Walkerville Brewery
525 Argyle Rd, Windsor, ON
(519) 254-6067
The first brewery to start up the Craft Beer movement in Windsor, ON, was Walkerville Brewery in 2012. Windsor has a rich history of spirits and beer beginning with Hiram Walker,the founder of Hiram Walker and Sons Ltd, the manufacturers of numerous world famous spirits including the Canadian Club. You won’t visit a brewery in this town without the mention of this man. What a lot of people don’t know is Mr. Walker also had a taste for beer and opened the original Walkerville Brewery in 1890. Now a 120 years later, Walkerville Brewery is appropriately housed in one of Mr. Walker's original 18,000 sq ft warehouses and the beer is continuously flowing.
Many of the beers and ideas are themed around prohibition and with four flagships are always pouring they’re regularly brewing seasonals and one-offs that add a variety of bold flavours to their lineup, including some whiskey barrel aged brews that they keep onsite!
Blayne Caron and Michael Beaudoin are the brewers in the operation and we had the chance to tour around and share a pint with Michael that day. As a recently certified Cicerone, he has a wealth of knowledge about beer that makes for some great conversation about beer, food pairings (but watch out, he is sure to slip in a few “Dad” jokes).
As I sipped my way through a colourful flight of eight beers I was particularly drawn to the Easy Stout, Milk Stout. The label depicts a dapper man granting access to a speakeasy, it is a delicious and silky offering with sweet notes and a glorious dark chocolate, slightly dry, finish. It is medium bodied and easy sippin’.
Their Geronimo IPA was another tasty creation named after a ship that was seized during a bootlegging operation, that was then set free by a storm and drifted all the way back to Canada. It is a coarsely filtered IPA that is loaded with grapefruit, orange peel, and piney notes, both on the aroma and to the taste.
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