Beer Academy: Small-batch Craft Brewery, Tasting Room & Beer Shop, and experiential beer event space where, according to their Twitter bio, “beer knowledge is shared, glasses raised, and thirsts are satisfied.”

Yep, this place is a one stop shop for beer geekery. There’s no other place quite like it in Toronto to date. We checked out the grand opening for a night of beer banter over cheese and brews, beer infused desserts (chocolate porter cake, anyone?) and sample upon sample of their pretty darn delicious homemade beers.

The new space (which just opened on Wednesday) moved into the old Duggan’s Brewery at 75 Victoria St. It’s the brainchild of Six Pints Speciality Beer Company, a craft-beer division of Molson Coors.  It’s rustic, cozy, and urban cottagey with a fireplace and a big shelf of beer books. It all feels kinds of like an invitation to camp out on their leather seats with your feet up and drink sample after sample of beer. We happily obliged.

The walls are covered in historical facts and beer quotes, so you can learn a lot just by walking around the place (if you don’t have your beer gogg’s on, that is), but the well-learned beer experts that run the joint will tell you everything you want to know. We even got a run-down of the brewing process complete with a coffee machine demo. Wild.

The 5 custom brews made in house include a blonde ale, a dunkel weiss, Belgium brown, a pale ale and a porter. You can wet your whistle on those in their tasting room, and you can take them home in growlers or quart bottles if you dig them (or if you want to try your hand at porter cake – I know I sure do.)

~ Kait Fowlie