yet another) award winning beer … yeah. It boggles the mind. Like Gold, it is hard not to have had a pint of Yukon Red if you …
Singing the Praises of the Much-Maligned Zinfandel
One of the fun questions I enjoy asking wine drinkers is, if you had one wine to take with you to a desert island, what would it be? I have several good friends who would choose New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, with their zesty, grapefruit-y notes, as exemplified by the Kim Crawford or Oyster Bay Sauvignon …
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Adios, Corona.
Who isn’t familiar with the concept of the Lawnmower Beer? This is just the one beer, a cool and refreshing drink, the perfect reward for a salty upper lip and grass-stained shoes. The main purpose of this particular beer is to be thirst quenching, and as Stephen Beaumont from the Beer Connoisseur points out, the …
Craft Time
In light of the 18th Annual Great Alaska Craft Beer and Homebrew Festival, which took place in Haines, Alaska, this past weekend, we thought that we would dedicate this article to defining what exactly a makes a craft beer unique. At its most basic definition, craft beer is an American term defining a style of …
Open that Bottle of Wine Night!
Last week, I visited the Wall Street Journal website to read the most recent article by my favourite wine writers, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher … it wasn’t there! They retired at the end of 2009. They had my dream job: they are a married couple who, for a dozen years, had written the best …
What’s Your Method?
By the time you read this Rendezvous will be over and the Frostbite Music Festival will be but a memory. But March is here, and with it more sunlight, longer days, and that urge to shake it up. The roaster is on, the coffee is hot and I am having a great time at work …
Wine on the Go
Last week I was cornered by someone who asked what her options were for taking wine along on a paddling trip. For me, part of the experience of enjoying the outdoors is to end a day with friends by setting up camp with a great view, a good dinner and a glass or two of …
Growlers: Not Just For Pirates
Canoeing to the DCMF? You are probably already concerned about the rattling of beer bottles in your canoe (to be safely consumed, of course, by your campfire and not while out on the water). We hear your pain. If drinking from a can doesn’t float your boat (i.e., lack of a good inhale upon drinking …
Great Scot!
As you may have noticed already, Whitehorse has some new beer in town. Our friendly neighbours at Yukon Liquor Corp have sourced four offerings from Russell Brewing Company: Blood Alley Bitter, Black Death Porter, Main Street Pilsner, and Wee Angry Scotch Ale. Three of these (all but the Main Street Pils) are part of the …
Look What’s Shakin’!
Attention: New beer in town. OK, so it has been around for a few weeks, but if you haven’t yet tried Delirium Tremens on tap at Tippler’s, we suggest you hightail it over there for a liquid lunch. This fantastic Belgian strong pale ale is brewed by Belgium’s Huyghe Brewery in Melle, East Flanders. Since …
Bitter and Batter
If you read Dennis Zimmermann’s article last week on ice fishing and combined it with the weather in Whitehorse this weekend, you may well have grabbed your auger and hightailed it down to Pumphouse. Or maybe, like us, you still have a freezer full of fish from last summer’s amazing season and got inspired to …
BC Pinot Gris: Well Worth Trying
A kind friend returned from a trip with a belated gift for my 50th birthday – a mixed half case of British Columbia VQA wines, five reds and a white. What a terrific gift for a wine lover. As a bonus, BC wines are an area with which I am woefully unfamiliar. Recently my paddling …
U(wanna) Brew?
Ever thought about U-brewing? It’s just another brick in the wall of beer enjoyment, and other than the method they use for actually producing the beer (full/partial mash or beer kit), U-Brews everywhere are pretty much the same. The Whitehorse outlet, U-Brew Yukon, guarantees 44 bottles (500ml) per batch. You can purchase plastic bottles and caps …
Five Superb Wines Tried with Beef Wellington
In past articles, I have written about the fun of trying to match wines with food, and have also suggested that there is no one “right” answer to the question of which wine goes with which dish. These ideas were beautifully illustrated to me at a party I held several weeks ago to celebrate my …
To México and Back
Wow. February. That seemed to happen pretty fast. I am on my fifth winter in the Yukon. And this is the first winter I flew the coop for a couple weeks in January. And yes, it was worth it, and yes I did some relaxing. I came back renewed and with a huge respect for …
Happy New Beer!
