Bellwoods Brewery

I think it’s safe to say that community plays a big role in the success and enjoyment of the craft beer industry. Here at Bellwoods we brew some pretty experimental and flavourful beers, and we feel lucky to be supported by so many craft beer enthusiasts who receive our ideas with open arms.

So when we were approached by Toronto Beer Week last year to see if we’d like to participate in a homebrew challenge, we thought, why not? The winner would come to our brewery to brew their very own recipe, and see it on the big screen! As a wise man once said, it takes a village to brew a beer, er - drink a beer? Well, whatever, the village of Toronto will get a very delicious beer to drink.

As of Saturday May 18th we’ll be tapping the Bellwoods Samurai Saison brewed by David Thompson, the winner of the 2012 TBW Homebrew Competition. Dry-hopped with Sorachi Ace and Nelson Sauvin hops, this 6.4% sessionable Belgian style beer is a perfect refreshing brew to sip on the patio. Well-balanced with a pleasing dry finish, this Saison has an incredibly distinct herbaceous nose and fruity palate from the addition of those Japanese and New Zealand hops. Subtle notes of lime and coconut reveal themselves in the aftertaste. 

We brewed a 7 hectolitre batch, and while this is definitely bigger than any homebrew quantity, it definitely won’t last long.

We’ll be open all (long) weekend long, for lunch as well as dinner, starting from 2pm each day (and noon in the retail store). Keep in mind that the Samurai Saison is only available on draft!

Cheers to David and to a great long weekend!

Hello Toronto! I hope you didn’t miss us too painfully. We’re back from our very brief but very fun trip to Victoria for the Canadian Brewing Awards and getting down to brewsness (see what I did there?) as usual. And if you’re sitting at your desk wondering why it took me until Thursday to blog about it, instead of Monday like everyone else, I say wonder not. You don’t want to know the truth (which is that I stayed a couple extra days in Vancouver eating raw fish, staring at the sunny mountain tops, and relaxing. Please send all hate mail to wazzup@vacay.com).

But on to the real matter at hand, the reason we flew across the country and put all brewery-related work on hold for the first time ever: Scooters.

We came, we saw, we scooted. (If we were to shoot a made for TV movie about our recent escapades in Victoria this past weekend it would definitely bear this stoic title).

Weaving their way (politely) through lanes of traffic and into the hearts if viewers everywhere, 5 brewers band together to make the ultimate bad-ass gang: The Hellwoodies.

With determination fermenting in their brains the gang cruise along the Vancouver island coastline at dangerously legal speeds. Elderly residents look on with blurred focus, cursing their lack of resolve to finally update their God damn prescriptions. Children mistake their menacing hogs for toys, locals roll their eyes, but haters won’t get this gang down!

(In this photo we see Luke and John being really badass, stopping to appreciate nature and take a picture of a baby deer)

It’s a tale of self-discovery and perseverance - but ultimately how five people learn that scootering is just metaphor for life, which is just a metaphor for brewing…which is a metaphor for life.

Coming out the summer of 2013, it’s the feel decent-ish movie of the year you won’t wanna miss!

Oh also, we one an award! Actually four of them, which we’re pretty happy about considering we’re new kids on the block. Blitzen took a gold in the Belgian Strong category, Hellwoods our beloved stout took home a silver, and both the Lost River Baltic Porter and Wizard Wolf Dry-Hopped Session Ale earned a bronze. All in all we placed in some pretty competitive categories and had a chance to try lots of the winning brews. A big thank you goes out to everyone who worked so hard to make the awards a success and also congratulations to Great Lakes Brewery who took home the award for best brewery of the year (no big deal)!!!

Cheers to even more successes in 2014, great Ontario beer, and of course, the almighty scooter!

As many of you know, this past Saturday we celebrated our one year anniversary with Bring Out Your Dead (cognac barrel aged imperial stout), the first of two exclusive beer releases to commemorate the event. We were excited to feature such a labour intensive beer on draft, but we wanted to let everyone know that in addition to the delicious beer offerings in the brewpub, we’ve made some big changes to the food.

For the past few months we’ve been renovating big time — not just adding more fermenters, but also the makings of a commercial kitchen. We were able to get by on a limited menu of meats and cheeses for the first while, working with a teeny tiny residential stove, but our (selfish) appetites for fried chicken and the desire to provide more options for diners won out. We caved in the best way possible, and after much preparation and very difficult tasting meetings, we’ve rolled out an exciting new food menu.

