Beer in Canada.

Guys.....just check out my profile pick for what I just found yesterday, right across the Ontario-Quebec border. At the first deppaneur I found, too!

 

^ (all above) That's not kindness

 

If you order a Quarter chicken leg with fries from St-Hubert and ask for extra sweet and sour sauce you get a bottle of Fou' Foune and a bottle of Geuze upon delivery.

 

I don't think there's any maliciousness in any of these comments. Just having a bit of fun with what is undoubtedly the biggest myth in the Canadian beer scene.

Like all myths, it likely had a spot of truth to it in the past. If I were to guess, I bet it started when Alberta got their first shipment of Loons back in 2009 (my profile pic, actually). Most sat on the shelves for years. YEARS! The Lou Pepe's were even around for a good 6 months, with maybe the exception of the Gueuze. When I moved away in Aug. 2012 there were still 4 or 5 labels that were still kicking around. Ot would have taken just one or two beer geeks from the US to visit Calgary, or Edmonton during that phase to believe that Cantillon ran from the taps. And, lets face it, in many American minds Canada is just some homogenous, amorphous idea that exists just North of the border. They don't have a firm grasp of Canada's geographic and urban variation, so if Cantillon was once ridiculously plentiful in Calgary, it's probably the same just down the road in Montreal, or Toronto or Vancouver now, right?

So I say to my American Friends. Sorry, we have about as much Cantillon as you have. Please don't judge us too harshly if we give you a somewhat cheeky response to your question "where dem loons at?". We just answer the same question DOZENS of times every year, both on the interwebs and, indeed, in person, too.

 

Was the same thing in Vancouver around 2010/2011. Not for some time now though, stuff goes like crazy now with tight limits if it isn't bought up by store staff before it hits the shelf.

 

Someone should create a "Misconceptions and false facts about beer in Canada" and sticky it. The first question should be "Hey I heard if I ever go anywhere in Canada, like, literally anywhere, I'll be able to find boxes of Cantiloon in stock, can sum 1 pls help me find all of them and give me an exact breakdown of where all the boxes are". Second question (and non-ironically, this time) should be "I heard Canadian beer sucks, is this true? If not, what are some of the best beers one can buy in each province? (year-round and seasonal)" with a breakdown of what's really fuckin good in each province (PS: if you're ever in BC, Yellow Dog IPA is the best, except it's not bottled and you either need to go to the brewery and get growlers of it or go to a pub that has it on tap, and Fat Tug is second best, except you can get that in bombers and it's usually insanely fresh, just fyi)

 

This is easily the best thread in the Canada forum since I joined BA.

 

Just to repeat from an earlier comment on another BA tread, Rose de Grambrinus was once available from a Toronto based Belgian bistro/bar in the late 1980s. True story.

 

Once? Still is.

 

Well, that's good news then isn't it? It was a rare treat back then. Just like drinking bottles of Thomas Hardy's at The Amsterdam or sipping Gales's Prize Old Ale at the Duke of Wellington in Waterloo.

 

Thomas Hardy's (2006) are available at Bistro.
Cantillon (RdG) is at Bar Hop, and a couple others are at Bistro as well.

 

And just a 10 minute jaunt west on the Danforth to Allen's...

 

What did I miss when I went there? Is there a really good bottle list, because the tap list was awful...

 

http://www.allens.to/allens/beer.shtml

Some decent Belgians, nothing else overly exciting.

 

Just nostalgia probably.. Allen's was the first place in Ontario (possibly Canada)to carry beers from American craft breweries like Sierra Nevada back in the mid 80s. It was like going to heaven. They even took your coat.

 

Funny after all that joking, a shop in Vancouver recently pulled some 'Loons from their cellar yesterday. Likely all gone now.

 

It's always sad to see when some of the pioneers completely fall off years later, but that seems to be the case with Allen's.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing Beeradvocate help out our brothers to the south by doing up some provincial top 25's