Indie Alehouse was an early mover on the Ontario scene and remains one of Toronto’s best brewpubs today. You can expect to see more of them outside of Toronto as they just opened a small production brewery. This beauty drinks like a summer fruit salad. Ribbons of strawberry, honeydew melon and orange lead to a racy, pine-like bitterness sailing on a creamy body.
A treasure of a beer, Vitus has won many medals, including the World’s Best Beer in the 2011 World Beer Awards. This single bock beer drinks is a sparkling classic with a warming 7.7 percent ABV classic. Flavours of chocolate and rye bread mixed with a fruity hefeweizen yeast strain that presents dried apricot, clove and banana notes. Try it with classic German fare like sausages and mashed potatoes, with apple sauce.
Toronto’s Left Field Brewery’s Squeeze Play series make fruited kettle sours. A zingy kefir-like tang mixes with juicy pomegranate seeds in an easy-drinker refresher that will keep those “last days of summer” vibes going strong.
Altbiers have terroir — it is hard to replicate the flavour without tasting one made in a Düsseldorf altbier brauerei. These amber-hued lagers are perfectly balanced, crisp German classics that deserve veneration. When it comes to this tightly defined beer style, Uerige is an outlier, beloved for its higher hop bitterness. It is rare to find a Düsseldorf example in Canada, so hunt down this Altbier at the LCBO in Ontario this fall.
This beer is all about the haze, pouring a juicy fluorescent orange with a mousse- and latte-like foam. The sip starts off with papaya and guava moving to pineapple and a seedy passion fruit centre. A low but persistent orange-rind bitterness balances the sip. This hazy brew is tough to find — you can only buy it at some wine and beer stores in Illinois — but it is worth the hunt as it won gold at the 2018 Great American Beer Festival for Hazy, Juicy IPAs.
This Rio de Janerio brewery hopped to Canada, landing in Toronto before moving to their permanent home in Montreal. Helmed by talented brewer, Patricia Rios, their Hazy drinks like a glorious tropical fruit bomb. Peaches and fresh mango mark the nose, cotton candy washes over the palate, drying out in the finish. Try this full, creamy New England style IPA with Mexican, Thai or a fresh bowl loaded with fresh herbs and all the veggies.
This is a beer to close your cottage with. Sip it under the last of the summer sun on your deck in September. Its deep caramel and biscuit notes with subtle cinnamon, ginger and allspice, beckon the beginning of a new season.