Because technology isn’t quite at the point of scratch ‘n sniff for the computer screen, I’m gonna provide for you thousands of ‘words’ with these tantalizing pictures. Take a seat, get a bowl of popcorn, and hunker down for a special screening of Bellwoods Kitchen: Love In The Time Of Fried Things.

Whether it’s the pork belly with clams, the panko crusted coconut tofu, or a simple bowl of fries with rosemary, thyme, and shredded toscano cheese, theses dishes are delicious and full of integrity. We’ve taken the time to source produce from small farm collectives throughout the Kawarthas, meat from Sanagan’s, and seafood from Hooked. We’re so passionate about craft beer, and it only makes sense that we want the food we serve to be all about that same level of quality. Rest assured, these chickens were roaming free and going to bars as they pleased before ending up on your plate. 

So if you get home from work tonight and you don’t feel like cooking, I know a place that’ll set you up. Or, if you’re at work right now looking at these pictures and thinking they look delicious, you can blow off your kitchen and we won’t say a word. Your secret’s safe with us.

Click HERE to see today’s menu.

Often times when birthdays roll around you sort of wish they didn’t, hoping instead that you could just go back to a time when they meant eating 4 pieces of cake (guilt-free) and then passing out on your tricycle. 

Fortunately for us, this Saturday we only turn a year old, and at this age we don’t need to buy orthotics or expensive wrinkle cream. And because we’re feeling sentimental, we decided to brew not 1, but 2 anniversary beers! Masochistic, right? The first is “Bring Out Your Dead”, an Imperial stout that was aged in cognac barrels for 3 months, weighing in at 10% ABV. The second is “Motley Cru” (11%), a sour blend of Tripel aged for a year in red wine barrels, and Quad aged for 3 months in port barrels. 

The stout will be available on draft this Saturday, but the Motley Cru was primed and bottle conditioned with Champagne yeast, so you’ll need to wait another month before we release it in bottles. Let it be known, if any poor soul shall ask for Motley Cru this Saturday, it’s off with their heads! 

In addition to the stout (which will be released in bottles as early as next week) we’ll also have a festive birthday cake — but considering my appetite for all that is sickeningly sweet, I can’t guarantee it’ll last for too long. 

And we should mention our industrial kitchen is finally finished (can I get a what what?), which means that on the anniversary of our opening, we’ll be launching our new and improved menu with lots of tasty options for dinner. Specifics will come later in the week, with pictures to boot, but in terms of the sorts of dishes you can expect in your future, think pork belly and clams, coconut tofu in galangal broth, fried chicken, braised short ribs and deep fried pickles. These pickles, I’m telling you, they’re life changing. 

So get out of the house, embrace the supposed arrival of spring, and on Saturday (April 6th) we hope to see those of you who’ve enjoyed Bellwoods beer over the past year, and perhaps some new faces too. Come by for our exclusive cognac barrel-aged stout and some cake! 

Just when I felt ready to throw my bike into a slush filled ditch and admit defeat to mother nature (why must you torture us with more snow?!) the sun reared its beautiful lioness mane and showed us all that the icy death-grip of winter will soon be a thing of the past. Moods are looking up, the kitchen relocation is almost complete, and as I type this Luke is sprawled out on a beach somewhere in Miami for a much needed vacation where he will surely be keeping up with the Kardashians. Either that, or sitting beside the water and drinking blue slushie cocktails with umbrella garnishes poking out the top. 

I suppose spring is symbolic of growth and change, and in keeping with this poetic sentiment, I want to tell you about a pretty exciting change here at the brewery. No, we’re not going to start serving wine, and no, even though at 7am we curse our lack of foresight, we did not buy a fancy espresso machine. The changes I’m referring to have to do with beer (go figure), and more specifically, how that beer looks. 

Sure, our classic Bellwoods label is simple and sufficient, but if there’s anything I’ve learned about plastic surgery, it’s that a facelift always looks better. Okay, that’s a total lie, but trust me, these NEW LABELS we’re introducing are the most awesome thing ever!!! So awesome that my annoying penchant for exclamation points is getting out of hand! Seriously!

No. Seriously. Check these puppies out. Designed by the fantastic brotherly duo at Doublenaut, our new labels say a little more about the unique personality of each brew. In total, they’ll be designing about 15 labels for us, so expect to see new releases as the summer approaches. And we should mention that the lovely witchshark illustration that has become something of an unofficial logo around here was actually drawn by Kate-Wakely Mulroney, and incorporated into the Doublenaut design. To check out more of Kate’s illustrations, you can visit her blog Labouring Beasts.

