Profiles

Tanner & Co Brewing Launching This Weekend In Chester Basin, NS

Posted by acbbchris on 2017-10-04
Posted in: Profiles. Tagged: Tanner & Co Brewing. 4 comments

Tanner_Logo

Tanner & Co Brewing Company of Chester Basin, NS, is set to open its doors this weekend. Owner and brewer Dan Tanner came to enjoy beer through the culinary field and while training as a Sommelier, a different route than many others. Chester Basin is located 70km West of Halifax on the 103, near the Eastern edge of the South Shore. We traded emails with Tanner to learn more about his background, and plans for Tanner & Co Brewing.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m a veteran of the restaurant industry & have been involved in it for 17 years. I started as a server & then moved in to management at beautiful White Point Beach Resort. I originally studied wine, becoming one of the first graduates of the Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers Atlantic Chapter program. A few years later I completed the NSCC Culinary Arts program. Brewing fit perfectly with the two, as I learned how to taste from my wine studies & how to cook from culinary education.
We thought long and hard about a name for the brewery & decided to honour my family name. Tanners were among the first settlers of Lunenburg County in the mid 1700’s. I am proud to name my brewery after such a long history of hard workers, comprised mainly of fishermen and farmers.

How did you get into the world of beer?
My beer knowledge was limited until a session on beer during the Sommelier program opened my eyes to the many different styles available around the globe. I learn by doing & while I love wine, I was drawn to beer because it was something I could make with greater control. If you have a bad year producing wine, you have to wait for the next year to try again. With brewing, I have greater control on the ingredients used as well as the final outcome. And if I’m not happy with what I’ve made, I can start over the next day, and not have to wait for another season.

Tanner’s home vineyard, look for grape must to be used in some of the beers

Care to share some info on your homebrewing history?
I’ve been a homebrewer for over 5 years. Did about two batches of extract kits before making the jump to all grain. For the last two years I’ve been doing double batches just about weekly. All that extra beer is a great way to make friends!

What made you decide to take the leap into opening a brewery?
Five years ago I floated the idea to friends who thought I was crazy. They’re probably right, but after that much time & still wanting to do so, I decided to go ahead. You only live once. I’m starting with a 3BBL (350 litre) brewhouse, with two fermenters & one brite tank.

The Brewhouse

The Brewhouse

Can you tell us about the beers you’ll be brewing?
I have a lightly hopped pale ale that I’m happy with. It’ll likely show up in the rotation more often than others. Otherwise, with the smaller system we have to brew on, we’ll be experimenting lots for the first year or so. I have traditional German styles Roggenbier (Rye Beer) & Dampfbier (Steam Beer) that will also show up along with our vintage beers produced with grapes from our onsite vineyard. I had an awesome Cabernet Franc Milk Stout produced last year with our grapes. The juice went to making a small batch of wine & the skins, stalks & pulp (must) went in to the beer.
This weekend will see the release of six small batches I’ve brewed. An American Pale Ale, Belgian Blonde, Imperial Milk Stout with Masala Chai from the The Tea Brewery in Mahone Bay, a Lemon Lavender Saison, as well as the Dampfbier and Roggenbier.

Do you have a favorite beer style, beer, or brewery you enjoy drinking (or brewing)?
Picking a favourite beer is like picking a favourite child (I assume anyway). I enjoy trying any beer I can get my hands on, to taste, evaluate & try to dissect what the brewer was going for.

How can folks enjoy your beer?
We will be concentrating on mostly selling kegs to licensees, with some growler sales in some of the local Farmers’ Markets. For this weekend’s soft launch, growlers will be for sale at the brewery itself.

Do you have some initial accounts in the area lined up to serve your beers?
We’ve been waiting until we are in the production phase to knock on doors. Saltbox Brewing was the first to offer to put us in their guest tap rotation, so once production is in full swing, our beer will be available there. Another great show of support from a local brewery! Plus we have several more breweries, restaurants and bars on the short list for kegs shortly.

Coming Soon!

