I first met Iain McOustra four years ago on a visit to the old Amsterdam brewing facility at Bathurst and Lakeshore for a story about their barrel programme. Since then, the brewery has been on a tear.

They opened a larger production facility in Leaside and in 2013 added the sprawling BrewHouse on Queen’s Quay. This spring they completed a significant expansion to the Leaside facility, so I caught up with McOustra to talk about what this means for one of Toronto’s most important craft breweries.

Of the move from a maximum annual production of 18,000 hectolitres to potentially over 50,000, McOustra says, “when we made the jump, instead of doing it piecemeal, we decided we’d go all in.”

To help put those (very large) numbers in perspective, consider that there are about 176 pints in each hectolitre, so they’ll have the theoretical ability to make over 8,000,000 pints next year.

The overhaul includes a new German-made brewhouse, tanks and packaging line, McOustra explains, “It’s not just about letting us make more, it let’s us make better beer."



Brewmaster Iain McOustra (left), brewing supervisor Morgan Wielgosz, and innovation brewer Cody Noland.

In technical brewing terms, that means things like a new centrifuge for clarifying beer without the flavour-stripping action of filtration. It also means many of the steps will be automated so his brewing staff will have to spend less time carefully watching a stopwatch.

There is a human aspect to the expansion as well. Since opening the Leaside facility, they have tripled their workforce and the renovations have afforded them the opportunity to work with talented local crafts people. Every floor in the brewing space is tiled and laid by one man who McOustra describes as a "straight artisan."



Cans for Starke at McOustra’s favourite spot on the new canning line — apparently there is only one man in Ontario left doing the hand-twisting of these metal guides.

Throughout our tour, McOustra proudly underlined that among a number of factors that has made the growth possible, the most important is the success of their Boneshaker IPA. It’s now their top-selling beer, both in retail and for licensees and that’s worth noting because it’s a bold, hoppy ale that never would have been considered mainstream in Ontario before craft beer’s current popularity.

Asked why the beer he developed three years ago has been so successful, McOustra says: “I think its overall combination of real hop depth with the malt character is unique.”

He hopes that Starke, their new imperial pilsner, proves to be equally popular. Like Boneshaker, it twists together powerful malt and hop threads, but in this case it’s paler, blonde malts that create a bread-on-honey sweetness and Saaz hops for grassy and floral spiciness with a touch of lemon bitterness and crisp finish.



Barrel ageing is still a very important part of the Amsterdam operation.

One piece of unhappy news did come out of our discussion. Amsterdam’s popular and award-winning Tempest stout will not be brewed again.

The newly expanded brewery is open for tours, so you can spend some of this weekend geting a firsthand look at one of Toronto’s largest breweries.

Amsterdam Brewing Company, 45 Esandar Dr.