The Ontario Craft Beer Guide

An indispensable guide to the heady world of Ontario’s craft beer revival, the expanded second edition of The Ontario Craft Beer Guide adds nearly 100 outstanding new breweries. For newcomers and aficionados alike, experts Jordan St. John and Robin LeBlanc guide you through the booming craft beer scene to your new favourite pint.

The renaissance of craft beer that has swept North America over the past thirty years has transformed the Ontario landscape, leaving over two hundred breweries, both great and humble, dotting the province. The diversity of craft beers we now enjoy is unprecedented in history and dazzling to behold. For the growing number of people who find their interest piqued, the sheer selection of brews can be intimidating. The Ontario Craft Beer Guide gives readers, whether bright-eyed beginners or aficionados of the highest calibre, a dependable field guide to the beers of Ontario. Noted experts Jordan St. John (Lost Breweries of Toronto) and Robin LeBlanc (The Thirsty Wench) tell the stories of some of Ontario's most notable breweries and provide expert ratings for nearly a thousand beers.

It’s closing time at the brewery. While the moon rises, the happy crew sings and dances as they wind down for the day. Join them in saying goodnight to the beer-making equipment, brew ingredients, and styles of suds. This humorous parody of a children's literature classic is a "pitcher book" for grown-ups. It's the perfect anytime story for beer lovers everywhere!

With nearly one hundred new breweries, this second edition of The Ontario Craft Beer Guide is an indispensable field guide to the province’s beer. The explosion of craft beer variety in North America has created a climate of amazing quality and bewildering options for beer drinkers. Choosing a drink in that landscape can be intimidating, but in The Ontario Craft Beer Guide beer lovers have a concise and expertly curated guide to over one thousand offerings, with simple tasting notes, ratings, and brewery biographies. Let noted experts Jordan St. John and Robin LeBlanc guide you to your next favourite beer, from your new favourite brewery.

Noted beer expert and writer Jordan St. John shows readers the rich history of Toronto's heritage breweries, many of which still exist today. Explore the once-prominent breweries of nineteenth-century Toronto. Brewers including William Helliwell, John Doel, Eugene O'Keefe, Lothar Reinhardt, Enoch Turner, and Joseph Bloore influenced the history of the city and the development of a dominant twentieth-century brewing industry in Ontario. Step inside the lost landmarks that first brought intoxicating brews to the masses in Toronto. Jordan St. John delves into the lost buildings, people and history behind Toronto's early breweries, with detailed historic images, stories both personal and industrial, and even reconstructed nineteenth-century brewing recipes.

Beer historians and writers Alan McLeod and Jordan St. John have tapped the cask of Ontario brewing to bring the complete story to light, from foam to dregs. Ontario boasts a potent mix of brewing traditions. Wherever Europeans explored, battled, and settled, beer was not far behind, which brought the simple magic of brewing to Ontario in the 1670s. Early Hudson's Bay Company traders brewed in Canada's Arctic, and Loyalist refugees brought the craft north in the 1780s. Early 1900s temperance activists drove the industry largely underground but couldn't dry up the quest to quench Ontarians' thirst. The heavy regulation that replaced prohibition centralized surviving breweries. Today, independent breweries are booming and writing their own chapters in the Ontario beer story.