Stubby● The bucket list
The Essential Toronto
The eight breweries that explain Toronto, lakefront to east-end lager hall.
8 stops
New to Toronto beer, or showing someone around? Start here. Eight breweries that between them tell the whole story: a lakeside pilsner with island views, the sour house everyone name-drops, a Czech lager temple in the east end, a hop pioneer out west. Spread it over a weekend - the point is the range, not the rush.
The stops
A suggested order — not a ranking.
One beer, four ingredients, pilsner-only since 2000 - poured inside the heritage Roundhouse in the shadow of the CN Tower, which makes it the most distinctly Toronto place to start. The patio runs year-round, so this stop works in February too.
The waterfront brewhouse on Queens Quay, from a brewery that has been at it in Toronto since 1986, and the longest patio in the city - Lake Ontario in front of you, the Islands across the water. Order the Boneshaker IPA, the flagship, and take a patio table before sunset; the lake light is the whole point.
The city's legendary sour house and the reason out-of-towners line up on Ossington - Jelly King, the dry-hopped sour that made the name, pours in rotating fruit editions, and the raspberry-blackberry is the one to start with. The bottle shop next door sells them to go, so buy before you settle in.
A modern, stylish taproom and retail store pouring the year-round core lineup, with a Mexican-inspired kitchen beside it. Order Ransack the Universe, the 6.8% west coast IPA, and take home whatever's new from the shop on your way out.
Toronto's baseball brewery, where every beer is named for ballpark lore: Eephus, the oatmeal brown ale that has been the house signature since the start, takes its name from a slow, arcing pitch. The Leslieville taproom has no kitchen but lets you bring your own food, and the mascot is a basset hound named Wrigley.
Brewmaster Luc Lafontaine, formerly of Dieu du Ciel!, imported Czech-built lager tanks from Pilsen to get his lagers right - so start with Bohème, the 4.5% pilsner. The east-end room is Japanese minimalism laid over a Bavarian beer hall, with an izakaya-style kitchen and a sake and highball list beside the beer.
An Etobicoke veteran since 1987, and Canuck Pale Ale is the Canadian benchmark - this is where you drink it at the source. Then ask what's pouring from the Project X experimental series; the one-offs that turn up in bottle shops across the GTA start here.
Scarborough's only craft brewery and the reason this list reaches the far east - the 'Sociable' German Pilsner anchors a range that runs to a Japanese rice lager and the 'Solace' hazy IPA. No kitchen: come for a flight in the big industrial taproom on Ellesmere, then take cans home from the retail store.
