The Bar Towel

With new owners, they are getting a "new" name...StoneHammer Brewing.

Here's the article.

"The new owners seem to be more into the craft independent scene and doing some interesting things, so I think we'll see a lot more interesting stuff from them in the next couple of months"

This part sounds promising. I had heard in the past that the old owners didn't allow the brewers to brew too much outside of their core brands.

Sounds promising. The Pilsner can be very good -- underrated IMO -- but the rest of the lineup is a bit tired. I hope the ownership can breathe some new life into this brewery. They have a very good brewer, which is the main thing. All IMO, of course -- I realize there are some on here who are very familiar with F&M / Stonehammer.

I've always felt Stoney D is the star of their line up. Not a sexy style of beer, but on draught it is delicious.

I'll give it a try. Is it comparable to Left Field Eephus Pitch, for example? Love that beer.

Haven't had the LF in a while, but I'd say no. Stoney D is mild, subtle, malty without being roasty, a touch of sweetness without being coying.

I agree with the general thoughts above, and I sort of think F&M/Stonehammer is the sort of brewery I will go to when I retire from all this tomfoolery of novel craft beers !

But have been wrong before.

Looks like stonehammer is no more

http://www.canadianbeernews.com/2018/04 ... shut-down/

Official announcement

https://ontariobev.net/stonehammer-brew ... -official/

I don't like to see small businesses close but I'm also not exactly surprised. Even after the ownership change they seemed to keep doing the same things they had always been doing. They made an oatmeal (coffee?) stout that was solid, and their dark ale was fine I guess. Nothing else really comes to mind. EDIT: Oh wait, they did a Baltic Porter that was pretty good too, but I only ever saw it once.

With F&M closed, Guelph still has 1 brewery per 26K people (and two of them are Sleeman and Wellington, which are sorta big by this province's standards). Elora is also nearby.

Lack of innovation was a big problem imo, but market saturation didn't help much either. F&M was also located way off in an industrial park that probably had nearly zero walk-through traffic. I think the Guelph (and to a lesser extent, the KWC) area is getting pretty close to the maximum number of breweries it can reasonably support.

Sleeman makes 1.5 million barrels per year. They are one of the biggest breweries in the country. Bigger than founders, and about the same size as Sierra Nevada. They are also putting in a taproom soon, and renovating their entire retail space to make it more of a destination than a beer store.

But I digress. You are probably going to see several more breweries pop up in the tri-cities and Guelph area. I can think of three off the top of my head that have buildings and have begun renovations. The trend is going smaller, taproom only sales, and being more Niche focused.