Have you had any assistance from other breweries or folks in Atlantic Canada?
Jeff Saunders from Bad Apple Brewhouse has been a huge help. No matter how dumb the question he has always answered questions and offered advice. Happy to have such a great brewer answer my calls and emails. And since learning about us, the great folks at Saltbox Brewing in Mahone Bay have been proactive in offering assistance, as they recently went through many of the steps and faced the same hurdles to open.

Where do you hope to see your brewery in the next 2-3 years?
That’s a great question. I love brewing beer & hope that people enjoy it. I’m happy staying small. I love my day job as well, so just happy getting the chance to live out my passion & experiment in small batches.

Thanks very much to Dan for letting us know about the brewery. You can grab your first tastes of Tanner & Co this weekend at the brewery on Angus Hiltz Rd from 12-6PM Saturday and again Sunday (if there’s anything left!). Currently, only retail sales (0.75l flip top and 1.89l growlers) are possible at the brewery, though a taproom may be coming in the future. Keep an eye on the T&C Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest news and releases.

Backstage Brewing Co – Opening in Stellarton, NS in Early September

Posted by acbbaaron on 2017-08-23
Posted in: Profiles. Tagged: Backstage Brewing, North Brewing, Uncle Leo's Brewery. 1 comment

Stellarton’s A.J. Leadbetter is no stranger to small business. His father owned and operated a painting business in Stellarton for 60-some-odd years, after which AJ ran the family shop himself until a fire severely damaged the storefront in 2015. Meanwhile, he also expressed a love for music, playing guitar in bands around Pictou County for the better part of the last decade. After discovering craft beer and developing a home brewing hobby, AJ spent some time working at Uncle Leo’s in Lyon’s Brook, where he gained an appreciation for the processes and work involved in a production brewery. Now, he’s blending his entrepreneurial spirit and musical bent along with his love of beer and an intensely DIY approach to bring a second brewery to the PC, this one “in town” on Bridge Avenue in Stellarton in the building that formerly housed his family’s paint shop. Backstage Brewing Co. is built around the idea of bringing folks backstage, to see the show behind the show. AJ has been busily building his brewery over the last several months, and is poised to start selling beer in September. We reached out to ask him our usual gamut of questions and get the story behind Backstage Brewing.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you get into the world of beer?
I started home brewing a few years ago after my friend Seth got me into it. Started out brewing a few kit beers before getting bored and wanting to get in deep. I’m a bit of a foodie so that desire to create food led to wanting to create beers.

What made you decide to take the step into opening a brewery?
Prior to getting into brewing beer we used to do chicken wing parties. Then we introduced my beer to these parties and the reception to them was great. It was that support that sparked the fire to get going on a microbrewery.

Can you tell us about the beers you plan on offering initially?
We have 4-5 that will be in our core line-up. Daydreamer is a pale ale that comes in at 4.8% and 21 IBU. Hangover Helper is an American Pale, 5.3% and 40 IBU; light-bodied and packed with flavor. Headliner is big juicy IPA. It’s 6.3% and 60 IBU. Gemini is a DIPA. 8% and 100+ IBU. It’s big! It’s bitter! And surprisingly easy to drink! Nunmoar Black IPA is 6.6% and 75 IBU. Roasted, Hoppy, and Black. How much more black can it be? None.

What are your plans for distribution? Plans for tap accounts, bottles, growlers, etc.? Will you be licensed for on-site sales or consumption at the brewery?
Right now, our plan is to sell the majority of the beer out of the brewery: we’ll be offering growler fills of our beers, and operating a taproom, located in the same building as the brewery. Once all our permits are in place, we will have 12 taps of Nova Scotia craft beer, with 4-5 taps reserved for Backstage Brews.

Do you have some initial accounts in the area lined up to serve your beers?
We don’t have any local tap accounts lined up but have had interest in Halifax.

Do you have an approximate launch date?
Our tanks are installed and we’ve been working on filling them. That will hopefully have us selling our products for early September, when we’re hoping to do a soft launch.

