The first Toronto Beer Week wrapped up this past Sunday. It was a week to celebrate craft brewing in Ontario and beyond. The craft beer movement 
has been gaining momentum all over Canada for a few years now. We’re following the path forged by our neighbours to the south. Despite that stereotype that Canadian beer is simply better, Americans are leaders in the craft beer movement and making a wide variety of amazing beer inspired by traditions, merging beer types, and new ingredients. The term craft beer is different than microbrewery. Microbrewery refers to scale and breweries making beer under a set quantity. A craft brewery on the other hand is about quality and including using traditional and natural ingredients and methods (don’t expect to see corn or rice on their ingredient lists). Often craft breweries are small and independent, but in principle craft brewing can happen on any scale.
I imagine in large part Toronto Beer Week was a response to the big brewery dominated Beer Store and Toronto Festival of Beer. Smaller, independent craft brewers are rarely distributed through the Beer Store (the monopoly beer distributor owned my Labatt, Molson and Sleeman) and the Toronto Festival of Beers had only a paltry offering of beers that I’d not tried (so I didn’t even bother attending). The LCBO (the government run monopoly) is a bit better and is now working on their distribution model to make it easier for smaller independent brewers (and vintners) to have shelf space. The demand for craft beers in Ontario has been growing despite these distribution challenges. The demand for local, artisan foods has spread to beverages, boosting demand for both local wine and beer. As folks try beers that are flavourful and authentic the generic blandness offered by most factory scale beer just doesn’t satisfy.
Toronto Beer Week was a festival that spread over most of the city. Restaurants served meal cooked with and matched to beers. Bars and pubs hosted tastings and special beer selection. New beers, brewed especially for
the week, were launched. Contests of homebrews and cask ales were held. An urban adventure race, Toronto Beer Quest, closed out the week. It was an event to build the craft beer community. Brewers had a chance to share and celebrate their trade. Participants, whether just being introduced to craft beer for the first time or already a convert could find something new to delight their taste buds. It was a week were delicious, creative beers were actually easy to find and the hardest part was choosing where to go.
During this glorious week of beer, Jim and I made it to three events (other commitments like work, hosting a cookbook reading group, and marathon training unfortunately got in the way of taking part in more beer festivities). But we chose well and managed to try around 30 beers.
The Adventures of the Gourd Harvest Beer Festival at the Rhino was our first stop. There was a flight of beers and delicious snacks to match guided by Bill White (brewmaster and beer writer in TAPS magazine). The pumpkin beers are what attracted us. Both Grand River Highballer Pumpkin Ale and
Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale were available in cask and keg, giving us a chance to compare two beers, each conditioned in two different ways paired with pumpkin tarts (cask beers don’t have additional carbon dioxide or nitrogen pressure added that keg beers do, instead the yeast is reactivated in the cask to condition the beer resulting in less carbonation and less acidity). Other beers we tried include Church Key Cranberry Maple beer (sour) paired with a maple tart, an aged Denison’s Dunkel (strong malt flavour) paired with sausage, Black Oak’s 10 Bitter Years and Muskoka Harvest Ale paired with cheeses, and the Scotch Irish Porter paired with mussels.
The second event we attended was Festival of Breweries held at C’est What. There were over 40 beers available and they were almost all $1 each to try. My best count is that I tried 18 beers and it was a confirmation of my love of hops and casks. My three top beers were F&M’s Chachi Pilsner (cask), which was dry hopped and had a beautiful floral flavour, Railway City’s Double Dead Elephant, at 70 IBU (which is 23 IBU (international bitterness units) higher than the original Dead Elephant), and the Granite Hopping Mad (cask). We also ran into our two favourite brewers, Scott and Greg, who make us delicious custom beers at Fermentations and love to talk beer the whole time we are bottling (see Jim’s previous ‘boot post about Craft-U-Brewing).
The final event we participated in was Toronto Beer Quest, an urban adventure race based on Toronto’s beer history. Teams of two had to solve 10 clues about Toronto’s beer history and photograph themselves in front of the location. Armed with smart phones to help us solve clues, navigate
and photograph ourselves, Jim and I competed against over 35 other teams. While we didn’t win (we wanted to complete all the clues rather than strategically skip clues and take 10 minute penalties to win), we did have a good time. Since it was the first year of the race it didn’t go off without a hitch, a mistake in one of the clues made it unsolvable and the complicated math at the end meant only the winners were announced and we never figured out where we placed. But the event organizers welcomed our suggestions on how to make it even better next year, so we’re looking forward to competing again.
Overall, Toronto Beer Week was a delicious adventure in craft beer that we thoroughly enjoyed. I hope that it was as successful for the brewers, restaurants, pubs and other event organizers and I’m already counting down to next year!
