Stubby● Style guide
The Toronto Haze Report
Six taprooms doing hazy and juicy IPA right, Geary Avenue to Scarborough.
6 stops
Hazy, juicy IPA doesn't travel well - it's best days-fresh, on tap, in the room that poured it. So here's the city-wide map of who's doing it right, Geary Avenue out to Scarborough: the most-chased haze house on Geary, the open-source brewery that publishes its recipes, the Ossington OG that Toronto Life still cites for hops, a quiet Riverside brewpub, a baseball brewery reviewers rank with the best, and Scarborough's LCBO-flagship crowd-pleaser. Hand-picked, no algorithm - drink them fresh.
The stops
A suggested order — not a ranking.
Geary Avenue's most-chased haze house, built by brothers Dustin and Brayden Jones in a converted auto body shop that's been theirs since 2015. Shumei is the flagship - mango and stone fruit - and the hazy bench runs deep behind it: SKY God, Hellflower and Cunning of Hand 15 all pour on a given day. Start with the Shumei, then work the board.
One block over on Wallace, Halo made its name on haze - Canada's self-described open-source brewery, publishing its full recipes, with the New England style (its New Wave IPA) at the core of what founders Eric Portelance and Callum Hay do. The DIY brewhouse is visible right behind the bar. The 6.5% Mantra is the hazy IPA pouring now - order it.
The Ossington OG - one of the first names in Toronto's craft boom back in 2012 and a Top-100 world brewer, with a hop program Toronto Life still singles out through beers like the juicy Jutsu pale and the New England-style Roman Candle. The hazy to order off the board is Ratclops. Buy any cans fresh from the bottle shop before you settle into the beer garden.
The Riverside brewpub, opened in 2017 by chef-and-brewer couple Tara and Dave Lee, brewing on-site under the same roof as the kitchen at 700 Queen East. Its hazy program is quieter than the hop houses west of here but real - the flagship, 'yeah,' pours stone fruit and pine off Mosaic, El Dorado, Cashmere and Galaxy. Order it, with Far Side of the World and the sessionable Slack Tide backing it up.
The east-end baseball brewery, built in 2013 by Mark and Mandie Murphy, and a name reviewers routinely rank next to Bellwoods and Burdock - one roundup calls it arguably the best IPA in the city. The 6.5% Squeeze Play is the hazy pour here. The larger Liberty Village taproom, in a converted century-old billiard-table factory, is the other place to catch it.
The far-east anchor, and the reason this list runs all the way out to Scarborough - Common Good is the borough's only craft brewery, a big airy industrial room founded in 2016 by Jamie Mistry and Scott White. Solace is its calling card: an LCBO-listed hazy IPA built for wide reach - floral and citrus up front, stone fruit and pineapple behind - more crowd-pleaser than cult chase, and none the worse for it. End the report here.
