The interior of Silversmith Brewing’s converted church tap room.

Early this year I spent a few days in the Niagara Region (it took me a while to get around to writing up a column about it). The region, of course is famous for its fertile soil and rapidly expanding wine industry. Drive along the highway and you can’t go more than a few kilometres without encountering a brown and white winery sign telling you a local estate winery is nearby.

What you could miss, unless you were a guy like me who actively went searching for it, was local craft beer. Now, being in southern Ontario it wasn’t too hard to find a variety of craft beer brewed in the province, but I wanted to go the next step.

And, yes, I found some. The craft beer scene is Niagara is young – very young. I spent some of my time visiting the local breweries and brewpub to check it out. And I found both the quality of the wares and the their reports of rapid growth quite encouraging. I did finally get around to writing up my observations (which you can read here).

It doesn’t take long to summarize. Actually anchoring the region’s beer scene is the Niagara College Teaching Brewery, which is only a few years old itself. Due to scheduling I couldn’t visit the brewery itself but their products are available at a number of local bars and pubs. Their year-round offerings are a bit boring, but I found a couple of the one-off seasonals to be interesting and showing potential. Besides, they are brewed by students, so cut them some slack.

Then there are the Niagara-on-the-Lake twins, just a couple minutes apart on Niagara Stone Road. Silversmith Brewing (the older of the two at three years old) has a fantastic location – a located old church that has a rustic, historic charm that is very inviting. The offer up a range of styles, most aiming for a broad range of palates with fairly low IBUs. The highlights for me were their Black Lager, which had a dusty light coffee character I appreciated, as well as the Funzover Dunkel. They also popped open for me their first attempt at a lambic, Strong Wrong. It was a bit harsh but seemed to have all the right markings for a quality lambic. Give that beer another year or two in the bottle and it could be very appealing.

Down the road Niagara Oast House also has a distinct building, a historic red barn. Oast House is anchoring its operations on the dual oddities of Saison and Biere de Garde. For fun they toss in an IPA or pale ale or two. But be clear, this brewery is about their funky Belgians. Both the Saison and the Biere de Garde are clearly the highlights and show a superior understanding of what these styles require. I purchased bottles of each to cart home. I reviewed the Saison during Farmhouse Week here at onbeer.

The final beer-noteworthy stop in Niagara was Merchant Ale House, a cozy brewpub in downtown St. Catharines. The beer were workman-like and offered a range of styles. Good beer, enjoyable atmosphere.

Wine may be kind in Niagara but I was pleased to find a small insurgency fomenting in the dark pub corners of the region. A few years ago, Niagara had nothing in terms of local beer. Just imagine a few years from now. I must go back.