On May 29th, I attended The People’s Pint at the Gladstone in Toronto in which a bunch of home brewers shared their hand crafted beers. With so many different choices available it was almost like being at a craft beer festival. These varied from nothing too far off the beaten path, such as IPAs and Stouts, over to some that were a bit “weirder”. One brewer made a Chocolate Stout that was boiled along with a 7 pound lobster! My favourite had to be the Mangose which was a sour Gose fermented with mangoes.

The brewers also took some more basic recipes and spruced them up a by adding ingredients such as sarsaparilla, coffee beans or brettanomyces. The results were quite wonderful, though with 18 beers available it was hard to go back for seconds and risk missing out on one I had not tried.

The event was to raise awareness about some of the home brewers in the area and to launch the People’s Pint Brewing Collective, who plans to establish a Nanobrewery and Brew Pub at the Gladstone in which these same home brewers (and others!) can brew their beers and see them served to the general public. They announced during the event that there will be a Kickstarter campaign starting soon with more details about the plans.

There was an amazing turnout at the event and I was lucky enough to run into a number of other home brewers at the event. We chatted about our favourite beers, brewing techniques and the styles we like to brew the most.

The event had a wonderful atmosphere and is hopefully the first of many to come. The People’s Pint have plans on running another event in the Fall.