Ontario Craft Beer Week Is Coming, Mondial is here!

Well, we’ve just about a month before the 2nd annual OCB Week, or Ontario Craft Beer Week, if you’re into the whole brevity thing, kicks off on Father’s Day (June 19th, dontchaknow?). OCB Week is 7 days of celebrating the artisanal, the unique and the amazing beer brewed in our Province. It’s also quite a marathon of no-sleep, long days, longer nights and zig-zagging across the Province...I can’t wait!

Last year, at our brewery we focussed on doing lots of events and this year we’ll still be hosting, or contributing quite a few. But this year we’re stepping up the ante in terms of beer offerings, too. Check this out: We’ve collaborated with some of our favourite breweries to create a Pan-Ontario Beer, that should be super incredibly awesome. We’ve made a custom blend of our Screaming Beaver, Grand River’s Curmudgeon, Wellington’s Russian Imperial Stout, Flying Monkey’s Netherworld, and Great Lakes’ Devils Pale Ale. After blending we transferred into bourbon barrels, to get some yummy oak and bourbon character as well.
We’re also going to have a few events highlighting some Wild Oats that have already sold out (we saved a few for special occasions) and can’t wait to get to try some old favourites.

But in the meantime, I’m gearing up for Mondial de la Biere, which starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday. Mondial is one of the best festivals ever, this year in a new location. I love hanging out with all the Quebec brewers; not only is their beer fantastic, but they are such a friendly, gracious group of people. It seems every time I visit a Quebec-based brewery, I come back with a new respect for the way they treat people. I’m also hoping that I meet a few international brewers; last year I met Alex and Grady from New Belgium and have developed a wonderful beer trading relationship with Alex and also met Eric Warner from Left Hand, whom I’ve since had the pleasure of hanging out in places near and far.

And I’m sure I’ll run into Ralph Morana from Bar Volo in Toronto. I’ve never been anywhere without running into Ralph. It’s both reassuring and freaky at the same time.

Oktoberfest, Riotfest, Rob's Wedding, Organic Week and Mondial (oh my)

Wow. What a month. This seriously has to go down as craziest month ever. I'm going to have to say 'wow' again. Wow. Ok, so here goes...

First, Oktoberfest. This was our 2nd time holding a full-on Oktoberfest in Vankleek Hill, and we nailed it this time. Last year we got overwhelmed by the turn-out, but this year we really pulled it off. Not without a hitch, mind you, but pretty close.

Saturday was a complete sell-out and Sunday was pretty full as well. We raised over $30,000 for charity and had a whole pile of fun. The bands were amazing, the kinderfest was awesome (Doo-Doo the clown is the best kids entertainer, ever), the speakers series was super cool, Cask Days was phenomenal, the activities went really well and the brewery tours were enjoyed by folks, too.

I didn't post a pic, because you should check out the soundslide that Justin at our local newspaper, The Review put up. http://www.thereview.ca/story/soundslide-oktoberfest-ist-wunderbar

The next weekend, Riotfest. Nothing to do with the brewery, but there's a really cool punkrock festival in Chicago every year called Riotfest and a bunch of us went down for Rob's bachelor party...hey, Rob works for the brewery, so I guess it sorta has a little bit to do with the brewery. Also I went to Piece brewpub and drank a whole pile of 3 Floyd's beer while I was there...

And then Rob and Robyn's Wedding...The next weekend was the wedding. The night before the wedding Rob and Robyn held a show at Sneaky Dee's and they convinced my old band to get back together for a set. That was really cool and their wedding was awesome fun, too. And I must say that after spending so much money at Sneaky Dee's during college, I'm glad to have gotten a tiny bit of it back (our beer was on tap for the night).

Then Organic Week and the reception on Parliament Hill. It was a cool day spent remembering why we spend the extra time and money to make organic beer and do a bit of organic food lobbying. An interesting side note, was that in speaking to Steve Abrahms from Mill St Brewery in Toronto that he also was in a band back in the day called Skinnerbox, and I use to listen to their stuff all the time.

Then came Mondial. Wow, was that a party. This is the 2nd annual Mondial de la Biere held in Strasbourg, at the far corner of France, just next to the German border. The show itself was a bit rough on me physically, but great fun as well. At night though, everybody was out partying like it was 1999. I can't go through the list of awesome people I was hanging out with without sounding like I'm name dropping, so instead I'll say this: During my nights there I was enthralled with conversations with Swedes, Italians, Americans, Belgians, Brits and fellow Canadians. I'd come solo and was worried that I'd spend my nights bored and alone, but instead I think I saw the wrong side of 5am everynight thanks to the efforts of my intrepid brewing colleagues.

So yeah...this weekend is Cask Days and Halloween in Toronto with Nicola and the kids (who, I'm happy to say still remembered that they had a husband/father when I returned from France yesterday). That will put the final, wonderful cap on a wonderful, busy month.

Mondial de la Biere

This weekend was Mondial...actually it started Wednesday and goes to Sunday. As always, an awesome collection of Quebec breweries and a showcase of some of the best beer available on this planet.

This year, we decided to get a booth and represent in Montreal. It was a difficult decision, because the interprovincial regulations make it really expensive (we had to buy our own beer from the SAQ at a 270% markup before selling it back) and difficult to do right (we had to send the beer months in advance and we couldn't send kegs). In the end the festival seemed to cool to miss and we're so close to Montreal, it just seemed wrong to skip it.

Overall, it was a very good event for us. We had lots of awesome feedback from customers and breweries and got to meet a lot of the brewers and owners of some of our favourite Quebec beers. The interprovincial redtape however was very frustrating...

Only half of our order was brought to the event from the SAQ to start with. By 7pm the first night, the Bogwater was gone and by halfway through Thursday all our beer was gone. Our brewery is only 45 minutes away, but we weren't allowed to bring more and were told that the second half of our shipment wouldn't arrive until Friday. So we spent most of Thursday apologizing to folks who came to try our beer. On Friday the next shipment came, but somehow LugTread got missed and didn't arrive. After a few hours it came, thankfully (I think this was due to some awesome work by Mondial organizers, who were all very cool, but I didn't get to see what happened behind the scenes).

So, yeah, by Friday night we had sold out of everything except our Stout, and that was gone early Saturday.

Enough about me complaining though...on a personal level, I had a blast. First of all, when I say "we" apologized all day, I don't really deserve any sympathy. It is such a good feeling for me to be at a show and have supercompetent people working their butts off. Darren worked the entire show and somehow kept up with it all. Nikki and Anne both took a couple days and my friend Codco took a few days vacation from his real job and worked our booth pretty much the whole time, too.

This let me, Dad and Matt meet, greet and taste a lot more freely than we're used to.

I had found out earlier that Alex from New Belgium would be up - we've been emailing about Bogmyrtle for a while now and so I was going to get to meet her. We spent a lot of time sampling and talking and she was really cool. She also introduced me to Erik, founder of Left Hand Brewing. I'm a big fan of their Milk Stout, so it was really neat to get to hang out with him, too. I also got to hang out with some folks from Benelux and Hopfenstark, some of the Ontario folks who were up for the experience, like Ralph and Julien from Volo, Bill White, Troy Burtch, and Mirella Amato.

An amazing experience. I guess there are worse things than selling every drop of beer we brought, too!

I can't wait to hear from Rob and Jerry in Toronto about how their beer festival went and from Jen and Kevin in Orangeville, to find out about the street festival we were doing there this weekend, too!