Saturday 23 April 2011

April 22, 2011

Sad news to report today.  It looks like Duggan's Brewery has closed for good.  The landlord placed a notice on the door on the 19th and, at the time, there seemed to be hope that this was a misunderstanding and the lawyers would resolve things but the news soon came that it was not to be.

http://greatcanadianpubs.blogspot.com/2011/04/duggans-brewery-downtown-location.html

It was oh-so-fashionable on a certain site to knock Duggan's and their beers which made it nice to see the #9 IPA take the first Ontario Cask IPA Challenge in a series of blind tastings.

The food was good and given the portions and posh-quotent the prices were good too.  The beer was very competitively priced - with tax a pint would set you back $5.22.

Back in the day, this location featured Denison's (fine dining) on street level and you had to go downstairs for Growlers brewpub.  The fun ended in 2003 and when Duggan's took over in 2009 the first thing they did was to remove the bar from downstairs, along with that long couch snaking along the outer wall that created so many intimate nooks and crannies.  You could also contain a young one in one of the many corners and with the sampler sized menu items Growlers was an ideal place to take a youngster - we did it all the time.  Those munchies were pretty upscale, what with the fine dining kitchen upstairs.

The basement space was turned into an events room and this may have sown the seeds of their demise.  It was often empty and the rent is due just the same whether or not the space is being put to good use.

They also had a license to sell beer to go on site.  I guess I am out the $4.00 deposit on that growler of Porter.  What made it fun is that once you had purchased your beer you had to leave out the Lombard Street exit and not the door that you had entered by.  The person who served me was mortified to have to tell me this but I found it charming.  Perhaps it was a hold-over from prohibition or maybe it is a law from the days when they tried, with little success, to take as much fun as possible from the act of drinking.  It is the same sort of thinking that causes the Lion Brewery brewpub, Gold Crown Brewery and the attached brew-your-own (all on the same site in Waterloo) to have different owners, though all three owners share the surname Adlys.

The location was less than ideal.  It is one street East of Yonge in a not particularly busy area that is even less so after quitting time which reduces the number of spontaneous visits.

The #9 IPA is brewed and bottled under contract by Cool Brewing in Etobicoke so we will still be able to get that at the LCBO and there is rumoured to be a second beer available in the near future.

The end result is that now I have two reasons to feel sad when I am in the vicinity of Adelaide and Victoria in Toronto.

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