Beer Guide

Before Kendra Hoskin was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2009, she says she was a “huge beer drinker.” After the diagnosis, because most beers are brewed with wheat, barley or other gluten-based grains, she switched to cider. But the rise of wheat allergies has brewers making some changes, too. The NSLC now sells three different […]

If you follow current affairs at all, you know that March Madness is all about the NCAA tournament and the iconic brackets of teams competing. Even though I don’t follow basketball, I get it. But my ears perked up recently when I met a friend of a friend who was throwing her own March Madness […]

“Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.” Frank Funn’s St. Patty’s Day philosophy is pretty accurate, March 17 has become an all-inclusive reason to celebrate. But what he’s celebrating on Saturday is slightly different. Sure, he’ll be dressed in green…and maybe shamrocks too, but he'll also be celebrating the well-worn 125-year-old Saint Patrick’s Church. For the […]

This St. Patrick’s Day, remember how lucky you are to live in Canada. Chuck Gillis wishes he had what we all take for granted: While we sit here in our ivory towers drinking all the Garrison and Keith’s we want, he’s stuck in Texas, unable to get either. And he loves Garrison and Keith’s. Gillis […]

Halifax Explosion Tripel as told by Steve Trickett I finished brewing a Belgian tripel and transferred it into a carboy. I attached a blow-off tube to the bung and ran the hose into a jug of sanitized solution to catch any runoff, then called it a night. Next morning, the yeast cake had bubbled up […]

Sea Level Brewing’s owner, Randy Lawrence, is known for his motto: “Don’t be loco, drink local.” The Port Williams brewer, one of the first microbrewers in the Maritimes, has been championing the possibility of an all-Nova Scotia beer for many years. But it took travelling close to 6,000 kilometres to Washington State for Lawrence to […]

Bobby Zacharias (Propeller) Brett Mason (Sleeman) Daniel Girard (Garrison) Greg Nash (Hart & Thistle) Kevin Keefe (Granite) Lorne Romano (Rogue’s Roost) Randy Lawrence (Sea Level Brewing) Graham Kendall (Keith’s) Bobby Zacharias, head brewer at Propeller Brewery Where did you train? I studied in Scotland at the Heriot-Wat University, and I took a course at the […]

The leading trends in Canadian craft beer are seasonal releases and limited-editions, and in Halifax the most established microbreweries, Propeller and Garrison, have done a fantastic job keeping their fans on their toes with a staccato attack of new releases. Garrison recently released its first Spruce Beer, its first oak barrel-aged version of the Ol’ […]

There are beer geeks, and there are beer nerds. And if he’s going to be called one of them, Alex Speers insists on the latter. I meet Alex Speers in person on the first mild day in March. Previously, on the phone, Speers had taken me through a PowerPoint presentation of complicated-looking graphs and used […]