Brewery news you probably knew

Craig Flynn and Brenda O'Reilley, who are the owners
of YellowBelly Brewery in St John's, Newfoundland,
just took possession of the 126-year-old Cathedral of
the Immaculate Conception in Harbour Grace and
will renovate it into a brewery, taphouse, beer garden,
hotel an spa over the next two years. Is this a godsend?

A lot of us think of drinking good craft beer as practically a religious experience. Perhaps I don't equate all that to a "march a pair of every animal onto a big boat to avoid a flood" kind of religious experience but I certainly think it's a "Mother of Mary, this is a goddamn good beer!" type of religious experience. As you may have ascertained, I'm not particularly prone towards religion. That said, I'm very spiritual when it comes to good beer.

But let's look at this from a different spiritual angle, shall we? And I'm gonna bypass the Catholic Church with this one and go straight for a vacant Catholic Cathedral. A really big cathedral (as they tend to be.)

Recently, Craig Flynn and Brenda O'Reilly, the owners of the very successful YellowBelly Brewery and Restaurant in St John's, Nfld, purchased the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Harbour Grace, Nfld. The distance between the city and town is 46 kilometres (27 miles) directly across Conception Bay as the crow flies or 107 kilometres (66 miles) if you're driving. So why would they buy this cathedral for an undisclosed amount of collection plate cash? Well, truth to tell, the gorgeous-looking Gothic structure of yore, built in 1892, has sat empty since 2014.

This George Clooney-looking dude is none other
than Liam Mckenna, the lovable brewmaster at 
YellowBelly Brewing. When the cathedral project
takes off, well, Liam's job will expand quite a bit.

Now in 2014, a real estate appraisal declared it to have no market value. They must have been talking about the cathedral itself because let's face it, land always has get-out-the-cheque-book-now! value. That's the bonus of being a finite resource. At that exact same time, an engineering consultation said it would cost $9 million to restore the building. So the Church gave that a hard pass and let it sit vacant. That is until the Roman Catholic Diocese of Grand Falls sat down with Flynn and O'Reilly this year. A deal was struck between the two sides and now the pair will redevelop the building into... I love this part... a craft brewery, a taphouse-restaurant, a beer garden and a little further down the road, a hotel and a spa. Let us pray!!

The whole reno is gonna start this January with the hopes of maybe being open by Summer 2020. And again, that's the brewery-restaurant-beer garden part only. Like I said, the rest gets done when it gets done. Now I don't know either of the owners. But I do know the YellowBelly Brewmaster, one Liam Mckenna. So I went to him and asked, hey, what's going on? Your owners bought a church??

"No," he replied. "A cathedral. You could fit six churches inside it."

Well, YellowBelly Brewery and Public House at 288 Water Street in St.
John's, Newfoundland is about to get a sister brewery in Grace Harbour,
Nfld, named... well, I guess no one knows that yet. However, it's gonna be
in a big cathedral and will kick about a ton of ass! Excuse my blasphemy.

So, I asked, you're the Brewmaster for both now?
"Yep. (I'll be) hiring head brewers for each (while) I'll be the Vice-President of Brewing."

And as VP of Brewing, what will his duties be vis-a-vis the new cathedral brewery operation? "(I'll be) specifying, ordering equipment, personnel planning, hiring, training, overseeing all electrical-structural-mechanical and brewer-related (issues), budgeting, planning, environmental. Typical shit."

I don't know, gang, does any of this sound like typical shit to you? Typical shit to us is "Oh, crap, it's Monday." I mean, I go into work, sell beer, go home, drink beer... rinse, repeat.

Taras Manzie, President-CEO of Lake of the Woods
Brewing in Kenora, is opening a second brewery. That
has happened before (Mill St, Bellwoods) except that
Manzie is opening his second one in Warroad, a tiny
town in Minnesota. He will effectively be the first ever
Ontario brewery to open a satellite outfit in the USA,

Liam and I must have very different day-planners. Just sayin'. But this new cathedral brewery? Talk about an ultra-cool travel destination for craft beer lovers. A former cathedral? Praise be... to Odin.

Okay, so here's a separate story about an Ontario craft brewery opening a second destination. But this one has a unique and original twist. The second brewery is in another country. For that, let's travel to Kenora, Ontario which is about as north-west as you can get in Ontario without actually being in Manitoba. I worked there as a fresh-faced journalist briefly in the mid-1980s. I came back to Southern Ontario because it was simply too cold for me to hang there in the winter, hitting minus-40C or minus-40F, if you prefer. (The Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet at minus-40.) We had to plug in our cars at night. And yes, I am a wuss. Like I said, worked there briefly.


Someone who is definitely not a wuss? That would be Taras Manzie, the President and CEO of Lake of the Woods Brewing in Kenora. While LOW Brewing has been around since June 2013 (Hey, the same time I started writing this crap blog! Coincidence??? Yes, completely. Smarten up), he was looking for a new challenge. He found a big one. Last week, LOW Brewing announced they'd be opening a second brewery in Warroad, Minnesota.

On the bottom is the five-year-old Lake of the Woods Brewing up in
Kenora while on the top are the designer sketches of the new Lake of
the Woods Brewing in Warroad, Minnesota, slated to open in 2019.

Wait. Minnesota? Like United States' Minnesota? Yupper do. What's not a coincidence? When LOW Brewing opened, it was in Kenora's old firehall. If you look at the picture, you can see where the trucks came in and out. As for the new LOW Brewing in Minnesota? Also located where the town's old firehall was.

Just as the Kenora LOW Brewing is Ontario's most northern brewery, the Minnesota version is about to become the state's most northern brewery, as well.

