There will soon be no shortage of places to drink freshly-made beer in Liberty Village. Two brew pubs have recently announced they'll be setting up shop there.

The international franchise Les Trois Brasseurs/The Three Brewers, with locations across Ontario and Quebec, in addition to French Polynesia, New Caledonia, La RĂŠunion, and Brazil, will soon be adding to their Toronto portfolio by setting up shop at 99 Atlantic Avenue.

News also broke this past week that Alberta-based Big Rock Brewery would be making a second venture outside of their home province (the first was in Vancouver) to bring their beer to Toronto, building a brew pub at 60 Atlantic Avenue on the corner of Liberty Street, less than 100 metres away from the new Three Brewers location.

Big Rock CEO Robert Sartor confirmed the news by phone earlier today and told me that outdoor beer-drinking will be a big part of the concept. "It's a pretty cool space," he says. "The building is over 100 years old and we occupy part of the old and part of the new and what's exciting to me is that we're going to have a really large patio."

He's also excited to bring some more of Big Rock's small scale and experimental offerings to Ontario, the kind of beers that his company makes in Alberta and BC but rarely make it out of the province given the small scale of those offerings.

Sartor says he's hopeful the doors will open on their brewpub by March and word is that Three Brewers will also be opening sometime next year.

While a representative from Liberty's eponymous brewing company told me today that they are still "actively scouting" locations for their brewery in the same area, this might be bad news for fans of local craft beer and Liberty Village Brewing Company.

It's never a bad thing when we get more options to have food and beer made under the same roof, but the arrival of two established franchise brewpubs (and Local Public Eatery) in the neighbourhood, likely means competition will soon be fierce (and rents high) for any beer-makers and publicans looking to make Liberty Village home.

Photo of an existing Three Brewers location.

Ben Johnson also writes about beer over on Ben's Beer Blog. Follow him on twitter @Ben_T_Johnson.