I just about dropped my spoonful of Lucky Charms when I read this passage in Josh Rubin's column in the Toronto Star:

News of the beer’s impending arrival has already created a stir among Toronto’s beer aficionados. “I’ve been waiting six years to get this in,” says Brian Morin, owner/chef of downtown brew hot-spot beerbistro, who expects to sell it at his restaurant for roughly $20 per one-ounce serving.

Now, I have warned you before about the misuse or, perhaps, shallow use of aficionado but maybe this means I have it all backwards. Maybe, just as those fans of bullfighting - the original aficionado - those who see a great transcendent truth in the playing out of the tragic game, fully aware that in the end there is only death, well, maybe Toronto’s beer aficionados need the same combination of pleasure and pain to understand their passion. Maybe they need to take a hit in the wallet to appreciate their place in the cosmic order. Thank heavens for our distinct Easlakian culture.

While my experience at beerbistro has been nothing but a happy one time and again, it is important that we review. Utopia shall be offered by the local government retail monopoly called the LCBO at a relatively reasonable $115 a bottle which, for 24 ounces, means $4.79 an ounce. But beerbistro is going present it with a 417% mark up when it sells those 24 ounces for a total of $480. By comparison, Jolly Pumpkin's wholesale price in Ontario is a very reasonable $10 per bottle but one could not imagine the same bottle retailing for $41.70 on beerbistro's beer menu. Maybe it does.

Do you care? We are all free to buy or not buy that ounce and I happily exercise my freedom by declining. But it is good to be aware of these things. Interestingly, this bar in New York reportedly sells it at $12.50 an ounce while this place in Chicago seems to sell it for $10 an ounce. It is good to be aware of these things.