Of course, some beers will still have the classic label, but we’re trying our best to get something customized for our most popular releases. And if you’re sitting there wondering what the hell “Wizard Wolf” is, well, it’s our favourite version of the Common Session ale that, as of yet, hasn’t been released.

As for a timeline, the Witchshark will be our first release, making its debut in the retail store within the next week. The Roman Candle and Wizard Wolf will follow, with Hellwoods and Motley Crü (our much-anticipated anniversary beer) hot on their tail.

We’ll be seeing you soon in the bottle shop* where you can collect them all!

*[Our Easter hours are a bit modified. Remember the retail store will be closed Good Friday, open Saturday, and closed again on Sunday]

With the arrival of the new bottler, the acquisition of some white wine barrels from the Niagara region, and the impending opening of our new kitchen, things have been business as usual around these parts — which is to say, busy. So when we were approached by the lovely folks from “Beer For Boobs” about perhaps doing a special beer for the annual breast cancer fundraiser, we had to rearrange our brew schedule a bit to squeeze in a new recipe. 

The event supports a great cause, but it also encourages women in the industry, and considering we have our very own female brewer (me) in house at Bellwoods, it was a no brainer to jump on board. We also have an almost exclusively female front of house team serving up the beer (and lugging kegs!) each and every night. Big thanks to Tamara Wise, one of our floor supervisors, for helping brew this tasty batch!

I would love to tell you that because it’s 2013 (2013! That’s practically the future!) everyone and their dog understands that Hey! Women do stuff! Interesting stuff! Creative stuff! Lots of stuff! But alas, there are still lots of sexist attitudes floating around out there in the atmosphere. What a bummer. The truth is it’s very much a male dominated industry still, but times are changing and it’s great to see growing numbers of females making a living off of beer. And if the trends in the brewpub are any indication, women are not afraid of flavourful beer. 

The beer I decided to brew is interesting and flavourful, but not an overcompensation. Though I love imperial stouts and double IPAs, I decided that I wanted to do something a little more sessionable. Brewed with a good percentage of wheat malt, an aromatic new (to us) hop variety from New Zealand called Kohatu, and the addition of zest and juice from three cases of blood oranges, the resulting beer is refreshing and hoppy. It’s also the palest pink colour, which was my way of saying, “Yeah, so what, I’m a girl. Deal with it.”

But my real intention with this beer was not to prove anything, it’s simply to put out into the universe a beverage that anyone and everyone could enjoy. Having too many preconceived notions about the people you meet or the drinks you order will not a happy person make. Chill out, order a pink beer, and enjoy the emancipation from being an uptight wuss-ass. 

This is a beer for those with boobs and those without. A beer that harbours no judgement.

Because it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, right?

[The blood orange beer (yet to be named…) will be released in the brewpub in and around March. 1st, with two extra special kegs on reserve for the Beer For Boobs event at The Rhino (Toronto) on Sunday April 7th and The Casbah (Hamilton) on Sunday April 14th.]

We made it through January folks! We’re past The Most Depressing Day Of The Year and we can graciously manoeuvre our way through Febrewary with the collective knowledge that warm weather and late night bike rides where your snot doesn’t freeze are definitely on the horizon! Also, at some point I will just calm down and stop using so many exclamation points. But that time hasn’t come quite yet!

The thing is, I’m excited about a couple new developments at the ol’ tank farm. First of all, the plumbers who emphatically belt out top 40 Mandarin dance anthems as they work have finally finished our new hot water system. (I actually kind of miss them already). What this seemingly boring statement means is that we will finally be able to seamlessly brew more beers in a day without the risk of running out of precious hot water. And for anyone who has ever showered in cold water, you might understand that, similarly, a brewery just likes it hot. 

The second big change is our bottling line. Though we love bottling two at a time (sometimes one when the machine just throws a temper tantrum), the demand in the retail store is steadily growing and we finally admitted last week that we might need to buy a new one. Fast forward to this past week when Mike, Luke, and Patrick our Operations Manager flew to Pasco, Washington to train on a fancy new (life changing) machine. I guess you could say we were eager to get the bottle rolling. Ha, ha…Ha. This 6 head bottler can roughly tackle in one hour what we currently do in a day. Aaaand we’ve decided to switch up the format a bit (650ml bomber to 500ml heavy grade tall ale bottle) to allow for more bottle conditioned brews, which means we’re a step closer having a regular supply barrel-aged, blended, and soured ales in the convenience of our retail store, all year round.

