Beer News Round-Up

Here’s a quick round-up of local beer news & press mentions from the last couple of weeks:
Undoubtedly the biggest news recently was last week’s announcement that Labatt has make a friendly takeover bid for Lakeport that looks likely to be accepted. This has been covered all over the place (including a Canadian Press piece featuring some quotes from yours truly) – this handy Google News search link should direct you to many pertinent stories should you want to read up on the deal and what various people think about it. And if you want to sound off about it yourself, you can join the discussion in the Bar Towel Forum.
In his weekly “What’s Brewing” column in The Toronto Star, Josh Rubin has recently profiled Scotch-Irish Sgt. Major’s IPA, McEwan’s Scotch Ale, Barley Days Yuletide Cherry Porter and Thomas Hardy’s Ale.
Meanwhile, in his “Suds” column in Metro, Aonghus Kealy started the year with an interview with Todd Fowler, brewmaster at the Molson-owned Rickard’s Brewhouse microbrewery at the Air Canada Centre. He followed this up with columns debunking the beer belly myth; previewing Robbie Burns events at The Granite and other local establishments; and reporting on the launch of Guinness Red in the UK.
Over in The Globe & Mail, there were a couple of beer-related articles in their weekend edition throughout January. A review feature on several local winter seasonal beers ran on January 27th (with Stephen Beaumont offering a rather negative opinion of the piece on his website later the same day), and the week before saw an article on beer & cheese pairings.
And perhaps the most interesting of the lot was a Toronto Star interview with Max Nelson, a University of Windsor professor who earned his PhD in classical studies by researching – and brewing – ancient beer.