Have you had any assistance from other breweries/people in Atlantic Canada (or elsewhere)?
Yes, I’ve been working for Uncle Leo’s since November 2016. What started as hanging out at the brewery turned into a full time job. Karl and Rebecca have been very good to me. The experience/knowledge I’ve gathered while working in a commercial brewery is kind of priceless. We purchased our brew house from Peter at North Brewing. Peter and Josh have been great. The craft beer community in Nova Scotia is very helpful.

In terms of putting the brewery and business together, my wife Beth’s parents, Wayne and Lynn, have been instrumental. Wayne is our head of construction and Lynn is our bookkeeper.

What type of system are you be brewing on?
It’s a 2.5bbl Psychobrew system. We are hoping to produce 250-300bbl this year.

Care to share some info on your homebrewing history?
It’s the classic “homebrewer turned pro brewer” story. I homebrewed and people enjoyed the finished beers. Beth has been my biggest supporter and really pushed me to make this happen.

Do you have a favorite beer style, beer, or brewery you enjoy drinking?
Honestly, I love big hoppy beers. West coast-style IPAs being my favorite. I never seem to grow tired of them.

Do you have a website, Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter page?
We have no website at this point, we have a Facebook page here, that just went live in the last couple weeks. We also have an instagram account, @backstagebrewingco

We’ve been totally focused on making the brewery happen. The social media presence will come. Beer first.

Anything else you’d like to share? We’d love pass it along.
We look forward to getting our beers out there for people to enjoy. Thanks for the support so far!

Thanks to AJ for taking the time to answer our questions about Backstage Brewing and letting us know what he’s got in the works. We’ll be keeping our collective ear to the ground for an official opening announcement and we’ll share it with you as soon as we know. Meanwhile, the best way to follow AJ’s progress is on Instagram where you can see the hard work, creativity and skill that’s going into his brewery and taproom. You’ll also have a chance to hear a more extensive interview with AJ by the gang from 902 BrewCast, currently scheduled to drop on September 19th.

Long Bay Brewery – Open Now in Rothesay, NB

Posted by acbbshawn on 2017-08-15
Posted in: Profiles. Tagged: Long Bay Brewery. Leave a Comment

Rothesay’s newest brewery, Long Bay Brewery, launched with a soft opening in late June. Owned by husband and wife team Sean Doyle and Julie Young, the brewery has spent the summer filling growlers of their two flagship beers for locals and tourists passing through. We recently chatted with Sean, who is also the brewer, to find out a little more about what makes Long Bay tick, and what they have planned for thirsty New Brunswickers in the coming months…

Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?
We both grew up in the area and are here to stay. We spend most of our free time chasing our three sons around, tending our large vegetable garden, and taking care of our chickens.

How did you get into the world of beer?
When craft beer first started to become available it was tough to come by, and we didn’t necessarily have the money to spend on it either, so we had to take matters into our own hands. After a few years goofing around with brewing kits, I built an electric all grain system at our house to really dial in a few recipes. I spent a big part of my career as a biologist, so I really connected well with brewing and became deeply interested in the biology and chemistry involved in making good beer. With my love for the craft, and Julie’s experience in customer service, we decided to make the jump.

What is the culture or ethos of the brewery?
Our culture here is all about making the best beer we can, by using high end ingredients. I know this sounds like your same old story, but we take it to great lengths. For instance, we only use liquid cultures of yeast, we choose to use specialized imported grain by the bag instead of solely 2-row, and we use really high quality hops from a local supplier that are spot-on. This mindset certainly isn’t cheap, but when I was home brewing I decided pretty early on that if I was going to put in 10+ hours brewing a batch, I wasn’t going to do it without the best ingredients I could get. We definitely brought that same ethos with us here to the brewery.

Long Bay Brewery, 82 Marr Rd, Rothesay, NB

Can you tell us about the beers you’ve launched with? Any plans for seasonals or one-offs in the works?
At first we are offering two core beers:

Bantam APA – This is a recipe we had brewed at home for years. It’s a 5.5% ABV Pale Ale that has huge hop aroma, but is quite low in bitterness (40 IBUs). It’s a very approachable, dry beer that we always had on hand at home in both the winter and summer months, and it became a staple style for us. We use Cascade and Centennial hops supplied by Darlings Island Farm, where the owner (Josh Mayich) pelletizes them under low temperatures before packaging, which really preserves the hop oil and makes for a really unique aroma in the final beer. We also use Citra, which is an amazing hop for any hop forward ale, in our opinion.

