At the behest of Cask Marque, I’m in Montreal. It’s late September and it is coincidentally Montreal Cask Beer Week; an event that is only really nascent this year. My job is simple, if a little funny to observe from the outside. I have to ensure that the cask ale being served is up to scratch. This is partially done with observances on clarity, aroma, and flavour, but also requires accurate temperature reading. While it’s meant to be done anonymously, if you’re the only person who has ever actually whipped out a Thermapen while drinking your beer in order to figure out whether it’s within parameters, they’re probably going to put two and two together.

I’m sitting at the bar at La Courtepointe, getting ready to order a half of Brasserie Albion’s Bitter. The notebook and pen are ready, and I plan to surreptitiously slide the thermometer out of a side pocket on my bag. I’m struck by the look of the room. It’s a corner building with large maneuverable windows on both sides of the door. The patio is lively since it is still unseasonably warm and some simple pergolas act as sun shades. The barroom itself is except for the turntable spinning Sketches of Spain. On the wall near the entrance is the quilt that the establishment takes its name from. The furniture is simple blonde wood, but the tile on the bar matches the quilt. 

For a young bar, there’s a throughline. Not just from the bar that used to occupy this space (later, some of the regulars that have made the transition from the old cafe or tavern will joyfully embrace the owner as they settle their tab), but from the lives of the people running La Courtepointe. The curation of beer lists, the decision to physically flip vinyl instead of simply streaming, and even the single page food menu all speak of intentionality. One of the owners, Maxime, is putting Miles back on the shelf and switching to Mingus when he sees the thermometer.

We fall to talking about his cask setup, which is brand new. Typically, if casks are served on Gravity, there might be a cooling blanket; ideally you’d get through a pin on your counter in a day. If you have a cask fridge and you’re drawing through an Angram engine, it is probably dialled in for the correct temperature. Maxime has built his engine into the counter next to his fridge. The draw line cannot be more than a couple of feet long. The cask is connected to a small tank of gas that exists simply to create head pressure rather than push the beer. It keeps it in better condition for a longer period of time.

“I built it special,” he says. “If you want to serve cask, you want to get it right. When people cut corners, the customers can tell. Why would you do it if you were going to cut corners?”

It’s no surprise they passed with flying colours.

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Production value could mean a lot of things, but essentially it comes down to providing an authentic, enjoyable experience. This could be investing your products with meaning, brewing well enough that the beer speaks for itself, employing staff that will engage with the customers, or just providing an ambiance and experience that is memorable.

Sadly, it’s one of the things that Craft Beer in general is not very good at, and the difficulty is that this is largely partitive in your perception. That is to say, you only notice that the production value is missing. If they’re doing it right, you might not notice it at all.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever had a barstool injury? On the face of it, it’s a silly question. 

That being said, if I were to ask you how you feel about the metal stools with the handle in the middle of the seat, you’d know exactly what I was referring to. Along with exposed cinder blocks and Edison lightbulbs, they’re part of the “Baby’s First Craft Beer Kit” on Amazon. At some point the owners made a choice, and that choice was not to spend money on more comfortable seating. Maybe they ran out of cash during the build, or maybe they just didn’t think about it at all. Maybe they thought that’s just the kind of furniture that exists in this kind of space. It is likely due to the fact that the nature of the business changed to become taproom-centric at some point in time after the decisions were made.

If you sit on them for a couple of hours, you probably wake up with back pain the next day. Maybe next time you go to a brewery, you go to one that isn’t actively trying to hurt you. 

The details are important, and it means that if you’re in the Craft Beer space you need to think about them. 

The ability to think through all of the myriad details of the experience is one that’s increasingly necessary in a world that doesn’t really care about Craft Beer in the way that it used to. At one point, around 2013, you could open your brewery and just existing was enough to carry you for several years. I talk to people across the province and across the city and even the most devout fans of Craft Beer aren’t aware of breweries that opened post 2020. Some people have seemed to take even positive reviews as the threat of homework. 

I’m not immune. Sometime before Christmas I would like to get to Burdock Kensington, Bickford, Everyside, Samara, Red Tape, Taberna Nacional, and probably Steadfast. I’m hoping they’ll delight me and I’ll be able to write lovely things about them. What if they don’t? Time is finite and the budget is finite, and do I really want to spend my time reviewing things badly if no one is paying me to do it? Will they have production value suitable to impress?

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True History Brewing at St. Clair and Dufferin is a tremendous example of production value.

For True History, detail is everything. The little things combine to make it much more than it ought to be. 

