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| Brock St. Brewing co-owners Mark Woitzik and Victor Leone took Johnny and I on a tour of the get-closer-to-completion new Brock St Brewing facility located at Brock and Dunlop Streets in Whitby. Between my restaurant-managing pal and my beer-loving self, it was a pretty informative tour. Probably looking at a late-October or mid-November opening and I tell you, I'm planning to be there! |
But as any builder can tell you, you have to start at the foundation and then build upward. (Sadly, my foundation broke down by the end of my 20s. I've been the "before" fitness club picture ever since.)
So that was on December 9, 2017, the day of the famous - some would say infamous - Whitby Craft Beer Brewery Invasion where eight of us piled into a limousine, drove to four separate Whitby craft breweries and drank deeply from the well of top-flight craft brewers. The long white limo made it seem a little more sophisticated, at least at the beginning.
However, by the end, you had eight pasty-white incredibly buzzed people from the suburbs, ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s, all singing Wu Tang Clan in a confined area. Imagine not even the 1980s group but an actual flock of seagulls all screeching at the same time. We were less harmonious. And I mean, by a wide margin.
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| I'll be honest here. I brought Johnny in as a ringer. He has been in the restaurant industry at the management (or higher) level since the mid- 1980s and I know of no one else who has that set of credentials. He was there to quiz the guys on the restaurant side of the operation while I was simply happy to see how the brewery component looked at this point. |
But Mark Woitzik, one of the co-owners of Brock St. Brewing, had called me prior to our little adventure and invited us all to see the site of what will soon be the new Brock St Brewing at the corner of Brock and Dunlop Streets in Whitby. I immediately said yes because what idiot says no to a brewery owner? And that's how our big day started last December. In a gravel-filled lot. The rest of the day was well-chronicled so I won't get into that other than to say, "The last hour in that limo is still super hazy."
So anyway, a few weekends back, my son and I were driving out to Whitby to visit my lifelong friend, Johnny and his wife, also a good friend, Trish. To give you an idea of how close we are, David only refers to two couples outside the actual family as Aunt and Uncle. Johnny and Trish are one of them.
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| That top facade in the top photo was already closed and the glass was installed when we visited a few weeks back. In fact, at this point, their vats, kettles and all the equipment needed for a brewery is likely in place. Their Hopkins Street retail remains open and will operate at the same time as this new facility for the foreseeable future. But this is gonna be a jewel. |
So when Mark got wind I was returning to Whitby, he immediately texted and asked me to pop by the site so I could see the progress. But because a critical component of the new Brock St Brewing is going to be a upper-scale restaurant, I wanted to bring a ringer with me, a person who could speak to and ask questions about the restaurant end of things. As actress Butterfly McQueen famously yelled in the classic Gone With The Wind, "I don't know nothin' about building restaurants." Actually, her scatterbrained character, Prissy, actually said "birthin' babies" not restaurants but frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn as I know nothing about either.
Johnny would be my ringer. As a Whitby resident, I'm certain he was curious about this new addition to his town's main street. As well, he's been managing restaurants (and positions much higher than that, including co-owning one and Director of Operations for a huge, familiar-to-all chain) since the mid-1980s. So while David opted to lounge around their pool with his Aunt Trish, Johnny and I headed over to the new Brock St Brewing site.
As we approached it, I asked, "What's your guess? About $25 million?" Frankly, I was just throwing out a random number but Johnny acknowledged that it could, indeed, be that much. He would know far better than I could ever. That said, it's just our guess as the price tag is, of course, mum. Once inside the soon-to-be retail area, we were warmly greeted by co-owner Mark and Victor Leone (missing was partner #3 Scott Pepin) and the basic breakdown of "what's going where?" began.
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| Here's an interesting and hugely historic wrinkle. Mark was offered the clock from atop the old, long-since-demolished Whitby Post Office shown here. So at the moment, he is scrambling to find a clock-maker who can refurbish this key piece of Whitby history. The clock could potentially be installed at the top of the building on the corner. The one fly in the ointment? It's entirely possible that pieces for this are no longer made and the clock simply cannot be repaired. It was originally built in 1911 and it may be tough to fix it. |
We started in the retail area, which will eventually involve the wood-working skills of my favourite carpenter, Josh Beaven and I am expecting regular updates from him at this point. When Johnny saw me, he laughed, "Oh, you are ready! You even have their T-Shirt on!" Well, yeah, my Brock St tee, bought for me by Josh, has seen the Las Vegas strip four times in the last year and will once again in October. Damn straight, I'm wearing my Brock St pride to the new site.
