steam whistle brewery

Across the street from the CN Tower is an old train roundhouse that has been converted into the headquarters of Steam Whistle Brewery. The brewery brews one kind of beer, a pilsner, and offers a brewery tour. This tour ended up being one of the unexpected highlights of Toronto for me.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe brewery is near the Toronto waterfront, directly across the street from the CN Tower.

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The tour takes us through the brewery. We visited towards the end of the day, so workers were busy filling up pallets of beer.

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Beer apparently is pretty simple. Steam Whistle only uses four ingredients. Hops, malt and spring water, to which yeast is added to start the fermentation process.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA technician monitors the fermentation process. The monitoring happens 24×7 because apparently beer never sleeps.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPeople in lab coats monitor every step of the process.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis crazy machine is the heart of the operation. It cleans, fills and caps the bottles of beer.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAt the end of the line the bottles are packed and loaded onto pallets by hand.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhen the working day is done, boys just wanna have fun… Apparently workers at the brewery get free beer, and often enjoy a few bottles at the end of their shift. It’s a pretty cool place to work, just across the street of the CN Tower, which you can sorta see the base of in this picture.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe finished product, a bottle of pilsner from ‘The Good Beer Folks!’ The tour was $10 and included a bottle of beer which was bottled just hours ago, a souvenir glass, and a couple of tastings of beer. Not a bad deal in my opinion.

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