Factory tours

Leaving London, ON, without ever having set foot in the home of Canadian beer, the Labatt Brewery, seemed unwise. After all we had visited a whiskey distillery in Scotland, Inniskillin Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake and a sparkling wine producer (Kupferberg) in Mainz. Thus we booked a tour; cycled to 150 Simcoe Street along paths hitherto un-known to us and, equipped with noise dampening headphones, followed the tour guide around the factory.

There is not a lot to see, really. All processes take place in steel vats of one shape or another. It takes almost 20 days for the mix of water, barley malt, yeast and hops to transform into beer. There is some boiling involved at first, then a lot of cooling.

 

The bottling part of the tour was the most interesting. All those brown bottles racing round on conveyer belts! The most fascinating piece of machinery was the bottle washing station. Every ten-cent-deposit empty bottle adorned with all kinds of different labels are first checked that they are the Standard Canadian beer bottle, then fed into a giant dishwasher, where they are de-labelled, thoroughly cleaned and sterilised in 30 min. From there they go straight to filling.  

We also went straight to filling ourselves after the tour. Five different beer types were offered for comparative tasting. I am not a beer drinker, and from left to right the samples turned ever more hoppy and bitter. A. didn't mind having a double ration of every sample. 

51% of the price of a bottle of beer is tax. Beer is only available (in Ontario) in The Beer Store. Some 6-pack canned beers are also carried by the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), the government chain of shops that deals with alcoholic beverages. At C$ 1.25 - C$ 1.65  per 341 ml bottle of  Labatt Blue that is quite a bit of revenue. I had been wondering about why so many foreign beers are readily available in most of the 440 Beer Stores in Ontario: it turns out that any brewer worldwide can sell through the Beer Stores in Ontario as long as they pay a fee and pass the quality and labelling requirements. There is no selection by the shop manager, and the breweries set the price.

The visit to Arva Flower Mills did not really include a tour. But we were allowed to look at their production set-up, just behind the well worn swinging doors to the retail store. It appeared traditional and rustic. The shop sells all sorts of grains and flours and other baking/cooking related ingredients, as well as pet and bird feeds. As with the farmers' markets, the products were not in the bargain basement category. Had we visited a bit earlier, I would probably have treated myself to some exotic pasta or other product like that. As it is, our pantry is still bulging and I will have to bring supplies to the Food Bank at the end of our stay. 

Grain sacks and barrow on the porch.

Milling machinery driven by belts.

In the retail store.