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BuffaloSabresBrewer

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HOLY CRAP! Why dont more people in Canada brew? Beer is f^cking expensive up there! I couldnt believe the prices when I walked into The Beer Store. I feel your pain guys and Ill be raising a HB to you guys tonight.
 
It's the vice tax. We live in a socialist country. But at least our hospitals are free.

I'm mostly kidding.
 
Our beer is waaaaayyyyy too expensive. No sh!tting, I paid $20 Canadian (currently about $20.10 US) for a six-pack of Rogue Dead Guy Ale (not worth it, BTW). Given our prices and general lack of craft beer, I really don't understand why more Canadians don't homebrew. They even make it easy with no-boil, wort-in-a-bag kits that you can buy at most wine shops here (they are actually really good!).

I don't know why, but the homebrew culture is dying really quickly here in Canada. It is hard to even find a decent online homebrew retailer in Canada these days (our last good one just folded). At least our dollar is strong and shopping at places like AHBS or Morebeer are reasonable these days.
 
Denny's Evil Concoctions said:
About the hospitals i assume cause the tax is f'ing outrageous.

My dad had to pay 500 bucks for a back brace while in the hospital.

The hospitals were the only part I wasn't kidding about. It's nt really a vice tax, and we're not really socialists, bt free health care has saved my life. That is ridiculous though. My condolences.
 
Wow, I just realized I came off really touchy there.

But the HB community in Halifax seems to be on the grow. It may be that I'm only finding the community as I do more brewing, but it really seems to be catching on. The LHBS across the street is definitely growing.
 
It's really strange. Canadians purport to take great pride in their beer, but they're content with Molson/Labatt/Keiths most of the time, and they're content to pay an arm and a leg for it. We don't even have SA or equivalent hocking pretentious-seeming beers on the mass market, unless you count Rickard's, which you shouldn't.

I think the fault lies with the government liquor store monopoly; people only know the small selection available, and thus are content with it and don't push to expand its horizons. The one province without this damaging monopoly, Quebec, makes some of the best beer in North America.

edit: to defend that last point: Unibroue, Dieu du Ciel, Charlevoix, even McAuslan/St-Ambroise.
 
BuffaloSabresBrewer said:
HOLY CRAP! Why dont more people in Canada brew? Beer is f^cking expensive up there! I couldnt believe the prices when I walked into The Beer Store. I feel your pain guys and Ill be raising a HB to you guys tonight.
I laugh everytime you hear people argue about whether homebrewing saves money. One trip to the liquor store here, and it's no longer a question, it's the eleventh commandment. I can brew far better beer for significantly less money.

There are so many problems up here when it comes to beer. A lack of a craft brewing culture certainly doesn't help. People just have no idea what's out there, outside of us who go looking. The guy at Garrison wins Canadian beer of the year, and I don't even remember seeing a minor news story about it.
 
Kai said:
The one province without this damaging monopoly, Quebec, makes some of the best beer in North America.[/I]

Wrong. The SAQ is horrible: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=0b2a8099-11d8-42c7-8f8c-283584c4d2c1
They have a total of about 80 beers that they carry, but you're lucky to find more than 20 of them in the same store. Luckily, I've found a couple sweet corner stores that carry huge selection of imports and local micros.
More and more people are coming to like good beer. The only problem is the price. Example, $70 for a 24-pack of imported beer seems steep for a lot of people, even though the cheapest local beer can be sold is $22.34 (for normal) and something like $20.59 (for the light stuff) (plus the bottle deposit). I just hope more and more people will start homebrewing and stop buying the normal Bud and Molson, they might feel a drop in sales and decide to pressure the government into lowering the taxes on alcohol. I heard recently from a report that 80% of the price of hard liquor is taxes. Probably about 30-40% of the price of beer is taxes.

Oh and since I feel in a rant-y mood. You know what's stupid about beer in Quebec/French: the names.

Here is the names of styles that exist in French:

Blanche (Wheat)
Blonde (you guessed it, Blond)
Doré (Golden)
Cuivré (Amber)
Rousse (Red)
Brune (Brown)
Noire (Black).

That's all the styles that exist in French. They go on the color! Add to that that most of the time there is no distinction between ales and lagers...

Now that might seem fine, but here are a few examples where it sucks:

-Blonde: You can compare a Pilsner, which is light and crisp, to a light colored IPA, which is intensely bitter, and they're called the same thing in French. Someone might stumble on an IPA and decide to try it simply because the name is "Blonde". When they try it and realize how bitter it is, they are likely to never try a Blonde again if they don't like the bitterness.

