Toronto’s Friendly Neighbourhood Brewery
Posted by Megan Jamieson in beer, beverages on November 1, 2007 at 7:39 am
The Amsterdam Brewery
21 Bathurst Street
416-504-1040
When a beer is good enough to be loved the world over, the fame of the city where it originated is often boosted. Dublin benefits greatly from the popularity of Guinness, the Heineken brewery is a major tourist attract in Amsterdam, the small town of Pilzen was put on the map by its celebrated Pilsner Urquell beer, and the breweries of Pabst, Schlitz, Miller, Blatz are widely accredited for making Milwaukee famous.
While Toronto doesn’t have a reputation as a great brewing city, it does have a small craft brewery that’s making its mark. The Amsterdam Brewery was founded on John Street in 1986 as the first brew-pub in Toronto. It quickly expanded in 1988, moving to a larger location on King Street West. In 2005 it expanded yet again into their new home at 21 Bathurst Street, across from Fort York National Historic Site. The new location is a beautiful historic building, which can be explored during a pre-arranged tour. These are offered for $6 per person ($8 with a souvenir glass) and include 8 beer samples.
There is a wide variety of beer available to sample on the tour, pick-up at the brewery retail store, or order at many Toronto pubs and restaurants. The flagship lager is a crisp and clean golden-coloured beer with a nice hoppy taste called Natural Blonde, also available as a light beer. They have a more complex and nutty Dutch Amber, a British-style nut-brown ale, a Belgian-style Framboise, a ‘Hellsbock’ light-coloured but strong-tasting lager called Avalanche, and a ruby-brown Irish Stout. They also carry a few different seasonal beers, such as the currently available Octoberfest; a Bavarian beachwood-smoked barley lager.
In addition to the great variety and quality of beer, there are two key factors that are sure to contribute to the continuation of The Amsterdam Brewery as Toronto’s friendly neighbourhood brewery. First, and undeniably, are the hours. The brewery’s retail store is open from 11am to 11pm Monday to Saturday, and 11am to 6pm on Sunday. This is a huge convenience for downtown Toronto beer drinkers that aren’t able to work their schedules around the hours of The Beer Store and LCBO.
The second undeniable factor to consider is the Brewery’s location. 21 Bathurst Street is in the centre of major urban growth in the City of Toronto. Not only is it surrounded by the plethora of condo developments on Queen’s Quay, King Street West, and the up-and coming expansion of condos west of Concord City Place between lower Spadina and lower Bathurst, but it is also situated immediately next to the historic art deco building once occupied by the Daily Food Bank building and slated to become a Loblaw’s Superstore.
The Amsterdam Brewery has been extremely smart in its business development, strategically positioning itself for success. The future looks bright for this unique craft-brewery and Torontonians should feel confident that The Amsterdam Brewery will continue to contribute its special flavour to our City’s exciting food and drink culture. Whether or not it puts Toronto in the likes of world-class brewing cities has yet to be seen.
Megan’s obsession with food continues on her blog, Megan the Vegan.
November 1st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
The quality of Amsterdam Brewing’s beers has been going downhill in the past couple years. They’re no longer part of the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, their membership ceased about two years ago I think.
Great Lakes located off the Queensway in South Etobicoke has been making far more interesting and flavourful beers in the past year (e.g. 666 Devil’s Pale Ale, Winter Ale, and Pumpkin Ale). Their brewing excellence won them a special Bar Towel Award at the last ceremony hosted at Beer Bistro in August.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:05 pm
TC:
Amsterdam’s departure from the OCB is actually fairly recent. I don’t remember the exact date, but they were a member at least as late as last Christmas, as their Tilted Kilt Ale was being promoted as in an OCB holiday beer campaign.
It’s also worth noting that OCB membership is not based on any sort of “quality” factors, outside of the ingredients having to be all natural (no extracts, no preservatives, etc.). If the “quality” of the finished product was taken into account, I could come up with a list of several members that would likely get the boot.
Agreed with you on Great Lakes, though. They’re doing some fantastic stuff.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Hmmm, this is a craft brewery brewery producing some, at best, mediocre stuff. I was surprised to see them featured here. To me they really do represent the Ontario beer scene (or what it is trying to break away from): safe, middle of the road, bland beers. Amsterdam does make a few seasonals, all credit to them, but nothing I have ever tried from them is even approaching above average (the framboise might be an exception, it has been a while since I have had that one). I tend to think places/foods/beverages/people featured here tend to be above average, or perhaps unique and interesting.
But all power to them - they have great hours in a spiffy new location that will one day find itself in the middle of a booming little condo ‘hood (but not right now - the 21 Bathurst street area is the middle of a car infested construction zone at the moment - I was surprised how pedestrian unfriendly that area is on a recent walk by there - trying to cross Bathurst/Lakeshore made me fear for my life!). And they sell it cheap in larger cases, which tells me right away what market they are after (and maybe a little something about the quality of the ingredients they use? I don’t know, just an impression).
I’d like to say there are a lot of other Toronto breweries you could feature here instead but sadly there is not (although Mill St is a great example of how to expand while maintaining very high quality products - or making great beer to begin with in the first place). Great Lakes, with their recent experimentation, is a great example though.
But I’ll agree with Greg’s point: OCB membership is not an indication of the quality of beer the brewers offer - there are many great brewers no longer a part of this organization for various reasons. I think when the OCB started, it was posted (I can’t recall where) that over half of the products offered from the various brewers that made up the OCB where Pale Lagers. Enough said.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Jeff,
I’m curious about this part of your comment…
I was surprised to see them featured here.
Our tagline is “Everything to do with Food in Toronto”, so just as I defended my post about food at the CNE from the food snobs who dissed it because they felt it wasn’t high-end enough, I’m going to defend Megan’s right to cover Amsterdam. Beer geeks may not love the place, but they are based in Toronto AND their products are still a far sight better than a lot of the mainstream stuff out there.
I can’t vouch for the quality of Amsterdam’s products because they don’t create many beers in the style I prefer, but I won’t refuse an article about them just because some folks don’t like their products. No doubt we can find a person for every place we’ve covered who would have something critical to say - if we chose our content in that way, the site wouldn’t/couldn’t exist.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Sheryl,
The reason for my comment is a) because the article felt like an advertising piece for Amsterdam. Trying to sell it as “Toronto’s Neighbourhood Brewery” felt far-fetched at best and insulting to my intelligence at worst; and b) because of my comment in that same paragraph “I tend to think places/foods/beverages/people featured here tend to be above average, or perhaps unique and interesting”. I love the site and read it because of that - I just didn’t see how something as run of the mill and average as Amsterdam warranted this sort of glowing write up. But fair enough - include everything and I’ll just stick my comments in here when I don’t agree :)
One final point re your comment :”Beer geeks may not love the place, but they are based in Toronto AND their products are still a far sight better than a lot of the mainstream stuff out there”
I disagree with this strongly - their stuff is the token micro on tap at the bar below my condo and I can assure it is far worse than Rickard’s Gold, Creemore, or even Stella. Propping something mediocre (at best) up just because it is small and local drives me crazy and it is exactly the sort of “settle for us” attitude that some Ontario brewers have - it hurts the Ontario brewing industry in a big way. But your absolutely right, that is just my opinion and in no way am I trying to dictate what you want to publish. Like I said, publish away, I’ll use this little space to chat when I disagree.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:51 pm
That should read “Rickards White” - I may even give some Amsterdam products and begrudging thumbs up over the long defunct Rickards Gold. *shudder*