Campaign for 'real Ale

Marta and I went to Montreal recently. It’s a killer city. Good food (surprisingly good bagels), cool architecture, and nice people – which is weird, since they speak French. You sort of have to re-train your brain to not think of all francophones as assholes. We were loving it, and we had this we-could-really-live-here epiphany.* We started to look at McGill for grad school.

But then…


We went to this place Brutopia at a friend’s recommendation. We weren’t really having many beers for whatever reason, but I like to sample some local color when I’m in a new city. Brutopia, we could see from their walls, was voted Montreal’s best beer for several years running. So this was it.


It was fine. Perfectly mediocre. We had their Vanilla Cream Ale and their Chocolate Stout. The latter was pretty good, but even Brooklyn Brewery makes a better CS. The former was two shades away from vomit-worthy. We had a couple others, too – all perfectly, pleasantly, boringly, why am I here since this is nothing special fine.

And this was the best it got, apparently.** My ardor for the city serious cooled. Could I really live in a city without an awesome beer scene? Is it kind of sad that I don’t think I can?

*To be fair, we do that with practically every city we go to.

**We heard some good things about this three gods place though, so maybe not all hope is lost.