Gold, Canada, Gold!

Phil and I are still having a great tie in Vncouver (except buying counterfeit tickets to last night's bronze medal hockey game - that sucked). At the athletes reception at Ontario House, Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested we adopt a chant of "Gold, Canada, Gold" - so I figure, why not.

Ontario House is seeing more than 10,000 visitors per day. It seems that once the word got out that they had great food and beer and weren't gouging people, that it has become probably The place to be.

I'll be one of the 10,000 there today again, hoping for a fairy tale hockey gold to give us the Olympic record for most Gold's ever.

Lots of good news...a tiny bit of bad news

So Phil and I arrived at Ontario House yesterday and were warmly greeted by Karen with Ontario's Olympic Secretariate and got to meet a number of the staff with the catering company, too. Cordon Blue was doing chocolate demos, the line up to get in was already around the block and the pavillion looked amazing.

Turns out our beer was being really well received, too. In fact, it was basically all gone! I did get to try a bit (whew!) but by mid-afternoon I watched the last glass get poured, before the hockey game got started (4:30pm when you are in Vancouver).

I found out though that they saved us a little bit of LugTread for some of the receptions coming up in the next few days, so we're not completely out of luck. The really fantastic thing is that all the craft beer sold out last night. All the Great Lakes, all the Mill St., all the SteamWhistle (they're here too, I forgot to mention them in my earlier post) and all the Beau's. Mind you it made for a wine-and-hockey pairing I wan't really expecting, but I'm very proud to see that the people heading to Ontario House are definitely craft beer drinkers!

We took an hour off before the game and went to a nearby brewpub calle the SteamWorks. We got to chat with the Assistant Brewer, Ben and got a tour of the brewery. I really enjoyed their wheat beer (lots of banana; just the way I like it). After the game, Philip and I went to a pretty awesome restaurant called Alibi Room and I got to have Crannog's Back Hand of God Stout and a 12 year old sour lambic that was mind-blowingly good. We shared a delicious cheese plate and I tried to tackle a pork belly sandwich (very tasty, but very filling).

By 10:30 our jetlagged butts were in the hotel room - no big parties for us last night...hopefully tonight we'll last a little longer.

Olympics!

We haven't really been announcing it very much, but the Ontario Gov't asked us if we'd like to have our beer featured at the Olympics. We shipped down about 3,000 litres for them to have at the Ontario House Paviliion. Ontario is going for a real wow-'em on the food and drink offerings of Ontario, so they've got Jamie Kennedy doing demo's, crazy good food (according to the Vancouver Sun) and Ontario made wind and beer.

I can't really comment on the wine, but alongside Beau's is Great Lakes, and Mill St., which is a pretty great lineup, if you ask me.

After hemming and hawing for a few weeks on how much it costs to go out to Vancouver, my brother Philip and I decided that we absolutely had to go. I hate shipping beer and crossing my fingers and the opportunity to show so many people from so many places who we are and what our beer is all about was just too much to bear.

So we booked flights and landed in Vancouver last night. We're just about to head down to Ontario House to go see what LugTread tastes like in Vancouver.