Beer retailing in Ontario is dominated by the Beer Store, a near monopoly, owned by the large breweries.  This set up has some positive aspects, as the employees are well paid and they recycle almost everything they sell.  However, for those of us more interested in craft beer than industrially

produced domestic or imported brands, the Beer Store limits options.  The other booze monopoly, the government owned LCBO, sells a wider selection of Ontario Craft Beers, but they only sell in single cans or six packs and the prices are prohibitively high.  Neither retailer provides a wide selection of craft beers from across Canada or the United States.  This leaves beer drinkers with few options aside from figuring out how to brew your own craft beer.

Thankfully Craft-U-Brewing is a growing trend.  If you have the time and space its possible to brew your own beer from scratch at home.   Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher is a good resource to learn more about home brewing. For those of us living in apartments, too poor/cheap to buy the equipment or to lazy to learn all the complicated steps in brewing high quality craft beer there are great Craft-U-Brew stores like Toronto’s Fermentations that make brewing easy.

I know that many of you hear U-Brew and think about cheap kit-beer that taste terrible and allow hangovers to start while you are still drinking.  This is true of many of the cheaper U-Brew options that substitute corn sugar for barley to keep the price down.  Thankfully, it is now possible to buy micro-brewed wort (unfermented beer) made with barley malt, water and hops (you add the yeast yourself to make the process legal).  By adding more malt, hops, fruit, spices or coffee you can transform the base wort into almost any style of beer.  Fermentation have a wide selection of beers on their regular list (here are just a few):

• Danforth Lager
• Dutch Lager
• Hoffbrauhaus
• Czech Pilsner
• Fuggles Pale Ale
• Bavarian Bock
• Newcastle Brown
• Oatmeal Stout
• Hefeweizen
• Belgian Wit
• Trappist Dubbel

However, what makes this U-Brew special is their ability to emulate just about any beer you have ever tried or read about.  My friend Val tried a Hefeweizen  in Colorado Springs with a really pronounced banana flavour.  Scott, one of the two employs that work with Charles the owner, thought it thorough and choose a yeast strain that would bring out the banana in their wheat wort.  The resulting beer was amazing and that batch did not last very long.  Over the past years we’ve experimented with beer style from around the world.  earthy Peat Smoked Scotch Ales, bitterly hoppy West Cost IPAs, danerously strong imperial coffee stouts (8-9%) and traditionally lagered double bocks. Continue reading →