ThirstyMates.com

Steam Whistle Brewery holds a fond place in the heart of most Toronto beer drinkers. While they make on hell of a pilsner they also brew in a partially restored historic building in the heart of Toronto.

The John St. roundhouse was built in 1929 and was previously the home of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s steam engine repair and cleaning facility. It operated from 1929 to May 13th 1988 and is currently owned by the city of Toronto due to it’s historic status. Steam Whistle operates out of bays 1-14. The roundhouse is located just a short walk from Union Station, The Rogers Centre and The Air Canada Centre.

Steam Whistle is also very very GREEN!

• In winter 2008 they installed brand new state of the art equipment that cuts their energy consumption by almost 33% compared to their old brewhouse.
• During the summer months since 2008 Steam Whistle has used Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling system to cool the air in their factory and conference rooms. Deep water pipes draw icy cold water from lake Ontario in order to cool the air. Reducing energy use and CFC’s.
• Even off site they’re green! Using biodegradable cups made of cornstarch resin that is completely compostable within 50 days! (That’s faster than it takes the city to clean up some of the garbage form the Toronto Grand Prix!)
• Keeping with the out of office theme Steamy (as some of the ThirstyMates call it) uses B20 Bio Fuel in their delivery trucks. The fuel contains Soya oils and recycled restaurant grease.
• You may have noticed after finishing a bottle or two of their delicious brew that the bottles are a little heavy. That’s because the glass is 33% thicker than the bottles used by the big boys. This ensures that less bottles get broken or chipped and allows them to be used up to 35 times. That’s about twice as much as a regular beer bottle. Yet another plan by those crafty guys at SW to keep it green is using custom bottles with painted labels they reduce the paper waste headed to the landfill and down the drain.

So next time you sit down to enjoy a box of the good green stuff remember that the company making it is doing its part to keep your world clean.

(As a side note please try to return those special bottles. In the summer of 2006 the crew at Steam Whistle had to slow production due to a lack of returned bottles.)

Diagio (the makers of Guinness) have reported that they’ll be closing down two factories in Kilkenny and Dundalk.

Don’t worry your heads though Guinness fans they’ll be opening a larger facility worth and estimated whopping 520 million pounds! That’s somewhere around 1 BILLION USD! Drinkers of the black stuff in England and Ireland won’t have to worry about different water polluting the taste of their beer though. They’ll still be getting their brew from the historic St. James Gate brewery, although the workforce there will be cut by half.

The St. James location has been in operation 1759 when Arther Guinness started brewing his first stout next to the River Liffey.

David Gosnell, Diageo’s global supply director, told a Dublin news conference that the company even thought about closing the St. James Gate production facility but after public outcry decided that it meant too much to Guinness fans.

The closings and new plant aren’t supposed to be fully finalized until 2013 so the picky drinkers who believe different waters make different beers need not worry too much about the subtleties of their stout changing any time soon.