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Labatt’s Mill Street buyout is no cause for panic

Mill Street Brewery, one of Toronto’s and the province’s most recognizable and widely distributed beer brands, waves the flag of craft no longer.

Recently purchased by Labatt and its Belgian parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Mill Street was booted from the Ontario Craft Brewers Association based on numbers alone: brewers under the OCB mantle must produce less than 400,000 hectolitres annually. 

The sweet deal or unforgivable sell-out – depending how you look at it – is a topic that will be discussed over pints and trolled online for months to come. Insults will be flung and boycotts declared by self-righteous craft junkies. 

But even though Mill Street has entered the harem of the beer world’s grand poobah, there’s a good chance that the beer won’t actually change much, and thanks to the $10 million (on top of the top-secret price tag), that Labatt plans to invest in brewing operations, there’ll certainly be more of it.

When AB InBev bought Chicago’s legacy Goose Island craft brewery in 2011, they faced the same backlash from the boutique beer industry that Mill Street will inevitably experience. But when I visited Goose Island’s Fulton Market location last month, half expecting a superficial corporate tour from suits posing as craft brewers, I got the opposite. Production and distribution, especially of money-makers like Honkers Ale, Goose IPA and 312 Urban Wheat Ale (not available here), have beefed up significantly, and a lot of that capital seems to filter back into building the authentic Goose Island brand.

An entire room at the brewery is devoted to experimental brews. There’s genuine cultural participation, including the brewery’s annual Chicago-style block party for beer-loving Chicagoans with special beers, live music and obligatory ketchup-less hot dogs. The original Goose Brewpub on Clybourn, still flourishing and brewing one-offs and weekly specials, has been left to its own devices. By far the most impressive addition is a sprawling new barrel-aging warehouse where Goose Island’s special beers – Bourbon County Stout, Lolita, Halia, Sofie, Matilda – slumber in pristine rows. 

“We’ve been very, very satisfied with the lack of direction,” said Jared Jankowski, Goose Island’s brewmaster. But what about craft cred? “I don’t really know what craft is. I make beer,” he said. And that beer is still really good.

Though it is troublesome to think that AB InBev, which has been rapidly snapping up successful small breweries for the past four years and already owns almost 40 per cent of the global market share, will likely merge with smaller titan SABMiller, it’s a natural progression within a booming industry. 

Even if there’s a corporate mandate to purchase the most popular craft breweries, evolved consumer tastes and a steadfast niche devotion to independent brewers ensures that small-scale breweries have their share of the market. The ultimate end is better beer on every tier, from indie to corporate.

Smaller does not always mean better quality, and huge is no longer synonymous with flavourless, soulless beer. I don’t always drink Mill Street, but will I continue to? Yes indeed. I’ll take a pint of 100th Meridian over an uninspired tall can of contract-brewed “craft” beer any day of the week.

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