This recreated 1860s village, complete with blacksmith shops, a historic water powered mill, sheep, and people walking around in pioneer garb, spans 30 acres in the northwest corner of ye ole town of Toronto. Some of you who grew up in the city may know Black Creek Pioneer Village from elementary school field trips, which would presumably consist of tapping maple trees and doing bark and rubbings. BORING. Black creek pioneer village is way better when you’re an adult, I say! Here’s why:

The brewery whips up some astounding beers.

Known for their fresh and authentic approach to brewing, the Black Creek Brewery has been responsible for brews like dandelion stout and lemon balm pale ale. These brews used all local ingredients, with no preservatives or artificial flavours, just super straight up herbs, hops and barley. Just last month, the brewery successfully made a “one mile beer”, using ingredients exclusively from around their property. This hasn’t been done in Canada for 100 years. Their gardener picked hops for 8 hours in total to make a single barrel of this stuff – and probably for this reason only made one barrel was made. I didn’t get a chance to try it, but I am told it was 3.5% percent and bready with almost no carbonation, in true pioneer style. They are planning on doing a bigger run of the one mile beer next year. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for a spicy “winter warmer”, which should be around LCBO’s around the end of November.

You learn a lot about history, beer, and agriculture.

A few fun facts I learned about beer: It is traditionally very subtly carbonated. The Black Creeks 4 house beers (brown ale, porter, stout and IPA) are bottle conditioned, which means that the carbonation arises naturally from the addition of yeast to each bottle. This is as opposed to forced carbonation, when carbon dioxide is pumped into the brew.

Porter was originally made by mixing brown ale with a expired ale and tossing in a bunch of high percent ale to mask the taste of it all. Porters who worked on ships in England circa 1800 drank this swill because it was the only thing they could afford. Then, people started calling it porter. (I found Black Creek’s porter way to intense and acidic, which I was told a lot of people do. I fully blame my uncultured college kid palate. Shameful.)

IPA is generally 3 times as bitter as any other beer, because back when it was first made it had to be infused with more hops and alcohol in order to keep it preserved when England shipped it all the way to their troops stationed in India during the days of the British Empire. This is where Black Creek strays from Pioneer brewing methods a bit – their IPA is not bitter at all, but ridiculously tasty. It’s infused with “citra-hops” it gives it a hint of grapefruit.

Who knew drinking beers and shooting the shit with pioneer theatre students could be so informative?

It’s all dirt cheap.

If there’s one thing you should know about this brewery, it’s that a tour of it is $4.50 and you get 3 samples of awesome beer and an hour of super fun beer banter. Another cool holiday idea, if you want to splurge on someone special in your life that really, really digs beer, you can buy them a one-day apprenticeship in the brewery! They’ll learn the tricks of the 1860’s style trade, all the while dressed in pioneer garb with the Brewmaster himself. It’s $75, and you get to take home a 2L growler of beer.

There are awesome eats to be had in The Halfway House.

On the upper floor of the brewery, the restaurant is located inside “The Halfway House”, which was one of the first inns constructed in Upper Canada. It was a popular stopping place for farmers delivering goods to market. It became termed a halfway house due to its location at the mid point on the day-long trip between the farming community of Dunbarton and the St. Lawrence Market downtown. When I walk in, there’s someone puttering around an oil lamp lit kitchen that’s selling ginger molasses cookies for .75 cents! Just like the brewery, the resto is committed to local, sustainable produce.

They have afternoon tea for two! Bring your mom here over the holidays for finger sandwiches and scones. Or just get plastered downstairs and come up for a beer brownie. Because they have those too.

~Kait Fowlie