Consider the beer they’re serving. They have restricted their selection to certain styles, mostly German and Bohemian, but periodically branching out into the wider world of lager including Central Europe and North America. They are actively searching out malt from different malting houses across Europe and North America because that is the palette that they have decided to interact with. If the style requires decoction, they will perform that technique. I would sometimes be on the way to work and pass the brewery early in the morning. The lights would be on. The lagering time is prodigious. Sticks and Stones, their Oktoberfest beers, are actually lagered from March. When it comes to service, they have switched all of their taps to Lukr side pours. Not only that, but they’ve added a Vom Fass service method to take advantage of the carbonation already in the beer.

When they pour that beer, whichever one you might order, it will come in glassware that has been specially chosen. The Weizen glass features a cross hatched diamond pattern I haven’t seen since Denison’s. The style of mug your lager comes in might change based on the style or the fashion they’ve decided on that season. It will be served expertly. I have seen pours replaced because they’re not happy with the glassware cleanliness, even though they are scrupulously clean. It’s the closest I’ve seen a brewery come to soignee in Toronto.

The glass will be set on a custom walnut bar with a pleasing brunswick bowling lane stripe. It will be illuminated gently by pendulous art-deco light fixtures. The furniture is all of a piece in brown wood, as though it had been placed there in the 1960’s waiting for the brewery to exist. The window panes between the taproom and brewery seem to be leaded, which mirrors the 1900 construction of the neighbourhood. The skis, prominently displayed, suggest equally an Alpine chalet in the Tyrol and a rec room two blocks over. The wallpaper, should you take the time to notice it, is bespoke and features the brewery logo and other charming details.

The catering is handled by Beisl, focusing on Viennese classics and is friendly for all ages. I have certainly seen the room contain as many strollers as serious beer drinkers, and for the kids, the Kasespaetzle would serve as a mac and cheese substitute. I’m partial to the Holsteiner Eggs. Looking at the current menu, I would say the Clams n’ Bratwurst suggest Jacob Wirth’s more than Cafe Mozart, but you’d be happy whether it was Austria or Boston.

Now, True History is not to everyone’s taste. I’ve heard people describe it as a little sleepy. If you’re an enjoyer of IPA, there might not be much for you. What you can’t really argue is that they considered every detail and that they have not cut any corners. Every minute choice is designed to provide the experience that they have envisioned. When you receive a beer at the bar, all of these choices come to bear on it. They are uniquely themselves. 

You can’t fake that. 

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Think about the places that you enjoy visiting for a beverage. 

I had a German transplant ask me, as I was walking him around Toronto with his wife, whether the city had a soul. It’s a devil of a question to ask someone around Sankofa Square, which is about as primly corporate as Toronto gets. I took them to The Imperial Pub. 

Yes, I know. The beer was bad. I have it on good authority they were pushing draft through the lines with compressed air. I once had a Thornbury Pickup Truck Pilsner with four separate off flavours including what I think was Indole, which I had only ever seen in a spike kit. 

They immediately saw the appeal, these people from Dusseldorf. It helped that I ordered canned beer.

I grant you, it’s a different kind of production value, the dive bar. It is decided on by the patrons. For 81 years, people used it as a waystation and hideaway, snug but not evil, scruffy but not quite scrofulous. When I was last there, Sinatra was wafting softly from the jukebox about County Down or London Town on a rainy October afternoon and I had a quart of Molson Export that had probably been illegally transported from Quebec. The red neon shone outside the second floor window and the vaguely Castilian decor and captain’s chairs of the library bar seemed so out of style as to be like respite from 2025. People need that. 

I popped my head in on Tuesday night to see if they had any T-shirts left. The place was rammed solid, wall to wall with people. A security guard stood watch for occupancy by the stairs and seemed bemused by the entire affair. Out of the damp autumn, people had come at twilight to bask in whatever special glow had been invested by generations of patrons, making its fifth last night seem heartworn. 

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You can’t fake production value. If beer is about people, then what makes it good must also be about people. I once wrote of Godspeed’s brewer Luc Lafontaine that the secret ingredient in his beer is his life. 

In 2025, the best tool for the survival of Craft Beer is production value. You may have noticed that Guinness is having a resurgence. Think of the iconography surrounding that brand and understand that this is cumulative. You may have noticed the wide selection of Belgian brands in the LCBO at the moment. Think of the collective culture the Belgian Brewers’ Guild has tried to enable over the years in terms of service and specialty glassware. 

If, as a drinker of Craft Beer, I can give you one piece of advice, it’s this: If you’re going out and spending ten to twelve dollars on a pint of beer, every part of that experience should delight you. You should be voting with your dollar to support people who are taking the details seriously, or at the very least, paying for experiences that you find edifying. Good enough shouldn’t cut it.