NEWS

Mother and son brew up pint-size honour

Pat Macdonald and her son Ian are marking the 200th birthday of Sir John A. Macdonald in a very Canadian way — with their own beer named for him.

The Mt. Pleasant Road and Lawrence Avenue East area residents spent three months last summer attempting to figure out what being Canadian is and how to turn that into a beer. They arrived at feisty, but smooth, and Old Tomorrow Canadian Pale was born.

“We wanted to create a beer that really had that Canadian soul and spirit in it,” Ian said on Friday, heading into the weekend in which Canadians marked the founding father’s bicentennial.

The mother and son teamed up with Jamie Mistry, former head brewmaster at Amsterdam Brewery, to work on the brewing process and find the right flavour for their premier brew.

“The genesis for the idea came from many places, but first from the heart,” Pat said. “You can’t have a last name like Macdonald and not care about Sir John A.”

Though the connection to Macdonald is in the name only, and not by relation, Ian says his family members are all history enthusiasts and they wanted to do something to celebrate Canada’s founding father.

“We wanted to celebrate him and also celebrate the greatness that has flourished out of something that happened 150 years ago,” he said. “We have a country we can call our own and now we have a beer we can call our own.”

Beer is made from water, yeast, malt and hops. Ian Macdonald says Old Tomorrow attempts to use a mix of ingredients that mimic Canada’s history and having “the best of everything in the world coming together.”

“We all came from the Old World way back when, but had to deal with Canada and the ruggedness that went with it in the new world,” he said. “We wanted to blend that together.”

Old Tomorrow uses cascade hops, Canadian rye and Canadian two-row barley to represent the new world, and Slovenian hops, UK pale malt and Caramunich III malt to represent the old world.

As of Sir John A. Macdonald’s 200th birthday on the weekend, Old Tomorrow could be found in more than 110 LCBO outlets, as well as on tap at 22 bars.

Pat said they’ve been wanting to do something to honour Canada’s first Prime Minister for a long time, and the idea was always to create a beer for him.

“What better way to acknowledge [Macdonald’s achievements] than to toast him with a beer?” she remarked.