As well as the name, the two breweries share something else in common. A shoreline view of Lake of the Woods, a 70 mile (113 km) long lake with 14,550 islands. Bordered by Ontario, Manitoba and Minnesota, Kenora is situated at the north-east corner of the lake while Warroad is down on the south-west corner. That said, they are separated by 220 kilometres (137 miles).

The only picture I could find of the old Warroad
Minnesota firehall looked like it was taken in
about 1910 - fuzzy as hell. So instead, I've opted
to use a picture of their water tower. It's tall...

In a media release, Manzie noted, "We want to service the lake and the lake is touched by Minnesota, Manitoba and Ontario. That's sort of our wheelhouse. That's our backyard. That's where we'll play and operate and work to develop communities."

Eric Nerland, the President of the new Minnesota LOW Brewing, was equally pumped (firehall humour) about the new project. "We are so excited to be bringing Lake of the Woods Brewing Company's history, brand and quality to Minnesota."

While numerous Ontario breweries have been exporting their product to the United States, this is the first time an Ontario has actually built another brewery in the US. Pretty big news. So I asked Manzie how long this has been in the works.

"We've been working on it for close to a year," he told me. "Construction's already underway but slowly. (We're) slated to open in the late Winter, early Spring 2019. The (brewing) equipment will arrive in January. So yeah, we're pretty excited, too." Wow, opening another brewery in the US - I mean, geez, Taras, how do you top that?

The founders of Longslice Brewery - from left, Sebastian
Lesch, John Peat and Jimmy Peat. When I first met this trio
in the Summer of 2015 at the Burlington Summer Craft Beer
Festival, they were contract-brewing at Cool Brewing in
Etobicoke. They are just months away from independent
brewing at The Aviary in the Canary District of Toronto.

"There will be more announcements coming soon about some pretty exciting OTHER developments that have been in the works, as well," he teased.

Okay, so here's another development by another brewery, this time in Toronto. I first met brothers Jimmy and John Peat and Sebastian Lesch back in the Summer of 2015 when they took part in the Burlington Summer Beer Festival. Their Longslice Brewery was basically just starting out but did have a beer on the market, their Hopsta La Vista IPA. That beer - recipe created by Jimmy - was tasty enough to have won them the Best British Style IPA at the 2015 Ontario Brewing Awards. So basically, they came flying out of the gate.

But as long as I've known them (Jimmy and I have been Facebook friends since that time while the other two will not accept my calls because their cell phone plans are clearly sub-standard), they've been contract brewing. Their Hopsta La Vista was followed by Loose Lips Lager, which has now collected two consecutive silvers at the Ontario Brewing Awards for Best Oktoberfest-Marzen in 2017 and now 2018.

John Peat, one third of Longslice Brewing, wears
their Ontario Brewing Awards silver for Loose Lips
Lager in The Aviary pouch like it's a big old gun.

But ever since their humble beginnings, the guys have longed to own their own brewery. Looks like that dream is close to being realized. Earlier this year, it was announced that Longslice Brewing and The Dock Ellis (restaurant) would be partnering to open a joint establishment - The Aviary, a brewpub in the heart of Toronto's Canary District.

For those unfamiliar with the name Dock Ellis, he was a Major League baseball pitcher with five different MLB clubs from 1968 to 1979. On June 12, 1970, he threw a no-hitter and later claimed to be high on LSD when he accomplished the rare feat.

But I'm not sure any of these Longslice guys were even born then. So let's move along with the story. The Dock Ellis is, of course, handling the food side of The Aviary and its 230 seats while the Longslice crew is handling the beer in their new back-of-house brewing facility. It opened in August and if you are a sports nuts, this place is loaded with TVs tuned into every possible game playing. I talked to Jimmy - again, the third of the trio taking my calls and usually answering, "Hey, what's the action?" - just before the opening and he was pretty pumped (this time, keg humour.)

The logo for The Aviary, as well as a tasty beverage. According to the
group, The Aviary will have a "fun, community-friendly vibe with a
focus of craft beer, amazing food and sports." Hey, three of my favourite
things right there! Finally Longslice Brewery will be an actual brewery!

"Yeah, The Aviary is the brewpub side of our new brewery in the Canary District. The brewhouse is still being fabricated but we hope to have it up and running this Fall," he said. (Mission accomplished, I believe - if not, then very close.)

He explained The Dock Ellis being the food and "front of house" component while they would be slaving over the vats in the back. Their vats. Longslice's vats. Yes, they are now (or soon will be) a brewery.

But the fellas have more than Hopsta La Vista and Loose Lips Lager in their arsenal now, adding Aloha Friday Hibiscus Pale Ale, Slam Dunkel dark wheat beer and Klondike Clarke, a new golden ale. I'm pretty pumped (this time, fist pump "Yes!" humour) for these guys and the next leg of their adventures in brewing. Great guys!

Lake of Bays Brewing has a big announcement Monday
and I strongly suspect this is the new label for their new
East Coast style IPA. I have a hunch it'll be called Anchor.

Okay, finally, let's look to Baysville, Ontario and our friends at Lake of Bays Brewing. I haven't seen their sales rep extraordinaire Tim Glazen in a couple of years but he and I always had a great chat when he popped into my Beer Store. Since then, I've been bounced from store to store in an effort to find a crew that can stand me for more than 10 minutes. We're still working on that. Meanwhile, Tim himself have seen his boundaries altered and changed in the same time period. But we recently reconnected at my latest store, Tim had some big news for me. Lake of Bays was dropping their newest beer, a New England-Style IPA "at the end of this month." Well, this is the end of that month. And Lake of Bays announced a new release for Monday. Here it comes, folks, another big beer. Yes, guy!

But Scooby Doo Gang, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. My next blog will be about Las Vegas, written in Las Vegas, as I fly there tonight. Until then, I remain...