Stubby● Style guide
Sour & Wild Ales
Five rooms where the funk is real: barrels, grape ales, cult sours.
5 stops
Sour and wild is the hardest beer to fake. It takes time, a house culture, and a brewer happy to let the wild yeast do the work. These five carry it honestly: dry-hopped fruited sours, grape-forward wild ales, goses and farmhouse ales - from a dedicated wild-ale house on Ossington to a gose program on Queen East. Drink what's actually pouring, ask what's rare, and take the flight over the pint.
The stops
A suggested order — not a ranking.
Start on Ossington at the city's wild-ale specialist - the one room where the whole spectrum is on the board. Jelly King, the dry-hopped fruited sour, runs through a dozen catalogued fruit variants, so what's pouring shifts week to week; the Intermodal wild ales and Vines Chambourcin are the grape-and-mixed-fermentation end of the same program. There's a bottle shop if the rare thing only comes in cans.
The easy-going stop, not the pilgrimage: a former auto shop on Dundas West with a wide board and a kitchen. The sour side is a single beer, but it's a real one - Solstice, a 5.5% Berliner Weisse, tart wheat rather than barrel funk. Order it first, before Clyde (an 8.2% double IPA) takes the afternoon over.
Geary Ave, family-founded, and the sour program here is small and playful rather than reverent - nothing barrel-aged in the catalogue. Order Autopop - Shirley Temple, the fruited sour; if the TDWDTG series is on, the Passion Of The Spice coconut pastry sour is the heavier, sweeter take. Everything else leans hazy and hoppy, so come for the sour and stay for the IPAs.
Bloor West, and the sit-down stop of the five: Burdock is a brewery, restaurant, and music hall in one building, specializing in wild-fermented and farmhouse ales with a natural wine list running alongside. Cherry B is the pick, a fruited sour; the Kini line and Salt Lick keep the tart end stocked, and Tuesday is the saison if you want the farmhouse side of the house.
The east-end counterweight, on Queen East in Riverside - where the sour side is a gose program: Dancing Monkey, Peach Emoji, Penelope Pineapple, plus a grisette and a rack of saisons. Order the Shoreline Dry Hopped Sour, then work the goses into a flight. It's the easiest of the five to sit at for an hour, dog and all.
