Best Ontario Brewery?

My tops are Bellwoods, Great Lakes and Indie Alehouse. Bellwoods gets an extra + for the fact their website is great at letting you what they have in stock on a daily basis! I wish every brewery made the effort to do this once a day.

There are a few breweries I'll try anything from because i like a lot of what I have tried: Cameron's, Silversmith, 5 Paddles, Nickel Brook, Collective Arts.

There are a few breweries that I feel as though I should like more than I do, but usually leave me thinking "that's not bad" at best: Flying Monkeys, Junction, Oast House

 

In line with this thread/question I saw that the Golden Tap Awards of 2014 (http://goldentap.com/) are on at the moment!

 

i think calling their beer mediocre is pretty harsh. their saison and beire de garde are both very nice and they have a good rotation of seasonals that i have found to be good to great (the sochi stout was outstanding). but i agree their prices are a joke and they are dead to me as a brewery.

i used to get growler fills from them whenever i wanted to bring a taste of niagara to my friends in other cities, but they must have upped their prices this summer because i paid $20 for a refill a month or so ago when they had the red ipa. that was outrageous. and $12 for a 750 saison is about 3-4 too high when saison dupont is available and even the nicklebrook saison was on par for $9. i steer all people away from these guys now as i think they don't really care about craft beer and are more interested in trying to get one and done wine country tourists to buy their beer at inflated prices.

sorry for the rant, i just hate that one my local breweries is someone that i can't support.

 

Amen!!!
Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

This is my opinion as well. In that order.

 

I've tried a few of their beers and have been very underwhelmed.

 

Innocente in Waterloo are doing great things. Conscience is worthy of much more attention.

 

Bellwoods best team consistency major league. Their beers are always in demand from my out-of-town traders.
GL-Lackey best brewer in Ontario. GL best hoppy beers in Canada.
Indie occasionally slugs one out.
new guys - Old Flame for sessionable traditional styles; Barnstormer has had some good beers, worth a stop at the pub.

 

I was not blown away by them when I visited.
Very brand and marketing focused, store has a lot of space dedicated to overpriced branded junk.


Beers were good enough, but the heavy hop profile on conscience was out of balance to me, it greatly benefitted the nose but the palate payed the price.

 

Lake of Bays Spark House is very well rounded and also Whitewater Brewing in Foresters Falls has their Farmers Daughter Pale Ale in Growlers.

 

IMO Muskoka and great lakes are the best that I've had, Cameron's never disappoints either. I've generally found that other than a few exceptions like trafalgar ales and meads, I find it hard to go wrong with most brewers.

 

I would have to place my first place bet with Bellwood's. Flying Monkeys and Better Bitters Brewing Co are both great as well but not on the same level as Bellwood's.

 

We live nearby and desperately want to support them, but Galaxy would never be my first hop choice.

Bellwoods, Great Lakes and Sawdust City have some stunning regular beers plus incredible one-offs. Muskoka and Flying Monkeys have decent year-round beers that are often my first choice at non-beer bars or the (infamous) Beer Store.

 

If you know the owners/brewers you would know that they are not really brand or market focused. They're merely playing the promotion game but their real passion is producing the best damn beer they can that they themselves would want to drink. As a business they obviously need to survive and thrive but they know their local market very well and therefore know from feedback that the more characterful/intense beers at this stage have limited appeal so they have to ease their customers into that more challenging territory. I'm pretty sure the intensity of Conscience is just the tip of the iceberg.

And FWIW, Conscience is one of the most intense massively structured straight IPAs anywhere and its very well put together and pretty balanced for being this way. Problem is that after all this time Ontarians still seem to be pretty hop shy and not overly knowledgeable about what constitutes great beer.

 

I think this is very ignorant statement and I take offence to this comment, as I'm sure other Ontario BA's will as well.

I don't feel it's correct to attack an entire craft beer community because you disagree with someone's opinions of a beer or brewery. However, this is obviously your MO as if I'm correct in another thread you also made broad sweeping statements about the state of the Ontario craft beer industry as being "behind the international craft beer standards" . You based that snap judgement on a handful of random, obviously unresearched grab bag of beers you picked up at an LCBO on vacation.

Ontario is easily making some of the best hop forward beers in the country and that can be backed up by the awards (the GLB IPA sweep comes to mind), and the sell out demand. Where does conscience fall in that line... for me at least not at the top. As this is meant to be a discussion of the best beer in Ontario I'm entitled to that statement, especially having tasted and enjoyed many beers from all the other above mentioned breweries.

I was speaking to the experience I had at the brewery and the beers I tried on tap that day, and I stand by my comments. If you don't agree it would be simple to just say so, not start an unprovoked attack on a province and their entire craft beer industry.

 

1. Bellwoods
2. Amsterdam's one offs. The rest of their stuff can disappear
3. Great Lakes
4. Nickelbrook

Forked River may end up shooting up that list if they keep things up.