In case your windows are too iced up to tell, it’s winter outside. For brewers, nothing really says winter like a barleywine: it’s strong, intensely flavoured, and pairs beautifully with a wood fire, an old pair of slippers and a good book. Lord of the Rings trilogy, anyone? (She said: The Girl with the Dragon …
Aerating a Red (and a Money Diet Suggestion)
Drinking inexpensive wines does not have to mean you are missing interesting wine experiences. This was brought home to me this past Sunday evening, when I invited a friend from work, and her partner, to my cabin for a dinner of home-made pizza. My friend knew I wrote the wine articles for What’s Up Yukon, …
No Reservations About These Reserves
Holy cow, it has a cork!” These were the exact words I exclaimed to a friend when I went to open a bottle of Australian Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve ($17.90) several weeks ago. If you’re a wine drinker, you’re probably familiar with Yellow Tail. It’s the most successful wine story of the last decade, …
Coffee Beans On The Rise
To paraphrase Bill Maher on the subject of rising oil costs: It’s not that oil is too expensive, it’s that it is too cheap when we have to steal it, refine it and ship it. The same could be said of the rising cost of coffee beans – every year the cost of quality Arabica …
Message in a Bottle
I try to write a wine column every couple of weeks, unless life gets crazy, as it has over the past month or so. In that period of time, I will usually get the chance to have perhaps two or three dinners where I will want to serve a bottle of wine. Because I’m such …
A Medical Miracle
Iused to hate coffee. A close friend has just reminded me that as a teen, I could not stand the stuff and was more content to drink iced tea, or beer. Coffee did not stir my palate until I became a young adult, and like many newbie coffee drinkers, I drowned the taste with sugar …
Exploring Gray Monk Estate Wines
Several weeks ago, I had the happy opportunity to explore a significant portion of the range of Gary Monk Estate wines. A friend of mine who helps organize the annual Rotary Club Wine Festival represents the Gray Monk Estate Winery, and invited me and several other Rotary Club members to taste their wines. Gray Monk …
To Be a Cicerone
When I grow up I want to be a cicerone. Sigh. The above statement is true. A cicerone is the sommelier of the beer world. A lucky soul who gets to order beer for fine restaurants, recommend parings to chefs, write lengthy articles for beer connoisseur magazines and work in specialty beer stores giving wonderful …
Add Some Wit to Your Winter
One of the perks of spewing your beer brain onto a white page every couple of weeks is that people occasionally give you beer and suggest you write a column about it. One of my colleagues came back from a trip to Alaska in mid-October with a six-pack of Alaskan Wit, so I figured I’d …
Vote for Your Perfect Cup
Something stinks in Whitehorse, and no it’s not the smell of our after burner. It’s election season, and with it comes a plethora of somewhat nauseating political rhetoric. I have spent some time thinking about this and I have come up with some political party coffee blends. I tried to incorporate some of the party’s …
A Walk Through the YLC Wine Store: Part 2
The third Thursday of November, chalkboards across France announced, Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé! (literally, “The new Beaujolais has arrived!”). This annual event is the first opportunity for wine lovers to taste the first wines made from the 2011 vintage harvest, grapes picked just six to eight weeks earlier. I always look forward to this …
EA Wine Triple Treat
I was asked by some friends to participate in “An evening of Art, Wine and too much fun” presented by The Artist Relief Fund Society, and I was delighted to get involved. The Canvas Confidential event will be held on Saturday May 14 at the Old Fire Hall, and proceeds from the event will go …
Beer Trivia
Delight your friends and family with a couple of beer-themed tidbits this week, or just look incredibly smart while getting your growler filled. The world’s oldest recipe? Yeah, it’s for beer. Despite popular opinion, Guinness in not a meal in a glass: It is one of the lowest calorie non-light beers, coming in at 125 …
Washington Comes to Yukon
Most Canadian wine drinkers are pretty familiar with California wines. Their Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays have been celebrated in such movies as Sideways and Bottleshock, and their top-of-the-line Cabernet Sauvignons, like the 2007 Screaming Eagle Cab, can command prices of $2,400-3,400 a bottle (US pricing)! A visit to the Yukon Liquor Corporation (YLC) will yield …
Turning to Argentinian Whites
In the week that followed the holidays, when I returned to earth with a thump to reflect on the fun and parties and food and drink I had consumed over the holiday season, there was a moment when I thought I’d spend all of January eating those boxes of mandarin oranges, and drinking nothing by …
Last-Minute Christmas and New Year’s Thoughts
