I have a lot of lost time to make up for and do want to quickly cover the last half of my trip to one of Canada’s most impressive beer destinations, Quebec.  So I figure bullets points and pictures are the way to go.

• Best Pub in Quebec City: L’Oncle Antoine.  This pub is  found in one of Quebec City’s older buildings, dating back to 1754 – new by European standards,  old for Canadian standards.  This pub boasts a number of great craft beers from Quebec and Belgium.  Our last night in Quebec was spent in the L’Oncle Antoine pub enjoying a few pints before heading to a 24 hour poutine joint.

• Best Quebec Beer: Microbrasserie Ile d’Orleans Extra Strong Stout.  This fantastic beer is brewed on Ile d’Orleans, an island in the St. Laurence River about 20 minutes out of Quebec City.  This stout had a rich mouth feel with loads of roasted coffee and chocolate flavours – delicious.

• Best Poutine: Chez Ashton.  This fast food joint is unique to Quebec and was a welcome change from McDonalds and Wendy’s.  Poutine is right up there with pancakes when it comes to post pub eats

I don't know how they do it, but in Quebec the gravy doesn't cause the fries to go soggy.

Cheers,

Erik

The first half of our trip was spent in Montreal, and the remainder of our time in historic Quebec City. As I previously commented, Quebec is an amazing beer destination, and I have quite a bit to post about. This first post will focus on Montreal, the second, which should follow shorty, will focus on Quebec City.

Montreal

The people of Quebec are incredibly proud of locally produced products, which makes for a great beer culture. Most restaurants we visited in Quebec featured a number of local craft beers. Unlike in Vancouver, good beer is available just about anywhere. Although the style of beers available in Montreal is quite diverse, most breweries tend to brew with a yeasty Belgian flair.

While in Montreal we visited a number of brewpubs – Brutopia, Dieu Du Ciel and Les 3 Brasseurs. For anyone planning a trip out Montreal in the near future, avoid Brutopia, they claim to be Montreal’s premium brewpub, but their beer is terrible – the other two pubs served great beer.

After landing in Montreal and a confusing hour spent on public transit on our way to our hotel, we sat down for our first meal in Montreal at Les 3 Brasseurs. This establishment belongs to a chain of brewpubs headquartered in France, and they offer four beers on tap (Wit, Blonde, Amber and Brown) and a maple syrup bottle conditioned Belgian style ale. We started out with a taster of all four ales – all were delicious, but the brown ale was my hands down favorite. To end the evening we tried the bottle conditioned ale, which was great, but nothing overly impressive. I just don’t think that maple syrup and beer work all that well together, many people I’m sure will disagree.

The best brewpub in Montreal, and possibly even Canada, is Dieu Du Ciel. They offer 18 beers on tap and a limited menu of bar snacks. We were only able to try 6 of the 18, but all were impressive. Dieu Du Ciel’s beer is clearly brewed with passion, care and creativity – three critical element necessary to create great beer, and food for that matter. The styles available range from German kolsch to a rich espresso imperial stout. The only beer that I thought they could improve was the India Cream Ale – I just don’t think brewers east of the rockies can match the fantastic hop flavors that west coast brewers have perfected.

Brewery Creek in Vancouver carries a number of Dieu Du Ciel’s beers, I recommend trying all of them at least twice.

Cheers

Erik