Independent, community-focused and locally sourced are the best ingredients for good beer.

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Independent, community-focused and locally sourced are the best ingredients for good beer.

That’s always been the view of the worker-owners at London Brewing, the co-operative on Burbrook Place in the Old East Village.

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Since 2018, they’ve been toasting the mantra with Truly Local, a craft beer festival with a invitation list of breweries sharing London Brewing’s values.

Truly Local hit the rocks during the pandemic, first being nixed, then sputtering through required restrictions. This month, on Sept. 17, it’s back as a full-fledged event with a lineup of wonderful little breweries serving intriguing beers on the main patio, in the taproom and in a rear space.

Festival-goers will have Truly Local passports to keep track of the beers they’ve sampled. There’s room for almost 1,000 beer fans in two sessions for this advance-ticket event that’s expected to be sold out.

Who’s coming? Some of the best small and niche breweries of southern Ontario, who — as London Brewing’s Emma Maganja explains — tick the boxes of offering beers with local flavours, hops and grains.

Among them are the wee Caps Off of St. Thomas, brew pub Burdock of Toronto, stellar MacKinnon Brothers of Kingston and an intriguing brewery I hadn’t heard of from Prince Edward County, Matron Fine Beer.

Matron Fine Beer brews beers of less than 6.5 per cent alcohol with styles and recipes that change with the seasons. IPAs are on the board, along with lagers and farmhouse ales. The hops come from 20 minutes away at Pleasant Valley Hops. Mostly, Matron sells out of its rustic, gravel road farm or at craft-smart pubs in eastern Ontario.

As for London Brewing itself, Aaron Lawrence has a smoked lager and a curious cider-beer hybrid that will introduce aspiring beer nerds to the word “graf”. All of London Brewing’s 12 taps will be connected to kegs of beer featuring local ingredients.

Even when not making one-offs for Truly Local, London Brewing is truly loyal to Ontario farmers, malters and yeast scientists. Fifty-eight per cent of hops used there are grown in the province. Thirty-eight per cent of the malt used is local.

Like to find unusual one-offs? Bent recipes for fruity beers, IPAs, sours and stouts? Chatting with experts about hop varieties? Beeline to this fest.

Light and bright is a good way to describe a late summer release from Forked River in London. The cleverly-named Ale You Need Is Love, in 1960s psychedelic packaging, is a blend of a wheat ale and a barley ale using Waimea hops from New Zealand. Not just for Beatles fans, it’s a toast to summer’s passing and the chills to come.

Cove Pils is back in the fridge at Storm Stayed in London. An homage to the Coves nature area that’s literally in Storm Stayed’s backyard, Cove Pils has a mandarin orange aroma. It’s brewed with Saphir and Hallertauer Mittelfrueh hops, both German.

A cider producer is bowing out, tapering down to an end-of-year closure. Hoity Toity, the mom-and-pop winery and cidery established 16 years ago between Mildmay and Walkerton, is clearing its inventory and closing Dec. 31. Its ciders include 66 Pickup, twice a gold medal winner at the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition in Michigan.

Wayne Newton is a freelance journalist based in London.

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