I can’t believe I am writing my last wine column of the year! This is a time when I reflect on what I have experienced in the year, and what I hope for for the next one. I have seen the departure of friends, the meeting of new ones, changes in my personal life, and …
The Working Brew
Ever wonder how coffee went from a simple cup of good brew to the lofty, $5-plus cup of latte you drink every morning? I could go into the costs incurred in making that mocha, but I’d rather not. We have already covered that in previous articles. ?Today I would like to talk about the simplicity …
Some of the Best Wines You’ve Never Tasted
This past weekend I had a very tasty bottle of red wine that I will be going back to buy more of. It was a little over $13 for the bottle, and my friend and I enjoyed it very much! It is from a wine producing country that I’ll bet you may not have ever …
An Evening of Fine Pairings
For at least 4,000 years, wine drinkers have chosen food to accompany certain wines and vise versa. When I imagine trying a good wine, it is always in a setting around a table or gathered with friends, and food is always a part of the picture. I worry that the North American wine industry has …
Tasting Dawson’s High Society
Sunday, October 16. I arrived at the Scotch Club late. The meeting started at 4 p.m. and I had missed the formal introductions. Two friends – seemingly also late – greeted me at our host’s door. “We’re having a party for you,” said one. “Dammit, I hate surprises.” I replied. With the previous night’s light …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Part One
Several years ago, my then-editor at What’s Up Yukon asked me to do a walk-through tour of the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC) store in Whitehorse, and write a bit about it. At first, I thought it was a little obvious, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized many residents who pick …
Why Wines Differ
Last night a friend stopped by for dinner. He brought moose sausages to grill; I boiled up some Yukon grown red potatoes and added butter and rosemary. We washed it down with the better part of a bottle of one of my “go to” bottles of Italian red wine, a 2009 Citra Montepulciano D’Abrruzzo (about …
Trying Some Malbecs
After more than a month of grey skies and rain, the sun finally made a re-appearance over my lake. Still, it feels like it is too late for summer, with the first trees turning yellow, the underbrush taking on reddish hues, and falling leaves starting to mass on my road. I am trying to find …
Wine Money Diet: Part 2
One of the delights of wine is that there are always surprises to be found and bargains to be enjoyed, if you are open to trying new things or going off the beaten path. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the Yukon Liquor Corp selection until I went on my “money diet”, …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Finale!
Several articles ago I promised to finish my tour of the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC) wine shelves before the snow melted. With the rains coming down and my frozen lake looking mushy, I’d better hurry! I’ve been writing episodes of my walking tour for so long that when I was in the liquor store last …
Drop that Corskcrew
You are NOT going to eat that burrito with a glass of merlot. There are just some foods that were meant to be diluted by beer, not wine. You’re sitting in a sweltering taqueria in Playa del Carmen. You order a Pacifico, not a cabernet sauvignon. Nuff said. My sister-in-law Dallas phoned one night and …
Planning a Wine Tasting
Several months ago I was asked by my friend Wendy in Dawson City to plan a wine tasting at her B&B, Bombay Peggy’s. We’ll be doing it over the May long weekend, so by the time you read this it will have been completed. I was explaining to a friend the thinking that I was …
The Joy of Yeast
That Louis Pasteur was onto something. Seriously. People were harnessing the power of yeast to make beer for thousands of years before they actually knew what it was. Louis Pasteur figured out how it worked in the mid 1800s. He proved that fermentation was not just a chemical reaction but caused by an organism: yeast. …
Beer personalities
I bumped into an old Alexander Keith’s beer commercial on YouTube this week—you might remember the series. It involved a crusty Scotsman with spindly legs, patchy facial hair, and an abrasive tongue, insulting young people for spilling beer, peeling labels, or otherwise disrespecting the pride of Nova Scotia. “Alexander Keith toiled since 1820 for that …
Eight Men in a Canoe
In these dying days of summer, we often turn away from light and refreshing beers and choose to drink something with a bit more oomph. With fall in full swing, there are few more oomph-y beers available from the Whitehorse liquor store than Unibroue’s Maudite. The Name, the Legend, the Label The word maudite is …
New Finds from Italy (in time for Thanksgiving)
A recent article on the consumption of Italian wine pointed out that, for the first time, the value of Italian wines exported was greater than the value of that consumed by Italians at home. In 2010, Italy exported 3.93 billion euros ($5.3 billion in Canadian dollars) worth of wine, while spending 3.89 billion euros ($5.25 …
To Gas or Not to Gas?
