BLOOD BROTHERS BREWING 165 Geary, @bloodbrothersbrewing
The beer that led me to Blood Brothers, one of the city’s most exciting new microbreweries, was a kettle sour brewed with local pears. It was sweet-tart, oh so drinkable and tasted undeniably of fresh pear. Called Paradise Lost, it stirred up mixed feelings about the encroaching winter because it’s a prototype beer for a hot-ass summer day. I loved it – so did my drinking companion, who tried in vain to trade his glass for mine.
Luckily, siblings Brayden and Dustin Jones have more great beer where Paradise came from – their tiny brewery tucked inside a nondescript warehouse building just north of Dupont.
For the Joneses, former home brewers who also run a contracting company together, the freedom to experiment and brew whenever inspiration strikes is fundamental to their philosophy. Creative independence and total control is next to impossible for contract brewers, so the brothers have used their construction skills to repurpose old dairy equipment into their own compact and well hidden micro-brewery.
Curious beer hunters tipped off by word of mouth, social media posts and a growing presence in Toronto’s bars can follow their noses – and an arrow with “beer” scrawled on the wall – to the brewery and bottle shop. The whole experience feels like finding a brimming pot of liquid gold at the end of an unlikely rainbow.
Despite their day jobs, the brothers do all of the brewing and shopkeeping with the help of their wives, Courtney and Jaime. Occasionally their sister, Lindsey, who runs a bakery out of the brewery space, jumps behind the bottle shop counter to lend a hand Blood Brothers truly is a family affair.
Rather than specializing in certain styles – beer classification is increasingly nebulous anyway – Blood Brothers work with multiple strains of yeast (four were in-house when I visited) to make a unique assortment of seasonal brews like Hail Saison (farmhouse ale with honeydew melon), Cocoa Woman (chocolate gose) and Guilty Remnant (white chocolate white stout), along with baseline beers like Inner IPA (with brett) and Shumei IPA.
“There’s really no focus for us other than brewing what we find captivating,” Dustin says.
Considering how Blood Brothers brews are becoming the talk of the town amongst Toronto’s beer lovers, it appears that captivation is contagious.
Update (July 28, 2021): This story has been updated with a new address.
