First Look: The Beer Academy, a new craft brewery and beer education centre
By David Ort
Get schooled in beer (Images: David Ort)
When Six Pints Specialty Beer Co., Molson Coors’ craft beer division, took over the Duggan’s Brewery space at 75 Victoria Street, it was renamed The Beer Academy. It’s since become Six Pints’ corporate headquarters, an event space and, as of June 20, a tasting room and retail store.
Six Pints, named after the daily ration of beer for British soldiers in colonial Canada, is the banner under which Creemore Springs Brewery and B.C.’s Granville Island Brewing operate. Aaron Bilyea, Six Pints’ director of national marketing, describes the venue’s purpose as such: “We are going to create understanding through tasting, through sampling, through education.”
Bilyea sees the tasting room and retail space an opportunity to “create beer enthusiasts by talking to people one-on-one.” That conversation focuses on a portfolio of beers brewed on site — currently, an unfiltered kölsch-style blonde ale, a Belgian brown ale, an English-style IPA, a porter and a dunkelweiss — which can be sampled as a flight of three 4-oz tasters ($5.25) or in a regular 12-oz glass (also $5.25). Each beer comes with a card that meticulously details its malt, hop, yeast and alcohol content, as well as its IBU and colour.
The house brews are also available to take home in either “quart” bottles (they’re actually 625 ml) and growlers. The latter are filled using the only dedicated growler-filling rig in Ontario (at right), which purges the special bottles of oxygen and extends the refrigerated shelf life of the beer from less than a week to up to a month.
Though they’re not brewed here, Creemore products are also available for sale in their usual formats. All prices in the tasting room and retail store include tax and deposit.
Todd Fowler, The Beer Academy’s head brewmaster, introduces the porter by joking that “no chocolate or coffee were harmed in the brewing,” even though it shows definite notes of both. So far, he’s used the brewing equipment inherited from Duggan’s to brew what he wants, and he looks forward to pushing beyond the four traditional brewing ingredients with projects like a peach beer.
The event space makes up the rest of the main floor. It’s decorated with a glass display case that holds a collection of classic beer containers, a graphical timeline history and more glass cases behind the bar for the three principal brewer’s ingredients (water, hops and malted grain). Those visual aids and an apothecary-style drawer of spices are put to good use during beer edutainment events.
An extensive library on beer styles, home brewing and the history of beer is available for customers to browse.
With two kitchens on site — one equipped with a demonstration camera and flat-screen setup — events can range from winemaker’s dinners or corporate meetings to major award presentations (a month before officially opening, the Academy hosted this year’s Ontario Brewing Awards).
When a venue puts the word “Academy” into its name — think Bedford Academy or the Academy of Spherical Arts — it can be tough to interpret. In the case of The Beer Academy, it seems to point to a genuine devotion to educating customers about beer.
The Beer Academy, 75 Victoria St., 416-366-1786
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