We here at Beer Cache have just returned from a three-week brewery tour of the great craft brew state of Alaska. We were lucky enough to stroll around bright tanks, peak into mash tuns, hang out in chilled serving fridges and pull nails from barrels to sample back-room casked ales with the generous owners and …
A Happy Accident
I can understand how they discovered wine. You squash grapes. Wild yeast on grape skins devours the sugary liquid and voila! Sociables. But how on earth did they figure out beer? You have to grow barley, dry it and then—most critically—malt it, which means you need to add water to the grains to get them …
Two Fine, Big Reds
This is a funny time of year in the Yukon. The return of the light and the moving forward of the clocks speaks to the impending arrival of spring. The other day I stood outside my cabin and heard birds calling their songs out, and thought… am I just noticing these calls, though they have …
Beer Saves
It’s empty calories, I know. If you are on a diet, beer kills—one imperial pint (20 ounces) of Yukon Red could be a tenth of your allowable intake of calories for the day. But beer also heals. If you drink bottle-conditioned beer (the stuff that is unfiltered and has the yeast sediment in the bottom), …
Tropical Beer
While most of you poor sods were busy clothing and sheltering yourselves during the month of February, I was deciding how best to hydrate myself on a sailboat off the coast of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The St. Lucia flag is blue (for the sky and sea) with nested, variably-sized triangles of yellow, black …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Pt. 5
I’m getting thirsty doing this ongoing wine tour of the Yukon Liquor Corp (YLC) store in Whitehorse, but I hope my articles in this series are causing you to think about tasting wines from some of the countries represented on its shelves. If you have a tasting experience, or other comment or question, please feel …
The Hot and Cold of It
Beer should be served cold… Or should it? The traditional rule is that ales should be served at cellar temperature (12-16 degrees C) and lagers should be served at the temperature at which they ferment (6-10 degrees C). Unlike ales, lagers go through an extra process in their development – the lagering process – where …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Part 4
In January, I wrote part three of a wine drinker’s walk through tour of the Yukon Liquor Corp. (YLC) store, covering Australia, and wanted to move on to the section next to it – the wines of Argentina. The purpose of this set of articles has been to share wine information with those folks who …
Beer Cocktail, Anyone?
Beer adulteration. It sounds dirty. But it’s a way to make an otherwise pedestrian beer seem wildly exotic. So-so wine can be made into sangria. So-so beer can be mixed with clamato for a great hangover remedy and an inscrutable flavour combination. However, I suspect people who drink this abomination are either caesar drinkers in …
Fine Pairings for a Birthday Treat
I’m not looking to expand my writing into the restaurant review arena, but I couldn’t help but relate an excellent dining experience I had last week. A couple of close friends invited me out to dinner last Thursday night, to celebrate both my birthday and the successful completion of an exam one of my friends …
A Beer Snob Confesses
I admit it, I’m a beerist. Not quite so harsh a thing as being a nihilist or a sexist, but I have high expectations for the beer I drink – beer snob, maybe. I recently ordered the “Mystery Can” on the beer menu at a barbecue joint in Vancouver’s Gastown. I was encouraged by the …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Part 3
It is amazing how the experiences and passion for wine that I have shared with friends has come to colour and enrich my life, and the way my friends and I share together. Yesterday I received a very special little postcard from France from an Australian woman I met three years ago, who was visiting …
Great Beer, and a Star Sighting to Boot
Phew! After two columns dedicated to near beer, I’m so glad I can trade in my Holsten 0.0% for a beverage that doesn’t make me feel bloated yet empty at the same time. It’s time to start writing about real beer again. Yay! My autumn was enlightened by a beer journey to British Columbia (yes, …
Near Beer Part 2: Faux Phobia
Did you Read Part One? In my last article I slagged the North American breweries for slacking off in the non-alcoholic beer department. The non-alcoholic beers I’ve tried from this side of the pond all failed miserably in approximating beer-like satisfaction. Then again, with near-beer being such a small market, maybe I’m being too harsh. …