The Oregonian countryside.

But just to recap, and because this is a source of great pride, in the three days they were gone in the US and A, the rest of us (there aren’t really that many of us) kept a small list of things achieved:

- didn’t burn down the brewery

- exhausted every episode of This American Life while bottling off a seemingly bottomless brite tank

- caught the witchshark

- had some beers with the witchshark

- lost the witchshark

- didn’t burn down the brewery

Alright enough. Shenanigans aside, we couldn’t be more excited about what’s on the horizon. I know I always say that, but I’m telling you, the construction around here is constant. I’ve even finally embraced the screeching yell of our plumber’s acetylene torch as our brewery’s anthem.

As if we needed a fire lit under our asses!

If I had a nickel for every time someone wandered into the brewpub and asked me if the bottle shop was open, I’d have enough nickels to fly to Abu Dhabi with a layover in Palm Springs to get my bronze on. I’d probably even have enough nickels left over to buy a life size Arnold Swarzennegger poster with a slogan like “I’ll be back, baby” or “No pain, No gain”.

But forget the desert and an ex-body builder for a moment because I have a very important message to communicate. A message that I have trudged through a veritable slurpee of snow to deliver.

Tomorrow, January 23, the Bellwoods Bottle Shop will officially open. Yes, my nickel jar will cease to overflow, but now our hearts can take on the responsibility of brimming with joy! Yes, things are still a little ‘under construction’ if I can borrow a phrase that has been dancing around my brain like a pinball for the last 3 months, but to be honest, we have so much beer it’s coming out of our eyeballs and need to find a place to hide it (your house). 

And before a stampede of beer-thirsty zombies attempts to overtake the castle (brewery), let me lay down some specifics:

For the first three days upon opening (Wednesday Jan. 23 to Friday Jan. 25) the stores hours will be 5-11pm.

As of Saturday, we will assume regular hours, which look like the following:

Noon - 11pm EVERYDAY except Sunday, when the long arm of the law dictates that we can only be open from noon - 6pm.

Once more for those in the nosebleeds:

-Monday to Saturday (NOON TO 11PM)      - Sunday (NOON TO 6PM)

For the opening lineup and more info click here.

Let the games begin!

Enough about reflections and the year that was. Live in the now, seize the day — it’s the 21st of January and I haven’t worked out once. Thank God I didn’t make that my unattainable New Year’s resolution. Sorry if you did.

We’ve set our sights on more practicable goals, and I know what you’re thinking right now, is ‘practicable’ even a word? To which I reply, yes, I looked it up in an online dictionary because I don’t think anyone I know even has a hard copy of one of those anymore, except maybe my grandmother, and she lives in Vancouver. But let’s get back to the point.

I was talking about goals, I believe. Things that we say we’re gonna try to do, and sometimes actually get around to doing. Things that we deem worth doing, because they will be awesome. And awesome updates I can provide for you today. I promise this is not a riddle.

Several weeks ago we contacted the country of Portugal, the president himself if I’m not mistaken, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, and asked him if he had any barrels kicking around that his people didn’t need anymore. Of course, as the fun-loving man he is, Anibal kindly offered us cognac and port barrels.

“But how big, approximately, are the barrels?” asked Mike and Luke.

“Approximately,” thought Aníbal, “well, like this,” and he texted us a couple pics on his phone.

We admitted that, not having much reference for his wing span, we still needed some specifics. Do you have a better picture? He then sent us this one,

before apologizing saying that it wasn’t about the barrels, he had meant to send that one to his wife.

“Look, how about you just tell us in liters how big they are,” we finally pleaded.

“Oh, like, about 200-320L, they vary, as they’re all handmade.”

So in the end we said yes, ordered a whole smack of them, and decided on the coldest day in ages to fill them on our frigid patio. The fermenting quad went in to the port barrels, and the imperial stout into the cognac. The remaining stout will be divided into casks, to which we’ll inevitably add strange fruits and herbs and release on Sunday (snack and cask!) nights each week.

And if you’re lucky, you can come by our patio and chip off a bit of the frozen stout that remains on the concrete to get a taste of what’s to come! We can’t attest to much carbonation, however. 

Muito obrigado Portugal!