I have been thinking about driving to Toronto. What are the best breweries, beer bars, general areas ect? Anyone want to drink some New Glarus in Ontario?
I am pretty picky/fussy about hazy IPAs and sours (i don’t love lactose) so that informs some of my recommendations. When are you thinking of coming up? I would love some New Glarus 
Best Beer Bars:
Bar Volo (great house beers, especially cask style), Birrerria Volo (sister bar to Bar Volo), Bar Hop, C’est What (OG Toronto beer bar, less hype beers but a solid variety of Ontario Craft.) There are a few others life Craft with large tap lists if you are looking to tick, and lots of others with decent tap selections.
Best Breweries:
Great Lakes - Not necessary the best rated but IMHO the most consistent and best value in Ontario. They have a brewpub downtown, the brewery is out in the suburbs.
Godspeed - Known for their lagers, pretty consistently good. True History is similar but personally I’d choose Godspeed first if you have limited time.
Indie Alehouse - Doesn’t always get the love but I loved the food here and the beer is pretty consistently decent as well.
Granite - Out of the way and beer is not super well rated but is consistently good, great food.
The hype breweries are Bellwoods (used to love them but i find their hoppy beers inconsistent for my tastes and they started adding vanilla or lactose to a lot of their sours which is not to my own taste), Blood Brothers (not to my taste for similar reasons, I am actually a bit baffled that others like them so much but they are popular).
Rainhard - used to love their hoppy stuff but haven’t had it much recently just because I haven’t made it out that way or seen it on tap recently.
There are a bunch of other breweries and bars worth checking out depending on what neighbourhood you are in. Godspeed and Left Field are close together, and Rohrshach, Avling, Eastbound are all along that Queen East stretch. Shacklands, Rainhard, Indie Alehouse (great food, solid beer), Junction are all close together, etc. There are some other clusters of breweries and bars too depending what neighbourhoods you plan to be in.
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Thanks for all the information! I don’t really know where I’m staying at all. I will be driving, so would like to stay somewhere I wouldn’t have to pay for parking, which I imagine is a little further out of the center. Close to a metro station, which I would pretty much use to get around. I’d like to see a Blue Jays game and some other more classical cultural stuff, but beer and breweries will be the biggest facet probably. Record stores are always nice, and hopefully I can time out a good show as well.
I definitely lean more traditional German, English styles. Not worried about hype stuff, more into Ontario and other Canadian quality stuff.
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Cool. Let me know when you are in town and we can try to meet up if you like.
I am not sure whether you will find free parking at a hotel unless you get pretty far out into the suburbs but I could be wrong.
If you are into baseball you could check out the Maple Leafs https://www.mapleleafsbaseball.com/ - It’s near-ish to a couple of breweries and I believe i recently saw that Left Field Brewery is there new beer sponsor. Games are free and usually decent way to spend a few hours even if you don’t stay the whole game. BYO Chair or sit on the grass.
