Toronto Distillery District – Free Mill Street Brewery Tour

We’d been in TO for nearly six months but we hadn’t both made it to the Distillery District yet.

As on their website “you must experience it for yourself. The Distillery District is an internationally acclaimed village of brick-lined streets and dozens of vibrantly restored Victorian Industrial buildings.”

55 Mill Street is claimed to be one of Ontario’s hottest tourist attractions - home to live theatres, galleries, fashion, design and jewelry boutiques, unique cafes and award-winning restaurants and of course the Mill Street Brewery! The area has a real historic vibe to it, which you don’t really tend to find in many places in TO.

There was even an English bakery which sold proper meat pies, we tried to get a cup of hot chocolate from the chocolate shop, but the queue was ridiculous and filled with staff who acted as if there were only two people in line.

There are also great art instillations around the area which contrast with the old bricks and cobbles.

We made our way over the Mill Street Brew Pub.

We had thought about going to the Steam Whistle brewery tour, but neither of us like Steam Whistle that much (although I was slightly tempted by the ride on the train!) but $25 vs free, we went with free!

The tours are available on weekends at 3pm and 5pm. We congregated in the retail store to the side of the bar at 4.45 and waited for our “tour”. At 5pm we were all walked through the busy bar and restaurant into a tiny microbrewery at the back of the bar. As we all shuffled into the small area we all listened in to a great talk on the history of beer.

How it’s made. The different stages it goes through to create the different types. It was really interesting. I never knew the reason why the Irish drank stout was because dark beer never used to be taxed.

We also found out the Mill Street bar was actually built for a set for the film Chicago! So all in all, it wasn’t really a tour, but more of a talk, but a really great one at that. We then washed our new found insight down with a nice pint of Mill Street Organic. Ahh.