When most people think of drinking in Hull, what usually comes to mind are seedy nightclubs and carrying backpacks of gas station-purchased beer over the bridge.
This simplistic view sells short some of the best places to get beer in the city, and one in particular, Les Brasseurs du Temps (BDT), does a fine job of blowing nearly every beer bar in Ottawa out of the water.
Built on the site of a 200-year-old brewery, in an old pumphouse, the massive bar is about a 10-minute walk from Terrasses de la Chaudière, just in the opposite direction from the sticky clubs on Promenade du Portage.
The enormous site features a restaurant, microbrewery, live music space, and a museum devoted to the history of brewing in Canada.
“When we said we would do all four things, people thought we were crazy,” vice-president Marc Godin said.
Godin and his business partners fell into doing so much with their space because the city had a moratorium on new liquor licenses, largely due to its long and sometimes difficult history as a place to drink.
“The Irish workers who dug the Rideau Canal and developed Ottawa used to call Hull beer town, because that’s the place they would have to come to sleep at night and have a beer,” Godin said. “When Prohibition came, Hull became happy town—because it was legal to drink wine or beer, so all the business class, political class, and travellers came to Hull.”
Historically, Quebec never truly enacted Prohibition when the rest of Canada and the United States did. Many companies, such as Molson, Carling, and Seagrams, survived the period through moving their operations into the province. Moving so much alcohol production into one place naturally led to difficulties in the border towns.
“Beertown became Happytown became Little Chicago,” Godin said. “We had the largest concentration of bars and hotels in Canada for over 100 years.”
It stayed like this for years after Prohibition ended, and the city wouldn’t give out any new liquor licenses for bars. So BDT had to become a restaurant.
It was a blessing in disguise. BDT serves amped-up pub food alongside more complex fare, serving everything from steak frites, to salads, to poutine. The menu is massive and there is a virtual guarantee that there will be a beer on the menu to match whatever you eat.
The beer itself is the main draw here and they make many styles that aren’t found anywhere in Ottawa. Alongside mainstays like crisp extra special bitters, smooth stouts, and hoppy IPAs are beers that usually require long hunts to find elsewhere.
The biggest standouts include a sour-mash framboise, a raspberry-flavoured beer that has a sour tang, a minty imperial saison, and a rauch (or ‘smoke’) beer. Only the boldest breweries attempt these sorts of brews, and BDT hits their stride with these.
Alongside the bar is a winding ramp which leads into a museum with a sizable collection of brewing tools, bottles, and artifacts from the last 150 years, all laid out with English captions.
The museum meanders around the brewing floor and covers hundreds of years of brewing in Quebec and elsewhere. It’s an excellent way to sip a pint and get lost in the remarkably quiet white hall.
“We developed the museum with the help of a historian from the city of Cornwall, who happens to be an expert on Canadian brewing history,” Godin said. “He saw the building, and even though it was still under construction, he said, ‘Guys, I think I’ve found home for my relics.’”
A few dusty artifacts on shelves behind the bar this is not. It tells an interesting tale of Quebec’s odd role as the only province to never truly run dry in the last 100 years, and the massive wealth beer has brought to the province ever since.
It’s rare to find a bar that hits the right notes on so many levels, and it made me rethink Hull beyond a place for fake IDs and angry bouncers.
Having been four times in the last two months, the atmosphere remains laid-back and calm—somewhat surprising considering that shots are $3—and everyone from families to college students and couples on dates coexist harmoniously.
