E-Malt.com News article: Canada, ON: Mill Street Brewery to open in Ottawa in November

Renovations appear to be going nicely, and more or less on schedule, as Mill Street Brewery plans to open its first brewpub outside Toronto in mid- to late-November, Ottawa Citizen reported on September, 16.

“We’re hoping to open by the end of November,” brewmaster Joel Manning says.

“The brewery should be commissioned by the second week in October,” Joel says. ”The equipment will arrive in about two weeks to set up, so that gives us about a month to start brewing before the pub opens.”

Equipment will include a 1,000-litre brewing kettle, a 1,000-litre lauter tun (that separates sweet wort from spent grain), six fermenting and aging tanks and a 1,000-litre bright beer tank from which brewmasters will fill 1.8-litre bottles, called growlers, as well as 30- and 50-litre kegs.

Growlers will be for sale at its retail store on premises, while kegged draft will be available on tap at other licensed establishments in the Ottawa area.

The Mill Street Brewery, which makes a dozen different craft beers, sells various labels at the Beer Store and LCBO in every province except Quebec (which it is working on). It opened in December 2002 in an original tankhouse in the historic 1870 Gooderham & Worts Distillery complex now called the Distillery District in Toronto. The main Toronto brewery was relocated to Scarborough in 2006, the same year it renovated the original Mill Street location and turned it into the popular Mill Street Brewpub.

Joel has been brewmaster at Mill Street since 2005; before that, he was at Amsterdam Brewing Co. in Toronto for 18 years. He’s also past president (2004) of the Master Brewers Association of Canada.

Joel says the emphasis here will be very much on a local clientele. “We’ll have two full-time brewers here in Ottawa. One is our head brewer from the Toronto brewpub, Adam Raider, who we’re relocating. And we’re looking for a second person to join him.”

“We’ll be brewing probably six brews here, either three or four permanent and two seasonals on rotating taps so that over the course of a year we’ll offer a dozen or 15 beers - maybe as many as 20 - all brewed here in Ottawa. We’ll have 12 to 14 on tap, six brought in from Toronto and six brewed in Ottawa.”

“The ones we brew here will only be available in Ottawa, either at the brewpub or to take home from our on-site store. And we’ll also sell draft in kegs to licensed premises in Ottawa.”

Joel says Mill Street offers a “new style” for Ottawa that celebrates brewing history in the national capital region.

“Craft-brewed beer is very human scale - hand-made stuff that’s meant to be consumed by a local audience. Beer is best consumed fresh and it’s important to us to have a connection with our local market.”

The brewery is already involved in the Ottawa region in partnership and participating in such events as Cisco Bluesfest, the Dragon Boat Festival, Capital Hoedown and Bon Appetit.

“Craft brewing is not just a trendy thing,” Joel says. “It’s a connection back to the way things were in the 1800s when there were literally hundreds of brewers across Ontario, many from immigrants making specialty beers they were used to in the old country.”

“So everything we do as craft brewers has been largely done before. It really is a throwback to the way beer was traditionally done in this country, and that’s the appeal.”

“Part of that is brewing on a small scale for our local community. And it’s also getting to know your brewer, sitting down and having a beer with him or going on a tour of the brewery.”

Small wonder that craft beer is becoming more popular each year. In Ontario, sales of Ontario Craft Brewers’ products, with more than 25 brewery members, soared during the LCBO’s annual summer beer promotion, increasing 36-per-cent over the same period in 2010. In fact, Ontario craft beer sales outpaced total LCBO beer sales in the same period by 5.7 per cent.

“Gone are the days when people drank only one beer and you were known by your favourite brand,” Joel says.

“Today, people don’t just buy Beau’s Lug Tread or Mill Street Tankhouse, they’re trying dozens of beers depending on their mood, the season, what you’re having for dinner and who’s coming over. As a craft brewer, what you want is a place on a person’s rotation of beers.”

Mill Street Brewpub plans to make some cask-conditioned beers, a unique and expensive process where beer is fermented in casks with a finishing hops to develop a softer and more natural level of carbonation. Cask-conditioned beers are typically served at cellar temperature, not freezing cold.


21 September, 2011