A Happy Find for Bordeaux Lovers
It’s a treat to ease off of the money diet as I shop for wines these days! While I have made some terrific wine discoveries that are well worth exploring regardless of your budget, I’ve been able to look again at a few more wines in the $17-20.00 range, rather than trying to stay in …
Near Beer: Part 1
Perhaps the most unspeakable adulteration of beer is the complete, or near-complete, removal of alcohol to make those sad, non-alcoholic shadows-of-their-former-selves near beers that men drink during sympathetic pregnancies, women drink during actual pregnancies, people drink when they have some bad genetics that make them incompatible with alcohol, or for a myriad of other reasons. …
And the Winner Is …
I was reminded again recently of the role that sharing wine can have in igniting enthusiasm and making new friends. As I mentioned in my last column, I had been invited by the staff of the Yukon Arts Centre to help them offer up a wine tasting as part of the launch of their new …
Flavour Starts with Adam’s Ale
Why do the Irish drink stouts? Why did the pilsner style develop in the Czech region? The type of water flowing through a region was a big contributor to the type of beer that evolved in the area. Beer is generally somewhere between 90-95 percent water. In terms of sheer volume, water is going to …
Respect in a Tall Glass
If you’ve ever been to a Belgian beer bar you know that those Belgians have a different glass for every type of beer, bless their souls. It seems gimmicky, but they take their beer seriously. I was in Brussels during the Brussels Beer Weekend in the balmy month of September a few years ago. The …
A Taste for the Arts
Love of (and interest in) wine has opened wonderful doors for me in my life. Tasting wine has been the lens through which I have experienced lessons in history and geography. Friends have mailed me bottles from places such as Malta, and I have had the chance to sit with vineyard owners and chat over …
Cool Tunes, Swell Suds
Dawson Music Festival (DCMF) is billed as a music event, but there happens to be a lot of beer action in the midst of it. My friend Lee, who didn’t have the foresight to purchase music tickets beforehand, kept calling it Dawson beerfest from his vantage point in the beer gardens. And arguably, beer does …
Treats for Summer Evenings
It took until the middle of July, but it seems (I don’t want to jinx us) that summer has arrived in the Yukon! The past two weekends have actually been HOT, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend two Saturdays nights kayaking, swimming and sitting outside with friends, enjoying picnic dinners and treats off an …
Extreme Beer
I blame my current state of beer obsession on Christmas of 1995 when I bought my partner a beer kit as a present. It somehow took hold and made beer a part of the family. We now have two converted freezers full of craft beer and kegs of homebrew. Rod (my partner) has a “Brewing …
The Other Side of the Andes
In my last several articles, I have been reviewing a number of inexpensive, yet tasty Malbec and Malbec blend red wines from Argentina. The high altitudes, dry climates and pure waters of the Andes contribute to the growing of terrific grape stock, which makes a large contribution to the success of the Argentinian wine industry. …
Iron Chef Beer Pairing
I am a non-reciprocator—people invite me to their houses for fabulous meals. I eat, and weeks later I think about having them over… and then I think too much… Time keeps passing and I somehow get invited back to their place again… and the one-way valve of guest parisitism continues. I am in the happy …
Too Much Like Funkytown
If your beer tastes like cardboard, you might want to reconsider drinking it. It was probably stored in a heated room, which accelerated the oxidation process, creating that flat, wet paper flavour. If you crack a bottle of your buddy’s homebrew and have to wrap your lips around the end of the bottle to staunch …
Argentine Finds on the Money Diet
As mentioned previously, I’ve been on a “money diet” these past months, but still want to be tasting interesting wines to go with meals I have with friends. Sometimes force of circumstance leads to happy discoveries. I wanted to share some new finds with you, in the hope that you will enjoy them as much …
Awash in Brew
I must be getting old: asleep in my hotel room by 10 p.m. the night of Haines Beer Fest this year. A poor display of anti-beerfest behaviour. The first year I went to the Great Alaskan Craft Beer and Home Brew Festival it was 2001 and it was held on the Fort Seward grounds. I …
