It’s easy to get around Montreal. Downtown is pedestrian-friendly, and the public transportation system is excellent and inexpensive. As for beer traveling, you’ll find an abundance of wonderful establishments with a liquid lineup to satisfy the most finicky taste buds. So, join us in a visit to some favorites.

Our first stop is Brasserie Dieu du Ciel! (29 rue Laurier Ouest). Loosely translated to English it means “Oh my God!” and that’s precisely what you’ll say when you taste the brew. It has garnered quite a reputation, and deservedly so.

The beer list is the broadest and most imaginative we’ve ever seen at a brewery. There are more than 75 in all, most of them rotating seasonals. They also earn top honors for creative names like “Fog Traveler,” an ESB, and “Coalwoman,” which is a rauchbier.

The day’s tap selections are listed on a blackboard by number, and they’re identified both by color—blonde, blanche, rousse, and such—and by style. A word about those color designations in Montreal: a “blonde” can be anything from a golden ale to an American pale ale.

We started with a dry-hopped version of a Belgian blonde and a Rosée d’Hibiscus, a wheat beer with hibiscus flavor. As the evening progressed, the original selections ran out and bar staff replaced them with even stronger, more adventuresome beers. We graduated to Péché Mortel (“Mortal Sin”), a coffee-flavored stout; Rigor Mortis, a Belgian-style trippel and an imperial cream ale brewed especially to commemorate the 14th Mondial de la Bière—more on that festival later.

Banking on Beer

Not far away from the University of Quebec at Montreal campus, home to some 40,000 students and smack dab in the middle of the city, is Benelux Brewpub and Café (245 rue Sherbrooke Ouest). It’s housed in what was once a bank; the vault is now a black-walled area for intimate conversations and tasting. The decor is “industrial,” with exposed ductwork, an open ceiling and upside down pint glasses as light fixtures above the bar.

The beers are hoppy by Quebec standards; the American IPA is something you would find the on the West Coast. Everything we sampled was true to style and refreshing. Our favorite? The blonde, a pleasing golden ale.

The Latin Quarter, a bohemian district north of downtown, has several brewpubs, so you can manage a mini-pub crawl even if you’re in town for just a day.

Le Saint-Bock Brasserie Artisanale (1749 rue St-Denis) is easy to spot: you can’t miss the outdoor mural with a beer mug and a halo above it. And yes, those are white Christmas lights around the front door, even in the summer. When Mother Nature cooperates, the front terrace is an outstanding place to relax, people-watch, or write up your tasting notes.

One delight of Montreal beer hunting is that the brewpubs frequently dedicate a generous amount of tap handles to Quebec microbreweries. Another is the quirkiness of the names. Both of us were schooled by the nuns, so it always makes us chuckle when we see “faith-based” beer names on the menu. That’s why we chose two of the house beers—La Confession, a brown ale; and La Penitente, a pale ale, both of which had a pronounced maltiness—and found them soothing to the soul.

Just a few doors away is L’Amere a Boire (2049 rue St-Denis). Like many establishments on this street, there are multiple levels to this pub. The interior is clean and modern, with tables and chairs made of blond wood and brick walls adorned with pictures of the Czech Republic, courtesy of a local artist.

The beers are inspired by classic European styles, but then they’re given a distinct, only-in-Montreal personality—fitting for a pub whose tapas menu includes rabbit and smoked marinated herring. The lineup includes both ales and lagers, so we staged a head-to-head tasting with Fin de Siècle, a brown ale; and Drak, a Czech-inspired brown lager. Both were served in a cross between traditional Pilsner glasses and cylindrical glasses used to serve Düsseldorf altbier. Neither disappointed—and yes, you can tell the difference between them.

L’Amère a Boire’s 14 tap handles offer something for everyone including Cense Hora, a lager that has been served at the Czech consulate in the city; Naturtrub, a hefe-weizen; an imperial stout; and a Maibock.

Multilingual Montreal

Montreal is the largest French-speaking city in North America, but it also has an Anglophone district. Crescent Street is at the heart of its nightlife, and Brutopia (1219 rue Crescent) has been a fixture there since 1997.

As you might expect, Brutopia reminds you of a British pub, with lots of dark wood, dartboards, and even Guinness posters. There are eight house ales, three of which are seasonal offerings. Finger foods, and sandwiches from cuisines around the world, highlight the food menu.

There’s a delightful back terrace with planters filled with colorful flowers in the summer. That’s where we enjoyed a refreshing IPA and cream ale while darkness began to gather. The pub also pours local microbrews, and Guinness and whiskies are popular with some locals.

A little further afield is Le Réservoir (9 rue Duluth Est). Ironically enough, we got caught in a reservoir-filling downpour on our way there and by the time we arrived, we were soaking wet. And you thought beer traveling was a cushy job, didn’t you?

