'Rainhard Brewing' - Brew Pub Review

Rainhard Brewing Co.
100 Symes Road #108, Toronto

Rainhard is in an industrial building on Symes Road, right next to Shacklands and just around the corner from Junction Brewing.

I had a flight of four of their beers: Armed'n Citra (pale ale), Kapow IPA (60 IBU), Revolution IPA, and Rage and Love (sour). This was surprisingly expensive at $15 ($10 is common, I've also seen $8 and $12, but this is a record high). I wanted to like their beers, and while there was nothing particularly wrong with them, they weren't really my style.

This doesn't mean anyone else should rule them out: it's well established that "my style" is relatively narrow and doesn't encompass many beers that are popular with others. Which brings up an interesting discussion: I wish well to every brew pub in the city. It's a tough business to be in, and you have to do something right to stay alive any length of time. And most of the people who do this do it because they love what they're doing - they surely don't do it because they think they're going to get rich. Another plus that goes with this is that brew pubs almost uniformly take their food seriously, and if they offer food at all it'll be good. Because of all of this, and my relatively narrow taste in beers, I recommend that people try their local brew pubs even if I didn't like the beers there - and there've only been a couple times that I condemned a place for having genuinely bad beer.

Features: a rather gray patio, a couple pinball machines (nice), a bottle shop. Very limited food.

photo: Rainhard's industrial front

loading dock and picnic tables, all in shades of gray.

photo: My flight - love those berry-based sours

best labeled flight ever with beautiful and clear labels for each of the four beers.

photo: feels a bit industrial inside too

concrete floor, rail with high stools, some picnic tables, two pinball machines, and lots of barrels.

photo: The taps

Eight taps, of which seven were active.  Hand-labeled names on a chalkboard.