Learnings from a Wine Tasting
In my last article, I told you about the wine tasting I was planning at Bombay Peggy’s in Dawson City over the May long weekend. We had about 20 people attend, a few less than I would have hoped for, but a good first effort. Three of the bar staff participated and helped do the …
Best Beer in Food
My partner likes to separate his beer and his food. I’m in favour of mixing them. One day we will find common ground. In the meantime, I will continue to feed him experimental dishes of spicy sautéed spaghetti squash doused with Big Rock’s McNally’s Irish Ale, or Smoked Porter Ancho-braised pork shoulder chops… and he …
We Have Your Beer
When I travelled to Toronto for work in March, my first impression was how I desperately needed new shoes and maybe a decent city coat not covered in lint and dust. My second impression of Toronto was that of a beer wasteland. Beer selection is controlled by the good people of the Ontario Government. You …
A Walk Through the Wine Store: Pt. 6
When I set out to do a walking tour through the Whitehorse Yukon Liquor Corporation (YLC) store, I imagined I could make it through the wine aisles and be onto a new subject by the New Year. Instead, a trip begun last November has taken me through to Easter, and beyond. We may finally finish …
Tasting the Money Diet
It wasn’t until I moved to the Yukon six years ago that I heard the term “money diet”, but I immediately liked the concept. Sometimes we diet because our life circumstances require it in order to restore or maintain our health. Other times we do it just because we are feeling a little beyond what …
Looking off the beaten path
Searching for wines is a little bit like a scavenger hunt at times, and sometimes it calls for looking at the outliers of the wine world for new and exciting finds. Here in the Yukon, we’re well familiar with French, Italian, American and Australian wines. More recently Canadian, Argentinian and Chilean wines have become more …
Hey! My lager is clear, light and fizzy!
So this week, Beer Cache is brewing a Marzen. Märzenbier is the beer style that is served at Oktoberfest in Germany. It’s usually begun in March (hence the name) and cold fermented – lagered – all summer, traditionally in ice-packed caves. But it’s not just the chilly temperatures and lengthier fermentation that makes your lager …
Refreshing Riff Rock
The members of Whitehorse’s newest band, Abscess of the Dog (AOTD), sit in a comfortable Riverdale living room and drink scotch. Matt Larsen, the band’s drummer, is a new father, and that is cause for celebration. Larsen, Lars Jessup and Kinden Kosick were friends long before they were ever bandmates. Jessup and Larsen are both …
Beer drinkers, get your wine glasses ready
For most folk, it’ll be a crisp lager after a hot summer paddle and a full-bodied ale after a ski. So what if someone told you that you could get both … wait for it … in the SAME BOTTLE. Yeah, we know! Proudly wearing the “New Item” badge at Whitehorse Liquor Store, the beer …
Two Sugars, A Little Cream and Lots of Zen
My favourite coffee mug still sits in a place of honour on my shelf. It’s cracked, full of brown stains that will no longer surrender to the dishcloth, chipped along the edges and bears witness to its final death knell: the long crack from bottom to top that caused the terminal leakage of its precious …
Espresso: From Italy With Love
Would an espresso by any other name still taste as sweet? Espresso, not EXpresso, describes three different things; a method of making coffee, the drink itself and a blend of coffee. Let’s talk about each of these things separately, to better understand this wonderful invention and tradition that we love as part of our daily …
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 …
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 …
Your Coffee is 97 per cent Water
OK, by this point you have bravely gone to the local roastery/coffee store, chosen from the myriad of names and flavours and arrived home clutching your precious prize. You place it on the counter and find yourself looking at your coffee brewer as suspiciously as if it was your 15-year-old’s date shuffling at the doorstep. …
Words Aren’t What They Used To Be
Do you find that words somehow start cropping up all over the place? Words that you never really ever heard before … at least not in the normal way? It seems that suddenly, for whatever reason, a word becomes the flavour of the week/month/year and everywhere you turn it has found its way into conversation, or …