It’s hard to believe that it has been more than five years since Godspeed opened, but time has been dilatory of late. Weeks can pass in a blip, while a sun dappled afternoon might seem to stretch on indefinitely. The tendency is to make the good parts last, and that’s what I’m doing Monday afternoon, standing at the bar.

I missed the launch of the pitch-lined Sklepnik. By all accounts, last Friday saw the vast majority of Toronto’s beer community turn up despite the minus thirty windchill. By Monday afternoon, as I’m standing at the bar, sandbagging Max in the course of his duties, the brewery has gone through something like 33 hectolitres of the beer. Selling an entire fermenter’s volume over the course of a single weekend is pretty largely unheard of for a brewery of Godspeed’s size, and kegs and cases are stacked by the door for the delivery company.
The pitch-lined Sklepnik sits on the bar in front of me, and infuriatingly, I don’t want to drink it. The aroma casts me back to the Duck and Rice in Soho where I was able to track down Tankovna Pilsner Urquell in the UK. I’m struck with a craving for pork and shrimp Har Gow that isn’t likely to be fulfilled this afternoon. 

I’m dawdling. There are three beers on tap that bear thinking about. The room is empty except for a well appointed young French-Canadian couple who have wandered in off the street. By the sound of the facetime conversation they briefly engage in, they have been sent to try this beer by some distant enthusiast. 

When I wrote about Godspeed in 2017 at the time that they opened, I said “The uncomfortable fact for many is that this is not Dieu Du Ciel west. This is an older brewer now, practically a different man, who has, through experience, stripped away the frills and is confident enough to brew the things that he enjoys.”

At the outset, there was a Stout and a Dortmunder. They were better than average for Ontario, but the floor of the mash tun had been causing problems with runoff. Opening on Canada Day long weekend for Canada’s 150th birthday was probably a choice made of necessity. The thing that excited people was the potential of Godspeed, but no one really knew what that might look like a year in, let alone five. 

The runoff is causing problems today. Taking a break from attempts to alleviate the problem and eating a little lunch, Luc “Bim” Lafontaine and Michael Hancock sit at the low bar next to the kitchen. They’re working on two collaboration beers, but the secret of what’s in those tanks is not mine to share. There’s a nod and a wave. They have business to attend to, and I’m happy to banter with Max, while I stand grinning like an idiot at the mug in front of me.

The pitch-lined Sklepnik comes courtesy of Pilsner Urquell, whose cooper has, just prior to retirement as I understand it, created two 40 hectolitre tanks which now sit in a small annex at the demarcation point with the brewing facility. Pilsner Urquell is 180 years old, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge, no such collaboration has heretofore existed.

In 2018, Bim visited the Czech Republic as part of their trade mission. The Czech government is extremely serious about their beer, hosting brewers periodically in order to showcase not only their culture, but their hop growing industry and other related ephemera. Svetly Lezak, Godspeed’s Pale Czech Lager, was released in March of 2019. At the launch, brewers who had come to taste the beer stood in a circle without speaking. Four years on from that foray into authentic Czech style brewing, I’m looking at an oaken vessel dated 2021 that has taken over a year to arrive due to the unforeseen logistical problems created by a once in a century global calamity. At some point during the calamity of the last three years, Bim managed a month in the Czech Republic, learning whatever he could from not only Pilsner Urquell, but Budvar. 

Months ago, I was standing across the room with Adam Broz, the brewmaster from Budvar. In a brief exchange, I said to him that I didn’t have any feedback about their collaboration beer, Buh, because it was mesmerizing; almost impossible to analyze because you simply desired another sip. He said, with what I assume is characteristic understatement, that it was an everyday beer. 

Weeks ago, I was sitting at the bar with Stephen Beaumont, who summed it up more succinctly: Drinking, not thinking.

The pitch-lined Sklepnik fulfills that brief. Maybe that’s why I haven’t touched it. I will need to try it alongside the basic model, fermented in steel, and also its inspiration: Pilsner Urquell. These are all available on Lukr Side Pull taps, which are becoming more common within Ontario. I don’t really want to break it down into its constituent parts, and the sun shining through the window behind me is warm, and I am comfortable and in good company.