Okay, back to the new digs. As Mark was explaining where the draft lines would be coming into the retail area, he noted that he was hoping, given their vastly-increased brewing capacity, that Brock St could do many "collaborations with other brewers in town." Given that the town's population is roughly 130,000 and they have four very vibrant, popular craft breweries - Brock St, 5 Paddles, Little Beasts and Town Brewing - at one brewery per 38,500 residents, that might just be one of the best per-capita ratios in the province, if not the country.
When Mark and Vince started talking about the restaurant component beside the retail, well, that's when Johnny jumped in.
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| Barrie Beer Brother Hago happily poses in front of Brock St Brewing during our Whitby Craft Brewery Invasion last December. To this day, Hago swears that the guys "could have saved a million dollars if they'd just named themselves Hopkins St Brewing." Nah, Brock St's better. |
The funny thing is the brewery is leasing out the restaurant component to established service industry pros in Whitby and while the men were mum on who's actually running it, Johnny confided privately he was certain that he had figured it out. He gave me the name of a group running two upper-scale restaurants in Whitby and is convinced this will be their third jewel. I would give you the name but it was unfamiliar to me and thus, quickly forgotten. But no one knows the industry as well as my friend so he's likely right.
From there, the pair took us into the brewery portion of the three-storey adventure. Okay, this is where a tiny brewery on Hopkins Street will now become a much-larger one on Brock. The new tanks, combined with older ones being relocated from Hopkins, are going to increase their brewing capacity by a multiple of five, if not more. While the space was empty (no longer the case) at the time we visited, it took little imagination to see how humongous this brewing area was going to become in the near future.
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| This are the four 120-hectolitre (3,170 US gallons) tanks now in position at the new brewery. Standing nearly three-storeys high, they are just part of the arsenal that the new Brock St Brewing will have. Oh, yes, there's much more. There's 28 tanks in total at the new joint. |
Mark explained they would have four 120-hectolitre (3,170 US gallons) tanks, four 60-hectolitre (1,585 gallon) tanks, ten 30-hectolitre (793 gallon), as well as 10 specialty 3-hectolitre (80 gallon) small-batch tanks. That's a lot of brewing capacity right there. In fact, so much so that Brock St can now act as a contract brewer for others without interrupting or delaying their own product in the slightest. After the brewery and the restaurant, that's a third money-making component for the trio.
As well, he told us some of the smaller tanks would be utilizing a new "fully-automated CIP system." What is that? Hey, glad you asked. An automated CIP system is one that high-pressure cleans the interior of the tanks with a flip of a switch. No muss, no fuss. It is the latest high-tech system in the industry. And what are the advantages of the CIP system? "It helps save on chemical usage, is better for the environment and utilizes much less water," Mark told me.
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| This is the stage the brewery was at when we visited several weeks back. In fact, the painters were in there on scissor lifts doing their thing and making the place look inhabitable. This is a huge frikkin undertaking. |
Long story short - these guys can now (or rather will soon) crank out a crap-ton of beer. Okay, from there, Victor took Johnny and I up to the second floor where he pointed out the storage area for the brewery's grains and supplies, as well as a banquet hall area with a capacity of 200 people. "We're getting a special kind of (sound-absorbing) wood for the dance floor in the banquet hall," Victor explained, which is very much needed because it is directly above the restaurant.
Of course, Johnny then quizzed him on the every single aspect of the banquet hall (the fourth money-making component) - the balcony area, how the food would get there (on a built-in dumbwaiter), who reaps the benefits (it's split - the restaurant makes money for preparing the food, Brock St makes it for renting the area so win-win) and dozens of other questions that I now completely forget.
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| Brock St Brewing's going back to Las Vegas, baby, in late October. You see, I recently bought a seat to the Maple Leafs game against the Golden Knights on my birthday - February 14, 2019 - but decided I didn't feel like waiting five more months to visit. So Ontario craft breweries, including our gang at Brock St, will be well-represented on the strip again. |
And finally, Vince took us to the third floor with the super-bitchin' view for the final part of the 19,000-square-foot structure - the exclusive club and fifth money-making component. This is where club members who have bought their way in can relax two floors above the din of the restaurant and retail area. The limited-time membership fee was basically created to bring some outside cash influx to the massive project. Susan, a friend of Johnny and Trish's who joined us for drinks (she's a big 5 Paddles fan) that night, told me the membership fee was $500, as she had bought one for her hubby.
This is an unbelievably huge step for the brewery which first opened its doors in April 2015, making it - believe it or not - the senior citizen in the Whitby craft beer scene, ahead of the three others. Mark pegged their opening date optimistically towards mid-October. So that, of course, means I'm guessing late November because nothing ever happens on time when contractors are involved. But I tell you this for free. By hook or by crook, I will be there Opening Night and there will be many pictures. Count on it. As for Johnny's take on the day? "I think Mark is going to be the next mayor of Whitby," he said, as impressed as hell. But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...
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