First time here? Take the 30-second tour of how Restaurantica works!
A velocipede is the nineteenth-century ancestor of the bicycle, and at Bicycle Craft Brewery it is also the beer most drinkers reach for first — Velocipede, a West Coast IPA cut with grapefruit, the house pour that ties the cycling motif on the sign to what lands in the glass. The bike is not decoration here; it names the brewery and its flagship, and it sets the register for a working microbrewery tucked into Industrial Avenue in Ottawa's Trainyards, a stretch of retail and light-industrial units better known for big-box parking than for craft beer. A visit is built around the tap list, not a dinner reservation. Bicycle opens as a counter rather than a dining room — you order at the bar, decide between a pint and a flight, and let the beer carry the rest.
The board is made to be sampled across, which is why flights do so much of the work. On one end sit the low-key, sessionable pours — Helga, a crisp light lager, and Jane, a clean German-style pils. In the middle are the pale ales and the odd sour: Songbird, a balanced pale with a floral edge, and the Gose of Juan Almonte, a tart and faintly spiced counterpoint for a palate that needs resetting. The hop-forward end is where the brewery spends most of its attention — Chilly Bin, a hazy and crushable APA; On the Lam, a juicy New England IPA; Happy Robot, a double dry-hopped IPA that leans toward mango and tangerine; and Velocipede holding the West Coast lane. The list rotates, and most of what pours also leaves in cans, so a flight doubles as a shopping trip. A run of three or four of these reads the house style faster than any single pint.
The food is deliberately small, and it tells you what kind of operation this is. Rather than run a kitchen, Bicycle keeps a short snack list and sources it out to neighbours: soft pretzels built around the brewery's own Velocipede jalapeño mustard, from a local bakery; pita chips and salsa from an Ottawa prepared-foods shop; beef jerky from a nearby farm; bagged chips from an Ontario maker. It is a small offer with a named supplier behind each line, which is a different thing from a tray of generic bar snacks. The snacks are there to keep a beer company, not to compete with it, and the pretzel-and-mustard plate keeps even the food pointed back at the tap.
The brewery is the work of Laura and Fariborz Behzadi, a wife-and-husband team who founded it and still brew, according to local reporting. That maker's fingerprint is the thing an anonymous taproom can't fake: the beers carry personal names and small jokes, the house makes its own mustard, and the whole enterprise reads as a two-person brewery that grew into its footprint rather than a brand that was launched into it. Bicycle has poured on Industrial Avenue since 2014, long enough to settle into its corner of the Trainyards as a neighbourhood fixture rather than a place people cross the city to find — a brewery that draws its own regulars rather than chasing a wider crowd.
What keeps Bicycle useful past a single pint is everything arranged around the tap. The attached beer shop sells cans to take home, with delivery across Ottawa and shipping province-wide, so a good flight doesn't have to end at the counter. The room is family-friendly by design — non-alcoholic beer, kombucha, pop, iced tea, and even ice cream share the list with the drafts, which lets a mixed group settle in without every order being a beer. Groups that want more can book it for a private party, framed as a casual brewery gathering rather than a formal event. None of it strays from the premise. Bicycle is a small brewery that would rather be good at beer, snacks, and the short walk home with a four-pack than pretend to be a restaurant it isn't.
Laura and Fariborz Behzadi give the listing a real maker story, with the public identity centered on a small Ottawa brewery rather than an anonymous bar.
The current tap-room list spans pilsner, lager, multiple IPAs, pale ale, gose, and APA, so the beer program has enough range for flights and comparisons.
The snack list names local or regional partners, including pretzels, salsa, jerky, and chips, which gives the small food offer more specificity than generic bar snacks.
This is Restaurantica’s own read — synthesized from publicly available sources across diner signal and editorial research, last updated July 2026. It’s our interpretation of the evidence, not a crowd average — and placement is never for sale.
Bicycle Craft Brewery is strongest as a beer-first stop, with a tap room built around house pours, flights, can pours, and an online beer shop. The appeal is the range of house-brewed beer in a compact Industrial Avenue setting.
The snack list gives the brewery a local-food angle rather than a generic bar-snack feel. Pretzels, salsa, jerky, and chips are tied to named local or regional suppliers that fit the small Ottawa brewery format.
The tap room reads as a low-friction brewery counter stop: choose draft beer, flights, snacks, and packaged beer without a full dining-room sequence. That makes it easy to use for a casual tasting or a short beer-shop visit.
Bicycle is useful beyond the tap room because its beer shop supports local beer delivery and Ontario shipping. For guests who like the tap list, take-home cans are part of the practical visit plan.
Private-party planning is a real secondary use case here, especially for groups that want beer, snacks, and a brewery-room setting. It should be framed as a casual tap-room event rather than a formal private dining room.
Restaurantica’s write-up above is synthesized from broad public signal — community reviews add the first-person layer. Share the nuances of your visit to Bicycle Craft Brewery in Ottawa: the standout dishes, the room, the service.
Write a review