The basic model produces a peppery spice and a warm white florality. Saaz is more complicated than the descriptors it usually gets, and you can bet this is a prime crop. There’s stuff from the mittelEuropean pantry in the aroma, a hint of thyme, and depending on the harvest year, I’ve noticed, a hint of eucalyptus. There’s citric lemon zest and in the pitch-lined version that is bolstered by the oak, developing a slightly warmer oily orange zest tone that I recognize from whiskey blending warehouses I’ve loitered in on junkets. There’s something of the stave, but what I’ve not seen anyone comment on is the pitch itself. It softens the beer, but there is a faint hint of a resinous myrrh-like astringency, a blink and you’ll miss it textural frisson alongside the bitterness, and the impression I get is that it will ride up with wear; that in a few batches time, it will fade away and simply become the frame on which this beauty reclines.

The pitch-lined Sklepnik isn’t the best beer to explain Godspeed. The best metaphor is the Kintsugi series, named after the practice of repairing broken pottery with precious metals. Godspeed is not what you’d call a coherent space, but it is completely itself, the authenticity unquestionable. It’s impossible to ascribe intentionality to its existence. You couldn’t arrive here from zero. The journey that it has been on has been Bim’s journey, whether across the world or simply in life as he’s become a father.

Over time, the stain on the wall the bar occupies has blued gently. In 2017, I had asked Bim what he would put on that wall as decoration and at the moment, it’s the Czech flag. Alongside that is a poster for Peche Mortel day, later this month, which will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dieu du Ciel’s Imperial Coffee Stout, and which marks the first time it has been brewed outside of Dieu du Ciel. Amsterdam Brewing’s Rauchbier remains on tap, a holdover from a smoked beer event that occurred recently, ably organized by Max Morin, an event the likes of which you might not trust in a different set of hands. For a while, the addition of a pinch of smoked malt to the recipe, as in their Ibushi Helles, became a defining hallmark of the brewery, with “Godspeed Style” adorning the label.

I’m looking around the room at the custom furniture, heavy enough that it shows no sign of wear five years in. The light fixtures are all custom cast, no two alike. The dramatic sweep of the brewhouse stairs, offset to catch the eye, are now balanced in the foreground by the wooden vats. The menu tiles, in Japanese, hang above the kitchen, a relic of an earlier period when Ryusuke was the chef, and, although Wvrst will be taking over the catering duties, it is my hope that they’ll remain there as tribute; an acknowledgement of plans altered, difficulties faced.

As the nice young couple across the room don their jackets, I gesture at them with an inquisitive thumbs up. It’s returned with beaming smiles and as I turn back I notice something. Below the counter, on the post, amidst the hammered metal sheets that clad the bar, there is an inch and a half square tile with an embossed “R” on it. I have stood in that spot for potentially a dozen hours over the years and had missed it to this point. When Bim has a moment between attempts at fixing the runoff I sidle over and ask. Without missing a beat, he says “Michel Rousseau.”

Every piece is as important as every other piece. Not everything that Godspeed has done has been a triumph, and the situation has been challenging. It was the potential that excited people, and the pitch-lined Sklepnik represents years of earnest effort, not just in the brewhouse, but interpersonally. A month spent learning from people who have spent their entire careers on a single style, and whose trust creates possibility. Functionally speaking, the odds against its existence are such that it is construable as a miracle, and that’s before the first sip. The only way you can get here is trial and error. There’s no ironic posture as a brewer. It’s not a hobby. The secret ingredient is your life.

The point in the afternoon has come where Bim and Michael have satisfied themselves that the runoff is going smoothly. They have twenty five minutes. As Bim pours them the pitch-lined Sklepnik, I ask him to hold the pose, but the mug is too full. He notices my glass is empty and says, “I will have to pour another one.”

An everyday beer.

Lucky me.