Craft Beer Passport offers discounted pints in Toronto

Passports are pretty cool. They allow their holder access to international travel, they have a badass picture you're not allowed to smile for, and they are increasingly difficult to counterfeit owing to technological features like embedded microchips.

But as cool as your passport is, it's never been all that useful for really important tasks like getting you discounts on craft beer.

Until now, that is.

Introducing The Craft Beer Passport. Designed by Mike Stulberg, an indie musician and street artist who says he was inspired by his travels through Europe and Asia to discover what makes Toronto a culturally unique city, the passport offers beer drinkers a chance to forgo airports and germ-infested hotels in order to travel to places actually worth travelling to, namely cool bars within Toronto.

Available for $20 starting May 21st, the Craft Beer Passport offers holders a chance to visit participating bars for discounted craft beer. Participant bars will have a selection of beers available to "passport holders" for just $2.00. Show your passport, get that beer stamped, and save some dough on craft beer. The list of 20 participating bars includes some of the best beer bars in Toronto, including Get Well, Tequila Bookworm, and Thirsty and Miserable and will provide access to discounted pints of local beer.

While it may seem a touch gimmicky to turn something as intrinsically rewarding as drinking into a scavenger hunt, the passports do claim to offer a "comprehensive 'field guide' to Toronto's craft beer scene" and even if that claim falls flat, at the very least, if you actually visit all the bars in the passport you'll save roughly $40--money that can then be spent on more beer.

"I think that the craft beer scene is so momentous right now that it can be overwhelming for some people to decide just where to dive in" says Stulberg. "And, often enough, some really great bars get overlooked. I see the Craft Beer Passport as a fun way for people to explore Toronto, discover new bars and support the local brewers of craft beer."

An official launch party for the Craft Beer Passport will take place on the evening of June 1st at The Piston and will include samples from a number of Ontario craft breweries, beats by Memorecks, craft beer-related door prizes and Craft Beer Passports on sale.

For more information and to purchase your craft beer passport, visit http://ift.tt/1sUbWPt.

Ben Johnson also writes about beer over on Ben's Beer Blog. For travel tips that involve beer and don't require leaving the downtown core, follow him on twitter @Ben_T_Johnson.

by Ben Johnson via blogTO