The Artful Craft

Did you know hoppy beer should be treated like milk?

Of course, I’m not suggesting that you pour it on your Fruit Loops or add it to the ever-expanding number of products your lactose-intolerant friends can’t digest. Instead, it is a comment on the best way to consume beer: cold and prompt.

This is one of the main reasons why you won’t find Stone City Ales’ beer at the LCBO or the Beer Store. Regardless of what your so-called “beer connoisseur” housemate told you, aging tends to have very negative effects on brews. This is due to the oxidation process that occurs when bottles are left sitting unrefrigerated and exposed to light, damaging the hoppy aroma and flavour. By serving straight from the source, Stone City Ales minimizes the steps between the brewhouse and beer drinker, thereby ensuring every beer tastes exactly like Justin da Silva, the inhouse brewmaster, designed it. That’s not to say you have to drink it on premise; just inside the Princess Street location you’ll find a refrigerator full of tall bottles and growlers, which you can take home.

But, let’s take a step back. At what point did life become so complicated that a Molson Canadian is no longer good enough to satisfy one’s needs for liquid malty goodness? As a Brit, I’d argue since 1959, when it was first introduced (I digress). Getting people to be more adventurous in their beer selection can be tough, since the flavour profile of local brews can be wildly different to the “one-dimensional mass-produced corporate fizzy yellow beers,” as Mallory Jones, the sales/events/marketing manager at Stone City, fondly puts it. “You need to respect that everyone is at a totally different place with their beer experiences. There are literally thousands of styles of beers— if you haven’t had them all, how can you say you don’t like it?” The vast variety may be one of the reasons for the undeniable reality that craft beer has hit the mainstream. Just look at the concurrent demise of Tumble at Ale and the rise of Mod Club at the Brooklyn on Tuesdays. To meet demand, the number of craft breweries in Ontario has exploded— 119 of the province’s 203 breweries have opened since just 2014.

There are certainly parallels with the music industry in which access to smaller artists has improved significantly in recent years, largely thanks to playlists such as Spotify’s Discover Weekly, which increases exposure for the lesser known while expanding peoples’ tastes. While young people, particularly young women, are over-indexing in the craft beer market, Stone City Ales has been wise not to pigeon-hole itself.

“Seven days a week you can be sure to find a beautiful mix of regulars, students, out-of-town visitors, families, dates, and beer geeks all hanging out together. We haven’t gone after any particular “market,” so to speak. All we’re going after is making damn good beer, food, and atmosphere!”

To recap: keep your target market vague, your distribution limited, and your growth controlled. It might be a Commerce student’s deepest fear, but that’s the delight of craft beer— going against the grain is in their DNA and it seems to be paying off. By focusing on the most important things (i.e. the beer), the ever-evolving menu, and the art of conversation, Stone City Ales has carved out an eclectic niche on Princess Street.

An article and photography by Ryan O'Driscoll