On March 11, CICTor held our annual brewery tour at Mill Street Brewery in the Distillery District. Over 40 CIC members and guests from industry, academia, and government gathered at Mill Street Beer Hall for a night of networking, food, and brewery tours. The evening started with some announcements made by Vice-Chair Mokit Chau who announced the upcoming AGM being held in May before the first group of attendees were whisked off to tour the brewing facilities.
Mill Street’s Distillery District site now acts as “test brewery” where smaller batches of new beers are brewed and tested in the brewpub. Mill Street’s Technical Manager Kaitlin Vandenbosch (MSc. in Brewing and Distilling) led tours through the brewing room and described what kinds of ingredients Mill Street uses to develop their various flavour profiles and explained the keys steps to brewing a quality beer. Samples of different grains and hops were passed around for attendees to smell (and nibble on!).
The tour continued in the distilling room where Kaitlin was involved in starting Canada’s first Bierschnaps productions using beer brewed on site in 2013. The distilling process is very different from brewing and requires copper stills that were imported from Germany. It was also revealed that Mill Street has some whiskies planned for the future – news that a number of CIC members were excited to hear. Throughout the tours, samples of Mill Street’s Pilsner and Cobblestone Stout were available for tasting, with the Stout being a particular favourite among attendees. After the tours ended, CIC Members were invited to stay and chat with other GTA chemical professionals and enjoy some hors d’oeuvres and more beer.
CICToronto would like to thank Mill Street for hosting us again as well as Kaitlin Vandenbosch for guiding the tours. And of course, thank you to everyone who attended and supported this event. Since it’s inception, the CICTor Annual Brewery Tour has been a popular mainstay in our lineup of events and we always look forward to seeing new faces and old friends join us every year for a night of learning and networking. We hope to see you all at the AGM!
Blog by Molly Sung. Photos courtesy of Laura Reyes and Jay Chi.
