If it’s brewed 200 kilometres away, is it still a Toronto beer?
Fans of Mill Street Brewery are crying in their pints this week after Labatt confirmed it was closing Mill Street’s main North York brewery and shifting production to Labatt’s massive plant in London, Ont.
The move comes 10 years after Labatt bought the formerly independent Mill Street, which began as a tiny craft brewery in the Distillery District in 2002.
A spokesperson said the company decided not to renew the brewery’s 10-year lease after it expired.
“Industrial lease rates in North York have increased substantially and we have existing capacity within our Ontario brewing network,” Labatt spokesperson Hannah Love said in an email. As a result of the move, 39 people were laid off, though they’re being offered a chance to apply for other jobs with Labatt.
Love said Mill Street’s three brewpubs — at Pearson International, the Distillery District, and Ottawa — will continue operations.
While Love insisted that “all of Mill Street’s products will continue to be produced and available for sale,” beer and spirits author and consultant Stephen Beaumont questioned whether that’s a realistic prospect, given the massive scale of Labatt’s London brewery.
“What this is going to mean for Mill Street I think is basically everything but their Organic Lager is going to pretty much cease to exist,” said Beaumont.
Labatt’s London brewery had been producing at least some of the Organic Lager since 2016.
Mill Street was something of a trailblazer for lovers of hoppy beers, at least in its early days, noted Beaumont, pointing to its one-time flagship brew, Tankhouse Ale.
“Tankhouse was one of the first beers to popularize the hoppy flavor profile in Ontario,” said Beaumont. Eventually, Tankhouse was overtaken by the trend towards IPAs, and Mill Street also added more malt to give it a more balanced taste, Beaumont said.
The number of Tankhouse taps around the city — and province — dwindled to a handful.
“I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Tankhouse tap,” Beaumont said, “or even drank a Tankhouse.”
There simply isn’t enough demand for most of Mill Street’s other brands to justify the batch sizes that would be produced in London, Beaumont said.
Industry sources estimate that Mill Street’s North York brewery had a brewing capacity of up to 25 million litres of beer a year, but that in recent years, it rarely produced half that much.
Labatt’s London brewery — the company’s biggest in the country — produces up to 200 million litres of beer a year, according to industry estimates.
Beer author and educator Jordan St. John predicted Mill Street Organic will survive, along with the Blue Jays themed Blue Wave, Tankhouse, and possibly 100th Meridian Amber Lager.
“I think anything other than that — all of their seasonal releases — will be gone,” said St. John, adding that shifting production and cutting the number of brands is a standard pattern when big breweries buy small rivals. “I think the only time it hasn’t really happened is when Molson bought Creemore.”
Mill Street co-founder Steve Abrams, who’s no longer affiliated with the company, hopes the Mill Street brands, including Tankhouse, endure.
“It’s a very sad day, especially for the people who’ve lost their jobs,” said Abrams. “I really wish them well, and that Labatt can keep the Mill Street name alive.”
Abrams, who founded the Harmon’s non-alcoholic brand a few years after the Mill Street sale, said the beer market has changed since Mill Street’s heyday, and that brewers of every size are struggling.
“It’s a cross-roads for craft beer. I think we sold at the peak of the market,” said Abrams. “People’s drinking habits have really changed, and the craft beer industry is going to suffer.”
Craft beer had once been a beacon of hope for big brewing companies like Labatt’s owner Anheuser Busch-InBev and Molson Coors, who went on a wave of acquisitions of craft brewers after enviously noting double-digit sales increases for craft beer.
Now, said Beaumont, once bubbly sales have gone flat, and some of those takeovers are being reversed, former craft brands closed by their new owners, or flipped to other companies.
“As much as craft is hurting, the big guys are hurting more, at least in North America,” said Beaumont. “And there’s not a lot of hope on the horizon.”
While leaning into hard seltzer, non-alcoholic brews and even spirits in an attempt to boost sales, big brewers no longer see craft beer as saviours, Beaumont said.
“Buying and producing craft beer styles has been tried, considered and now abandoned,” said Beaumont. “And I don’t think that’s coming back.”
