ottawa foodies

This one's for all the beer lovers out there that enjoyed their dollar beers:

cnews.canoe.ca

I still only pay about 35 cents a beer :-)

Not including your labour ;)

It's a labour of love! I enjoy it as a hobby, not as a way to save money. The latter is just a nice fringe benefit :-)

The sad part about this story is that it's yet another instance of our nanny state trying to protect us from ourselves. It's really unbelievable how little progress Ontario has made since the prohibition era :-(

My thoughts exactly!

Indeed zym, it's sad. I heard about a great product for ipods today that measured your BAC by breath, and doubled as an FM transmitter, but MADD is against it because they believe it would make kids have contests to see who could blow the highest.

"It's really unbelievable how little progress Ontario has made since the prohibition era."

In some ways Ontario has made a lot of headway with some of the liquor laws since prohibition.

EXAMPLES:

When I had my first drink in Ontario, 1979, one was not allowed to leave his/her table with a drink. One had to get a server to move your drink from one table to another. There wasn't even any seating at a bar, tables only.

Absolutely NO drinking outside on a patio. Consuming could not be seen from the street. (Just check out the windows in the old taverns and hotels.)

The Men Only side in Taverns was done away with just a few years earlier.

No booze in movie theaters.

One had to have a food order on a Sunday to get served booze. (I'll have an order of fries and a tray of draft (glasses), please !)

To buy liquor/wine etc, one had to fill out a form in a liquor store (that had windows with no visiblity to the street) No product displays only the product listings, on paper, were to be viewed.

No instore tastings. No LCBO staff with any product knowledge.

No wine stores in grocery stores or malls.

No Sunday opening of LCBO or Beer Stores (called Brewers Retail at that time). Also limited store hours (in most stores).

Wine variety consisted mainly of Brights, Chateau Gai or Andre's products. (Can you say Yummy Yummy Vinus Lambrusca ?) This included Cold Duck, Baby Duck, Alpenweiss or Brights 74 Gut-Wash (I mean Sherry and Port). An exotic import was Black Tower or Mateus.

No microbreweries and very limited (relatively expensive) imported beers.

I'm not sure of Ontario, but in Nova Scotia, it was illegal to have your booze in any part of your car except the trunk. It was also illegal NOT to have your NS Liquor Commission store receipt with you because they would assume you got it from a boot-legger.

Also in NS, it was technically illegal to transport any booze other than from the store to your residence. If you wanted to drink at someone elses home, the host needed to supply the booze.

Funny though, one could be pulled over for speeding and be reeking of booze but was just charged for the speeding as long as you were not swerving all over the road (or had any booze (open or not) inside the car).

Not sure if it was similar in Ontario.

Ontario is certainly no Europe when it comes to it's Puritan liquor laws but I think we've 'Come along way, Baby'.

As for the Buck-a-Beer going away, I thought it was due to the world wide price increase of grain.

Now I can clearly see it as a way for both the LCBO and Beer Store to improve their bottom lines ... instantly.

Greedy B#stards !!!

I'm looking into that column still made from a 20 gallon hot water heater ... again. Got the plans and everything !!

Check out these puppies ... for the Do It Yourself crowd !!

---> journeytoforever.org <---

PS: Only $135 to get my hooch tested at the LCBO lab. Of course I would have to bottle it with labels. This way I will not poison myself or others and get a very accurate alcohol content reading ta boot.

From the LCBO website: "LCBO tests all products imported and sold. These tests ensure that the products meet federal standards and are free from contaminants. There is a fee per product to conduct this test. For spirits based products the lab fee is $135.00 CDN plus applicable taxes per product."

Better start now to get the barrel ageing under way.

Killaloe Korn Whiskey anyone ?

This won't curb drinking. It will just hit the pocket books of those who can least afford it -- the poor. What a disappointing story.

One less thing to spend the beer & popcorn cheque on, I guess?

Another reason why it's great to live in Ottawa, the only large city in the province that effectively has competition for alcohol. I'll bet the depanneurs in Gatineau, like Le Roi de la Biere in Aylmer and others, are rubbing their hands at this Christmas gift from Queen's Park.

I think it's pretty clear that the Ontario government is looking for ways to improve the bottom line with the fiscal crisis that we are just entering. Not something I like, but better than raising income tax I think ( which might happen anyway).

Hi All,

Just came back from a trip to the USA, where Happy Hour is alive and well... and selling drinks for an unbelievable $ 1.00 for Draft Beer and $ 2.00 to $ 2.50 for Bottled Beer, Well Drinks (great stuff, just not premium like Smirnoff vs Grey Goose) and House Wine.

I can't say how I feel about Happy Hour (mixed feelings due to its statistics) but I agree with Captain C Canada has come a long way since the 1970s. I would really like to see "Tag It & Bag It" implemented in Ontario though... I truly believe that being legally able to take an unfinished bottle of wine with you after a meal is a good thing (for both the Consumer and the Restaurant, not to mention the fact that people won't feel the urge to guzzle down their wine rather than waste it).

That and the fact that Canadian Wineries and Breweries should be able to sell their products independently of the LCBO (a chain of stores perhaps, run as a co-op).

"That and the fact that Canadian Wineries and Breweries should be able to sell their products independently of the LCBO (a chain of stores perhaps, run as a co-op)."

There's a website dedicated to this type of change in Ontario:
freeourbeer.org/

F&T: You can legally take home unfinished bottles of wine. It's part of the same BYO legislation that was done back in 2005. Or, are you referring to the lack of adoption by many restaurants so far?