Chalice Belgian Ale – This beer is a super dry, deceivingly strong beer that was also a popular beer for us at home. To me, yeast selection is just as important to a Belgian beer as hop selection is to make an IPA, so it took years for me to find the right strain. So, to make this beer exactly the way I liked in bigger batches, I had to send my house Belgian yeast strain to Escarpment Labs to be grown up to commercial sizes. It’s a 6.5% ABV Belgian Blond ale, with all of the aromatic characters you would expect from a Belgian beer. It has been really well received with our customers so far, so we will definitely keep this in the core lineup.

We have a 7% ABV IPA and a Berliner Weisse in the works as well, and I hope to have them ready in the next month or so.

How can people enjoy your beer?
Our big push is to get our beer in bottles in ANBL stores. We bought a small bottler from the folks at Boxing Rock, and are working at getting it up and running. We also plan to have a few pubs in the Saint John area as well soon, but for now, we are selling growlers only at the brewery and don’t have seating for consumption on-site.

Growlers are available at the brewery now, with bottles and kegs available soon

What are the days/hours of the retail location?
We are open Wednesday and Thursday 3pm-8pm, and Friday and Saturday 12pm-8pm. We are closed Sunday-Tuesday for brewing operations.

Do you have some initial accounts in the area lined up to serve your beers on tap?
We have had a few conversations with pubs, but don’t want to go too far until we get a few more batches on. We will be reaching out to accounts here soon.

Have you had any assistance from other breweries/people in Atlantic Canada (or elsewhere)?
We have had a bunch of help from Henry at Boxing Rock. He is really good technically and was a great guy to ask tough questions about steam boiler setup and brewing equipment in general. Another person that helped was Esty (Andrew Estabrooks) from Foghorn Brewing just down the road from us. That guy has a ton of brewing experience and was a huge help with hiccups in scaling up to big brewing gear. This industry is great for support from other brewers and we are definitely going to be the same way when any other brewery needs help.

Where do you hope to see your brewery in the next 2-3 years?
In the next 2-3 years I would like to see us stay right in the we are, but with a few more tanks and a few more recipes dialed in nicely and available in bottles. Really the big thing is I hope the smoke clears a bit so we can get time to experiment a bit with things like Brettanomyces cultures, and make a few solid funky wild beers while keeping the core beers rolling.

For us beer nerds:

What size/manufacturer/type of system are you brewing on? Expected output (monthly, yearly, etc)?
We have a 15 bbl (~1750 L) steam-powered DME brewhouse with 30 bbl (~3500 L) fermentors. We wanted the ability to put out a large volume of beer if demand increases so we went as big as we could. Based on advice from other brewers this was the best way to go.

Long Bay’s 15 BBL brewhouse, from Charlottetown’s DME

Do you have a favorite beer style, beer, or brewery you enjoy drinking?
My wife and I are really into sour and wild beers. The most enjoyable beers I’ve ever made were ones that sat tucked away for a year with Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces in a keg. I know it’s going to be tough to pull anything off like that on big gear since we can’t tie up tanks very long, but eventually we will find a way.

How about a favourite style or ingredient to brew with?
Not sure if you would consider yeast an ingredient (Ed: sure we would!), but to me it is by far the most important and interesting addition to any beer. I have brewed with a huge number of the yeast strains available to brewers and feel like it’s the differences between strains and how to use them that makes brewing interesting.

Thanks to Sean for answering our questions, and best wishes to he and Julie on Long Bay’s endeavors! Be sure to stop by the brewery at 82 Marr Rd in Rothesay for a couple of growler fills at the times mentioned above, and keep your eyes open for their Bantam APA and Chalice Belgian Ale in bottles in the coming weeks. Follow along with the new releases and licensee sales on their social media pages too: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Congratulations!