March 2012
36 posts
5 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : Cafe 260 260...
Beautiful warm day to be wandering he streets checking out cafes. With only a few weeks left to finish my indie coffee passport and having four cafes left to visit. I thought it a good idea to run out to Cafe 260. In an nestled in an area covered in University buildings and condominiums. Cafe 260 is a beautiful little spot. Nice bare brick and unpretentious comfortable vintage...
5 tags
Rockabilly Brunch at Dominion on Queen March 11...
Featuring Alistair Crystl and the Cosmotones. Rockabilly Brunch at Dominion on Queen offers up some of the best Rockabilly music you’ll ever hear and a darn good breakfast to boot.
It’s a great way to spend your Sunday. Hearing the band from outside when I got there made my day. Going inside to find the band in fine form and then getting my eggs benny made with Rowe Farms Ham, served...
5 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : Mad Dog Cafe...
My Riverdale adventure continued with wandering West on Gerrard to Mad Dog Cafe at 817 Gerrard East. Actually a bit more of a sit down diner than a coffee shop. It turned out to be a great surprise. You can never have enough good brunch venues. I got myself a beautiful large cappuccino to go as I already had brunch plans, but I have made the mental note to go back that way sometime to try...
5 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : Grinder...
Such a beautiful day. I got my directions a bit messed up and got myself lost in Riverdale. I walked down from the Danforth and found myself in part of town I’d rarely been in and had not been near in years. I wish I could have seen this part of town decades ago. These days it’s dilapidated and worn down as are some of the residents of the area. Oddly enough, revamping the corporate...
5 tags
3 tags
2 tags
Beer for Boobs Bar Volo Tap Takeover coming March...
On March 25 at Bar Volo a group of great women in and around our local brewing industry are presenting the amazing beers they have come up with to benifit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Brewing at Bar Volo and various Breweries around Toronto these incredible ladies have taken it to themselves to join up and share their considerable talents to make some fantastic beer. Thanks to many of...
5 tags
TBL - Great Lakes Brewing's Project X at Dominion...
r
Project X went in the road this month. Going down to Dominion on Queen in celebration of international women’s day and collecting $15 per entry with $5 going towards Women’s Habitat. I’m not clear if the women of Great Lakes Brewing had a hand in all the beers or only a few. At least one was a creation of the ladies of Great Lakes which was a great way to celebrate. The beer...
6 tags
Chronic Mastication March 7 2012
Having some brown banana’s to me comes with two implications. One baking something or the other winging them at passers by. To do this you slightly open the banana and toss not quite at a unknowing person but near them. So it splatters near them. Considering I know longer live in a high rise I decided to go with the baking option. Slightly modifying my banana bread recipe and mixing in some...
7 tags
Yesterdays beer March 7 2012
Joined my friend for some drinks she brought me to this pleasant little family owned place on Harbord a couple of blocks west of Spadina called Momos. It was a very nice little restaurant with a bit of a European tavern kind of feel. They had local beer on tap and were featuring Flying Monkeys Hoptical Illusion. Not generally one of my favourites but it fell into a perfect time and place to give...
4 tags
Yesterdays Beer March 6 2012
Great Leaks Crazy Cannuck
The aroma when I opened the can was wonderful on its own. The promise the floral hoppy aroma brought was well fulfilled in drinking the beer.
But, don’t take my word for it. Drink the Beer!
7 tags
Toronto Underground Market March 4 2012
The highlights of my trip to the Toronto Underground Market were my companions whom were all people I’m glad to share my time with. The craft brewers like Beaus, Flying Monkeys and it was also great to finally to meet some of the guys from Hogtown Brewers and try their Kolsh style beer.As well as getting to see the Sassy Lamb and try another of their amazing little cupcakes.
Generally though...
5 tags
TBL - Rubber Boot Camp at Black Oak Brewing Co....
Black Oak Brewing Co. hosted the inaugural Rubber Boot Camp. Where the gentlemen from Black Creek Pioneer Village walked us through making home brew beer. While my attention deficit issues distracted me from hanging on every word I did in fact gain a new perspective and some insights into the world of home brewing. While I had general ideas it was interesting to see them put into play. To see the...
6 tags
Yesterdays Beer March 4 2012
Baking is thirsty work. While reorganizing my kitchen and making spent grain chocolate chip cookies I carved my way through some of my beer selection.
Black Oak Double Chocolate Cherry Stout, silky and flavourful a deliciously flavoured stout.
Black Oak Pale Ale, perhaps the best straight ahead pale ale you can get. My lovely coffee companion dropped by with an Abbot ale from Greene King out of...
10 tags
TBL - Stout Irish Pub March 3 2012
Taking our monthly Toronto Beer Lovers meet up on the road we went to Stout Irish Pub in Hogtown. It was my first time out there and have to say I liked it quite a bit. A sentiment echoed by most of the TBL as well. Great pub atmosphere, fun local beer on tap and from why I saw decent pub grub as well. Baking and cleaning all day I was a few drinks in well before I made it out to Stout. The...
4 tags
Chronic Mastication March 3 2012
My friends at Black Oak Brewing co. gave me a a bag of spent grain culled from brewing their fantastic beer. I took this and adapted an Oatmeal Chocolate chip cookie recipe. Which turned out really well and was fun to play with. Figuring out baking times and just how they should be. The first few batches were undercooked so that they were almost cake like. The spent grain still has moisture in it...
