Old Toronto Beer Tour

Throughout my entire cross country adventure, I've kind of just showed up at breweries and demanded they wet my whistle! In Toronto, however, I actually went on an organized beer tour..... It was seven hours long and it was awesome!
It's called the Old Toronto Beer Tour beerloverstour.com and it's hosted by Oliver Dawson, a former employee of Upper Canada Brewing Co as well as actor and opera singer. After Sleeman's took the company over in 1998, however, he left and started doing beer tours, first in Europe and then in Toronto. And we should all be very thankful for that!

The group of beer lovers meet up at Steam Whistle Brewing bright and early at 11am for lunch and for the only actual brewery tour. It's awesome because you get to have tasty sandwiches and drink beer with other people who also love beer.... and most likely sandwiches.

As far as Steam Whistle Pilsner goes..... it's o.k. It's a triple filtered Czech style pilsner, which is refreshing and delicious on a hot day when all you want is some delicious fizzy lager that tastes like a nice pilsner. It's got a distinct yet very smooth  noble hops character, which doesn't linger... so you are chungging it down before you know it! Good party beer in my opinion.

Also, fun fact! On each bottle of Steam Whislte there is the inscription 3fg, which stands for 3 fired guys. That was supposedly the original name for the brewery when it started in 1998 because the three guys that started the brewery were fired from Upper Canada Brewing Co. after it was bought out by Sleeman's.... how bout that!?

At about one o'clock, if I remember correctly, we board a yellow school bus and head on to the next brewery, Amsterdam Brewery. Before that, however, we are taken to the Canada Malting Silos, which is a Toronto Heritage site, and given a brief history of the immigrants who came to Toronto and recreated the beer cultures from their homelands.

Back to the beer at Amsterdam: that's where the real tastings start to happen and when the writing in my notebook starts to get a little harder to read.....

At Amsterdam we tasted a lot of different beers (lagers, IPA's, etc) but the most interesting was the Raspberry Wheat Ale. It's interesting because it sort of tastes like a sour lambic type beer (that's a blended Belgian style that's fermented with wild yeast). They use real raspberries in the recipe, not syrup, so you get a real raspberry smack on the nose and the it continues to punch you in the throat with tarty tarty goodness!

Once back on the bus we were given another sandwich, and yeah, you want it!

After that we were taken to the Cork Town district of Toronto to look at the outside of the historic Dominion Brewery as well as take a tour around the neighbourhood (many brewery workers back in the day would have lived in the area). And of course, after this little walk we're treated to another sample of beer at the Dominion on Queen bar.

The tour finishes up at Mill St. Brewery (unless you pay extra for the beer dinner at Granite Brewery), where of course a few more samples are to be had.....

Thank goodness I had my friend Mike to pick me up! So much beer! (insert Homer Simpson drool noise)

Next up: La Belle Province! Montreal, Quebec....