-Noire: This style basically anything in the Stout style, which is fine, but then you add Schwarzbier, which is completely different. Heck, Unibroue's Trois Pistoles is in this category, but tastes NOTHING like a Stout.

-Brune: This style includes stuff like English Brown Ales, but it can also include things like Bocks. An english ale and a german sweet lager. Same name...

-Rousse: You could include stuff like a red ESB, which is bitter, to something like an Irish Red ale...

-Doré: You basically include in this style pale ales, like Boddington's, and a lighter colored Bitter. Heck, Pilsner Urquell would probably be in this style considering it is a darkish pilsner.

End of rant...
 
The Beer Store here in Ontario definitely sucks for micros because it's owned by the major brewers, so while they do carry the smaller stuff they often don't have stock (at least in my town).

The LCBO on the other hand is making great strides, I'm finding a lot of micros there that I never used to see before. I even saw some Sam Adams Boston Lager last time I was there. The only problem with the LCBO is that they don't have the space to have a kick a$$ beer selection, they have massive wine and spirits selection which rightly takes up most of the store.

If some of the American micros would start exporting to Canada so we could get people seeing - and interested in - some more variety we would probably have a big growth in the beer market up here.
 
Judd said:
The hospitals were the only part I wasn't kidding about. It's nt really a vice tax, and we're not really socialists, bt free health care has saved my life. That is ridiculous though. My condolences.


There is no such thing as free health care. In fact health care is even more expensive in Canada. When I lived in Manhattan there were enormous amounts of Canadians and British in the hospitals. Most of them didn't want to wait for 6 months to get their cancer treated. Can't say I blame them...
 
I found it funny that a good smaller brewery like Youkon is the same price as BMC....and I seen lots of Canadians walking out of the store with BMC!

BTW Yukon Red was my favorite beer I found in canada.. so far!

But I have not been able to find anything with a strong hop characteristic! (IPA)
 
Kai said:
It's really strange. Canadians purport to take great pride in their beer, but they're content with Molson/Labatt/Keiths most of the time, and they're content to pay an arm and a leg for it. We don't even have SA or equivalent hocking pretentious-seeming beers on the mass market, unless you count Rickard's, which you shouldn't.

I think the fault lies with the government liquor store monopoly; people only know the small selection available, and thus are content with it and don't push to expand its horizons. The one province without this damaging monopoly, Quebec, makes some of the best beer in North America.

edit: to defend that last point: Unibroue, Dieu du Ciel, Charlevoix, even McAuslan/St-Ambroise.

I disagree, at least here. If the were to privatise the govt ran liquor stores, we would have no selection at all. It would just be what the big distributors flog.

I odnlt know about the rest of Canada, but go to the lower mainland or the Island. BMC beers are the minority.
 
Dr Vorlauf said:
There is no such thing as free health care. In fact health care is even more expensive in Canada.

:off:
It's not 'free' health care, it's universal health care. It's not expected to be 'free', because obviously little in life is free. It is expected to be accessible to everybody.
 
Denny's Evil Concoctions said:
I disagree, at least here. If the were to privatise the govt ran liquor stores, we would have no selection at all. It would just be what the big distributors flog.

I odnlt know about the rest of Canada, but go to the lower mainland or the Island. BMC beers are the minority.
In NS, it's the private run liquor boutiques that are bringing in good variety. Government run stores have a much narrower mandate to do this. I can get Bass, Fullers, McAuslan but don't look for anything much broader in scope. And that 500 ml Fullers ESB was $3.35, and the 354ml Bass was $2.53. After taxers and deposit, that's $6.85 for 2 beer. Sweet.
 
Denny's Evil Concoctions said:
I disagree, at least here. If the were to privatise the govt ran liquor stores, we would have no selection at all. It would just be what the big distributors flog.
Yep, that's what has happened in Alberta. Although I must say, we have a far better selection of beer than places like Saskatchewan or Ontario.
 
mr x said:
In NS, it's the private run liquor boutiques that are bringing in good variety. Government run stores have a much narrower mandate to do this. I can get Bass, Fullers, McAuslan but don't look for anything much broader in scope. And that 500 ml Fullers ESB was $3.35, and the 354ml Bass was $2.53.


The opposite in BC. Beer and wine (private) sell the BMC sleamans stuff. Liquor board brings in all the special imports.
 
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