Time to hop into your time machine.

The year is 1860, and you and your immigrant family are traveling by stage-coach between the farming community of Dunbarton and the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto.  You’re just starting to think about refreshments when you arrive at the “Half Way House” on Kingston Road in Scarborough.

You saunter into the Inn, looking for the taproom, yet your surroundings resemble a modern-day community center. Children are being taught in the school-house, while the ladies enjoy their table beer (1 to 2% alcohol by volume) in a separate parlor. The smell of freshly baked bread (made with reused brewers yeast) penetrates the air.  The men throw back their Brown Ales, and all around you people are enjoying one another company.

No, you haven’t died and gone to heaven, you’re just an Ontarian pioneer prior to the temperance movement.  A time when small-scale, craft beer was the center of community socializing.

Now fast forward 150 years to modern-day Ontario (skipping over the dreaded years of prohibition and the mass-produced lagers of the 1980′s). The craft beer scene is growing exponentially and Ontario’s 30 microbreweries are showcasing their passion for producing a tasty artisinal beverage.

On Friday I visited Black Creek Pioneer Village for my upcoming column in TAPS 2011 fall issue – focusing on the sustainability of beer production in the pioneer days, when beer was seen as an integral component of health. Upon arriving, I was absolutely blown away by the amount of historical beer knowledge kept in North America’s only functioning historic brewery.  I was first greeted by Blytne Haynes and actor-by-trade who gave me a great tour of the “Half Way House”. (No, not a house full of convicted criminals re-entering society, but a community center that is “half-way” between Ontario’s farmland and its bustling city centers).

After learning the history of early Canadian brewing and its associated lifestyle, Blythe introduced me to home-brewer turned professional historic brewmaster Edward Koren (Canada’s 2010 home brewer of the year!), who showed me a functioning recreation of pioneer brewing.

You’re probably wondering – “brewing without electricity? Now that can’t produce anything remotely as interesting as the craft beer of today!”  Well my friend, my taste-of-history proved to be a sensory explosion of unfiltered and unpasteurized beer in its finest form.

How does it work? The malt is both mashed and then boiled (with hops) in two large copper bins, capable of holding about 100 liters of hot wort. Copper provided the perfect metal for this process because it will not grow mold and it releases an enzyme that is yeast friendly.  From there, the wort is transported to a 10 foot long open copper plate (like a really big cookie sheet), where it passes through cheese cloth and is quickly cooled.  It’s then funneled into large whiskey barrels with the pitched brewers yeast, where it will ferment at room temperature.

Since these historical ales are not carbonated like a majority of modern beers, the beer is only conditioned for 1 to 7 days. However, since beer was such an integral part of pioneer society, men AND women were quite eager to fill their glasses with the healthy beverage at the first possible moment.

What’s next for Black Creek Brewery?  Well, Ed has his sights set on producing the first Estate Beer. That is beer brewed using only ingredients grown and harvested from within 100 meters of the brewery.  The traditional yet innovate beer will be a SMASH – or single malt and single hoped beer!

Lucky for you, you don’t have to invent a time machine to experience pioneer beer.  Black Creek Brewery offers tours of their historic brewery including a taste of their Brown Ale, Porter, Stout and IPA.  You can also take home a growler to enjoy in the comfort of your own “Half Way House”.