Le Réservoir has one of the smallest outside signs of any brewpub we’ve visited, but its fans have no problem finding it. We sat at the bar, atop retro soda-fountain-style stools, and studied the beer list on the blackboard above us. On the board were a blonde and blanche, ambré de blé (a wheat beer), an India pale ale, a Scotch ale and a cream ale with 100 percent Quebec malt. Surprisingly, both of our pints—the cream ale and IPA—were nitro-conditioned. They were flavorful, and a soothing antidote to the nasty weather outside.

Réservoir’s laid-back, intellectual air contrasted with the busy kitchen in front of us. One glance at the menu explained why: the “snack menu,” Réservoir’s brand of pub grub, featured grilled goat cheese with figs and marinated onions, aioli and gravlax in vodka.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention one more thing about Montreal’s beer culture. Mondial de la Bière is an outstanding beer festival. This year’s festival will run from May 28 to June 1, and will be held at Windsor Station and Courtyard in the heart of downtown.

We’ve watched the festival blossom into a world class-event. This year, organizers expect to have over 350 beers, 100 of which will be new to the festival. There will also be plenty of French-Canadian food, along with workshops that pair that food with the beer.

We invite you to add Montreal to your list of places to visit, and we’d like to close with a toast: À votre santé mes amis et au revoir jusqu’au prochain numéro!

Even that extended voyage, however, does not begin to illustrate the gulf that exists between Toronto, the city I call home, and Montréal, where I was born and raised. Visit the two metropolises and their philosophical differences become immediately and starkly apparent: Montréalers populate their cafés throughout the day, where Torontonians appear certain the economy would grind to a halt were they to stop for a midday glass of beer or wine or a cup of coffee; when weather permits, the sidewalks of St-Laurent and St-Denis nightly teem with sharp-dressed citizens strolling or window shopping or just standing and chatting, while Toronto’s Queen and King Streets are primarily boulevards mandated to get a person from point A to point B, with no lingering; and where food and drink are concerned, well, let’s just say that Montréalers are significantly more hedonistic than are their neighbors to the west.

This last point, of course, applies as much to beer as it does to fine wine, haute cuisine or poutine. (Distinctly Québécois, poutine is an over-the-top indulgence of a dish, combining fries, gravy and cheese curds.) Although the city came later to craft brewing than did Toronto, Vancouver or even the modestly-sized Nova Scotian capital of Halifax, once they finally did get started, the city’s brewers have largely led the way for Canadians. As a result, although the fact is widely unrecognized, Canada’s second largest city rates with Denver, Portland, San Francisco and Philadelphia as one of the continent’s finest beer destinations.

Examples of Montréal’s leadership in beer are legion, but begin with the city’s first brewpub, Le Cheval Blanc (809 rue Ontario est, tel. 514-522-0211).

The Experimental Approach

When Jerôme Denys took over his family’s central Montréal tavern in 1981, representing the third generation to oversee the long, narrow room, his first priority was to bring the venerable establishment into the modern age. To compete in the eighties, he figured, the old fashioned, time-worn Cheval Blanc would require a couple of key renovations, such as the addition of a women’s washroom! The idea to brew in the basement didn’t come until half a decade later.

When Denys finally did begin selling his own beer in 1987, Montréalers welcomed the development with great enthusiasm, making the brewpub, according to Denys, an overnight success. And in its early days, Le Cheval Blanc was indeed a brewpub in the purest sense of the word, selling only the house-brewed beer and one commercial brand, all on draught—no bottled beer, no food, no wine, no liquor.

From the start, Denys began setting the tone for what would eventually become Montréal’s pervading approach towards craft-brewed beer. Taking the approach that beer, like wine, should vary from season to season and even batch to batch, Denys regularly altered his recipes so that, for example, a bière blonde tasted in July would necessarily taste different from one sampled in November. If occasionally maddening, it was also a practice that fostered experimentation and so crafted an attitude that would severely influence the next generation of brewpubs to come.

At the head of that generation is Dieu du Ciel (29 avenue Laurier ouest, tel. 514-490-9555). Located just east of Mont Royal, the ‘mountain’ for which the city is named, Dieu du Ciel is, at first glance, more neighborhood local than destination brewpub. But step up to the bar and that impression quickly changes, as the bartender guides you through beers like La Charbonnière, a wonderfully rounded and balanced smoked malt ale, and La Route des Épices, an outstanding seasonal ale flavored with black peppercorns. Order a pint of Rigor Mortis Ambrée, the brewer’s abbey-style dubbel, or the very convincing pilsner brewed occasionally by Jean-Francois Gravel, and you begin to wonder if the man can do no wrong.

Venture no further in your Montréal beer travels than Dieu du Ciel and Cheval Blanc and you will have been well-served by the new school and the old. But to do so would also be to deny yourself the province’s bounty of craft brewery beer seldom seen outside of Québec.