...one beer

It's not very often these days that I buy the beer for the household. Since I don't drink a lot of beer, Steve usually does the purchasing. But once in a while, I make the beer run. Now in Ontario, one normally goes to The Beer Store to purchase their rations although the LCBO also stocks beer. At most of the Beer Store locations you walk up to the counter, place your order, and your case of suds appears, flying down the metal rollers from behind a plastic curtain. Magic! But some locations are what I like to call, the Women's Beer Store. You walk into a giant cooled room and pick up the case or cases of choice. So why do I cal it the Women's Beer Store? Well if you follow social stereotypes, men hate shopping and women love it. Men go in, get what they want, and get the hell out. Women browse, checking out every aisle, whether it contains what they are looking for or not. I usually go into the Women's Beer Store with a pretty good idea of what I will be leaving with, but I look around anyway and always end up picking up a little something interesting. And that's what I did last week.

Brewed by Toronto's Mill St. Brewery, the Belgian Wit may just be the ultimate summer beer. It's an unfiltered, wheat beer and refreshing doesn't even begin to describe it. Orange peel and corriander give it both a fruity and slightly spicy taste. I would suggest enjoying it with a slice of orange. If you're a fan of Hoegaarden or Keith's Premium White, add this one to your list. Fantastic.

everything old is new again

Finally!

Starting February 5, 2007, Ontario residents will be able to return their empty wine and liquor containers (that's glass bottles, plastic bottles (PET), Tetra Pak containers, bag-in-box, aluminum and steel containers) to their local Beer Store in exchange for their deposit. The idea is twofold. The first is to keep these bottles out of the landfill (yes, some still need the monetary incentive to recycle). The second is, by pulling these bottles out of our blue boxes, to allow the municipalities to expand the variety of items they can recycle.

So all we have to do is save up our bottles and take them to the Beer Store, just like we've been doing with our beer bottles for decades. Yes, we'll be paying an extra 20 cents for a bottle of wine, but we'll get the full deposit back. When they make it this easy, how can you not participate?

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