5 tags
Yesterdays beer March 03 2012
Neustadt 10w30 was one of the first craft beers I had when I was starting to understand what craft beer was. A few women I knew liked it but I wasn’t very enthused and found it to be to reminiscent of oil and tar. Making 10w30 a great name for it. I will clarify that I had been a Guiness drinker for nearly ten years at this point and had liked the Mill st. Coffee porter and St. Ambois...
6 tags
TBL - return to Wvrst February 29 2012
Steigl classic German pilsner. Brewed in Austria. Clean ,clear and tasty. Pleasant drinkable beer.
In celebration of Leap day I tried the Kangaroo Sausage and had them with the duck fat fries. Delicious and interesting to try. Doing my best to deflect from all the fantastic local beer Wvrst has on tap I went and tried Estrella a lager from Barcelona Spain. It has a bit of a mass produced taste...
6 tags
5 tags
4 tags
5 tags
8 tags
Chaos March 05 2012
The name of my blog is my attempt to be clever wanker. (I assume most people who know me agree with the latter part of that statement). I’m almost always on the go and often have two or three things happening at once.
Sometimes, there is much more chaos than moderation. Which is how I came to have stitches for the first time.
It was on Valentines day which for my purposes I had reclaimed as...
3 tags
3 tags
Yesterdaysbeer February 27 2012
Years ago when Tuborg pilsner became available my friends and I would drink tonnes of it. It wasn’t quite a big market beer and we weren’t into the standard overly hyped and marketed things that call themselves beer out there. Generally prefering to drink local or global beers I had not quaffed before I generally leave Tuborg alone. Given my former like of the pilsner I thought I...
3 tags
My Mom taught me to sew February 17 2012
It might be weird for a guy to know how to cook, clean and sew. (not super fond of the cleaning part). It was the type of thing I did with my Mom. We would bake and she walked me through the basics of that sort of thing. I actually don’t know how the sewing came about. My Mom showed me how and there have been many misguided attempts to modify clothing and in more recent years a lot of...
2 tags
3 tags
Yesterday's Beer February 29 2013
Black Oak Brewing Company’s Pale Ale is one of my favourite beers. I spent the afternoon craving it. I got through my work day and though my workout in my perilous campaign against the ever vigilant winter fat. Popped the beautiful beer in the freezer for a few moments found the leafs game and started making pancakes. In an apparent effort to be as stereotypically Canadian as possible. Black...
4 tags
Yesterdays Beer February 27 2012
This is the first time I bought Great Lakes Brewings Devil’s Pale Ale for home. I didn’t like it when I first tried it several years ago at the Toronto Beer Festival. So I’ve had an aversion to it. My tastes have moved on and I’ve developed a taste for craft beer and have visited the Brewery monthly for their Project X events. I’ve warmed up to the Devil’s Pale...
6 tags
Yesterdays beer February 26 2012
I tried the Beaus Beaver River at the the Only Winter Beer Festival at the beginning of February. It was delicious like I’ve come to expect from Beaus Beers. It was actually being delivered to the LCBO the same day as the festival. It was good to try on it’s own rather than with all the other great beer I was drinking. Beaver River is smooth and drinkable with a mild hop bitterness...
4 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : Bisogno...
Truthfully I had been I the area to visit Best Baa Fromagerie at St. Lawrence Market. Having missed the cheese market. I went over to another Indie Coffee pass venue to find it was closed as well. The next closest cafe on the list was Bisogno Espresso Bar at 61 Sherebourne ave. Like many of the other indie coffee cafes it’s a pleasant little place. There aren’t many other cafes...
6 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : Full of Beans...
Full of Beans just might be my favourite cafe on the Indie Coffee Passport. I immediately liked the place. Eclectic furniture and design. The mix and match tables and chairs worked really well with the bare brick wall and photographs along the length of the building.The bookcases and the take a book leave a book policy were pretty nice as well. This layout is somewhat like I would design my...
9 tags
Wvrst beer hall February 20 2012
I’d heard a lot about WRVST Beer Hall making it pretty great to go down to visit when they were hosting a beer school hosted by Black Oak Brewing Co. While I misunderstood the website and thought first come first serve meant whoever got there first on the evening of he the school. You actually have to drop in and purchase tickets ahead of time. Which isn’t really clear on the website....
6 tags
TBL - Black Oak Brewing Valentines Party February...
I’ve a really hard time coming up with anything specific to say about the last few Black Oak parties. There’s just to much going on and if I was totally off in the corner taking notes my friends would likely kick my butt for missing out on the fun. As it was the Valentines party I thought it appropriate that I dress up as an old timey bartender. Which went over well. Chocosol was there...
5 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport T.A.N. Coffee...
After visiting R2. I wandered up The street to check out T.A.N. Coffees Queen West location. At 992 it’s just before Ossington avenue if you were travelling west like I was. Gorgeous Americano. The crema of the espresso swimming over the surface. The cafe seemed nice and comfortable. With an incredibly gorgeous roaster in the front window. T.A.N roasts the cofffee for their local...
5 tags
Coffeepunk - Indie Coffee Passport : R2 668 Queen...
After a Valentines Day accident I ended up with the day off work. So on February 15 (discount chocolate day!) I wandered to the Doctor and got myself properly cleaned up. Afterwards I went to visit R2 at 668 Queen West. It’s a fairly pleasant place. Not quite my neighbourhood or scene. The coffee is nice and they have plenty of seating. Most spots having access to plug in the many devices...
