If you’ve been sleeping all day and haven’t heard, there’s been some beer news.

On January 7, 2015, The Beer Store announced that they would be “opening up ownership opportunities” to all Ontario breweries.

You can read the full scoop over on blogTO where I broke it all down the morning it happened.

Since the news broke, there’s been a veritable shit storm of activity as people reacted and responded to the news. At first, the news seemed like a PR masterstroke. The Beer Store changed the conversation that had largely been about their unfair monopoly up until now and instead issued what would surely be seen as a great step forward for Ontario beer. Right?

Well, not so much.

Reaction has been pretty swift and not all that supportive. People aren’t taking too kindly to the Beer Store, arguably the source of the problem, opting to be the solution to the problem and the move has come off as, at best, a token gesture and, at worst, insulting.

Here’s a round-up of the fallout:

TV and Radio

Jason Fisher of the Indie Alehouse really got the fun started this morning by responding on AM1010 with Jerry Agar (skip to 39:38) and then The Beer Store’s Jeff Newton joined Jerry and got pretty roundly flustered. Lovely stuff.

Print Media Coverage

Photo by Robin LeBlanc

The Blogs

In the interest of keeping the conversation going and maintaining a resource for everyone to share in the fun, please share your links or news schedule tips as comments here.