Brewhoo.

Ontarians could be crying in their more expensive beers Sunday.

The provincial tax on beer goes up 3 cents per litre on Nov. 1, the first of four planned 3-cent hikes on the same autumn date between 2015-2018.

The Kathleen Wynne government expects to raise $100 million a year for the provincial treasury once the tax increases are fully implemented.

The first hike will boost the cost of a 24-pack by about 25 cents.

Whether the price of one’s favourite brand goes up by that amount depends on each brewer.

The government has ordered the bigger brewers to swallow some of the tax increase at least until 2017.

“For consumers, this new charge will amount to an increase of about one cent per bottle of beer over the next four years,” Kelsey Ingram, a spokesman for Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, said Saturday in an e-mail. “Over the next two years, however, Ontario has secured a commitment from the province’s largest brewers to cap price increases to inflation for seven of their most popular brands, meaning that the one-cent increase will not be passed along to Ontario beer drinkers on a large proportion of the beer they drink.”

Annual inflation-based increases in the basic beer-tax rate each March can be passed on.

“Ontario consumers will continue to pay prices for their beer that are at or below the lowest prices in Canada,” Ingram said, adding the money raised will support priorities such as health care, education, infrastructure and transit.

The beer tax was announced in the government’s spring budget, included in a section devoted to the government’s proposals to “unlock the value” of publicly owned Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation and the LCBO.

PC finance critic Vic Fedeli has argued the beer tax, like the partial sale of Hydro One also announced in the budget, is a desperate attempt by a cash-strapped government to temporarily balance its books as promised in 2017-18 in advance of a provincial election.