E-Malt.com News article: Canada, ON: Four new breweries opening in the Ottawa area

As it turns out, it looks like 2014 is going to be a great year for Ottawa beer lovers.

With the microbrew movement in full swing and many of the city’s existing brewers looking to expand their facilities, at least four new breweries will be opening their doors in the nation’s capital, providing flavourful new brews for local beer aficionados, Ottawa Citizen reported on December 20.

The movement toward buying locally produced craft beers is hitting top gear, according to the LCBO’s 2012 annual report, which was released in May last year, but is the most recent information available about the market. Craft brewers saw their sales jump by more than 45 per cent last year. That trend is expected to accelerate as more microbreweries open their doors.

Among the new crop of Ottawa brewers is John VanDyk, who is in the process of creating Stittsville-area brewery Covered Bridge. VanDyk, a former federal government worker and avid homebrewer, said the ride has been rough, but it will all be worth it when he opens his doors for the first time on December 21.

“This has been a long time coming,” said VanDyk. “It’s been a bit of a rocky road, but the end should justify all of the trouble we’ve gone through.”

VanDyk is one of a handful of brewers that plan to open their doors to the public in the coming months. He has been working for the better part of a year to covert a 1,500-square-foot warehouse unit in Stittsville into a microbrewery. It will be the third microbrewery in Ottawa’s West end. Large brewing chain Three Brewers is already located at the Kanata Centrum and Ashton Brewing Co. is located in the city’s extreme West end in Ashton.

VanDyk believes the location in the booming area of Stittsville, right between his competitors, will be advantageous and help attract customers. He plans to have three different beers ready when the doors open.

“Stittsville has just grown so much. You see huge potential with all the growth going in; it’s a great place to have something like this. There are so many people and so many subdivisions going in,” said Vandyk. “We thought this was a great spot to do this.”

VanDyk isn’t the only one looking for areas of underserved beer lovers.

Marc Bru is nearing the final stages of construction on his microbrewery, Square Timber Brewing Co. in Pembroke. The brewery, which Bru built from the ground up on land he owns will allow the beer enthusiast to brew as many as 16 different beers, from easy drinking and accessible pale ales, to heavy, dark and specialty stouts.

“I have a fairly large property out here and if I was going to open a brewery, the only way I could afford it is if I was going to build it out here,” said Bru. “We started planning that way and I talked to several people about if it would be feasible. That’s how the plan came together.”

Bru is getting ready to open his 1,200-square-foot brewery, which he hopes will be selling beer by February. He said, early signals have been overwhelmingly positive as beer enthusiasts from all over the Ottawa Valley have expressed enthusiasm about his brewhouse.

Other breweries that are expected to open in 2014 include Dominion City Brewing Co. and Microbrasserie Gainsbourg, which is expected to start pouring its own suds in the new year.

There are more than 47 microbreweries located across Ontario alone, including Beaus All Natural Brewing Co. in Vankleek Hill, offering consumers more than 150 brands of beer and employing in excess of 650 people.

The growth in the microbrew segment of the beer industry has beer’s biggest players looking over their shoulders.

The beer industry in North America accounts for more than $200 billion US in sales. Overall beer sales at the LCBO hit C$908.8 million in 2012, a C$35-million, or four per cent, increase.

While major corporate brewers, such as Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev, account for 94 per cent of sales, and craft brewers account for around six per cent, it’s the little guys who have the momentum. When compared to sales in the 2006-07 time period, craft beer sales are up more than 400 per cent, according to the LCBO.

Analysts believe the microbrewers will account for more than 10 per cent of the market within the next few years.


27 December, 2013