PERTH BREWERY EVERYBODY WELCOME

WE ALL WANT TO FIND OUR NICHE, SOMEWHERE WE BELONG. FOR PERTH BREWERY OF EASTERN ONTARIO, THEY ALREADY KNEW THEY MADE GREAT BEER - ENOUGH CUSTOMERS CERTAINLY TOLD THEM SO. BUT THAT SAME BEER IS ALSO NATURALLY GLUTEN-REDUCED AND, AS A RESULT, PERTH HAS BECOME THE GO-TO FOR THIRSTY BEER FANS ACROSS THE PROVINCE AND BEYOND.

To be successful in one feld demonstrates talent, good judgment and a lot of hard work. To do that twice? Well that’s just showing of…

So the story goes a little like this. Back in 1973 Terry Steeves, a hard-working hippie bufalo farmer, started making beer in his summer kitchen to share with friends. After a few years the bufalo were retired, timber framing became Steeves’ daytime passion. Yet, his after-hours love of crafting beer remained steadfast down through the years.

In the early 1990s when the Ontario government began licensing Brew-on-Premise (BoP) beer making, Terry quickly realized it presented the perfect opportunity to share the experience of crafting personalized quality fresh small batch beer with friends and neighbours. So, in 1993 Terry moved his beer making out of his summer kitchen and Perth Brewing Company was born.

A state-of-the-art small batch brewing system was purchased from Cask Brewing Systems. As serendipity would have it, Cask Brewing was a company owned by a Calgary family that Terry’s grandfather and father had done business with many years ago.

AND THEN THINGS TOOK OFF FROM THERE…

Friends became customers, customers became friends, and friends of friends be- came customers and friends. Always looking to innovate and enhance the brewing experience, customers were introduced to canning their beer in the late 1990s.

This came about through the ongoing friendship and business relationship with the owners of Cask, who’d themselves worked hard to evolve the BoP experience by manufacturing single head canning seamers. Thus, Perth Brewery became the frst BoP to ofer customers the option to can their beer which established themselves as one of Canada’s largest BoPs and original craft breweries.

As the circle of friends and customers expanded, Perth Brewery outgrew its cozy timber-framed downtown Perth location. In 1997, the opportunity to migrate to a renovated warehouse on Highway 7 presented itself, and Perth Brewery’s new, larger home took shape, building on its recognizable craft character.

Fast forward to 2013, the broader world of microbreweries crafting unique brews was gaining traction. Never being ones to rest on their laurels, their unwavering enthusiasm to share their beer with even more people lead to their next natural evolutionary step … the creation of a licensed microbrewery, putting cans of their freshly crafted beer directly in the hands of customers.

A whole new world opened up to the team that they embraced bringing their Perth

Brewery staf, friends and customers along with them. Many of those folks have been with them from the start and are founding members of the Loyalty Club with fun and quirky stories of their own.

Recipes, like those for Last Duel Lager and Easy Amber originating in Steeves’ summer kitchen back in the 1970’s hippie days and others such as Calypso IPA, were honed along the way in 50L BoP batches, earning their rightful place as fagship styles of Perth Brewery.

And today, their home since 1997 still sits on Highway 7 albeit several incarnations later, more fermenters have been added, a canning seamer(?) upgraded a couple of times and ever more distinctive recipes added.

Now, in 2023, Perth Brewery is celebrating 30 years in business, but, in the latest stage of its evolution, what has really taken the brewery by storm is the demand from those with gluten sensitivities.

“You know what, we’ve worked hard, and put a lot of efort into the brewery. Along the way, we’ve created an incredible, and diverse following,” smiles Jeremy Steeves, son of Terry and the co-owner of Perth Brewery with Terry’s partner Cathy Brown. “And yeah, we are really, really happy about that.”

Jeremy has seen frst-hand how the business started by his father has changed and evolved over the years. And following a motorcycle accident that put a stop to a career in that feld, he has been involved in the brewery in a more hands-on capacity.

“I’ve always been around. But I remember in the 1980s, when I was a little guy, my dad was brewing at home with his friends. I recall the homebrewing setup and them siphoning the liquid into those little bottles,” he says.

“Bottling day was always a big party for them. It was when they were able to enjoy their unique creations, beers that had character and totally diferent from the regular lager category, which was really all that was available in the stores at the time.”

“There just wasn’t any fulflment for the adventurous consumer back then,” Steeves explains. “So it’s not that surprising people wanted to come over and brew and package their own.

“It just so happened that there continued to be this movement to interesting, inde- pendent craft and what we would go on to produce here at this brewery resonated with people far beyond our community now stretching across Ontario into cities and communities like Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa.”

“Even with this growth, we continue to have a very beautiful community following here in Perth,” he says. “There is a lot of Scottish heritage in this town which is now more than 200 years old. The community is really supportive to us and because there are hundreds of lakes in a 50-mile radius, we also get a lot of tourists and cottagers visiting in the summertime.

“We have a very beautiful community following here in Perth,” he says. “There is a lot of Scottish heritage in this town which is now more than 200 years old. The community is really supportive to us and because there are hundreds of lakes in a 50-mile radius, we also get a lot of tourists and cottagers visiting in the summertime.

“Which is why we open seven days a week and ensure there are always 15-20 beers on ofer!”

And a key growth driver in demand for the beers Perth produces stems from the fact that every beer they produce is gluten-reduced, a facet of their beers the team are now really starting to promote to their burgeoning consumer base.

Steeves explains: “If you could appreciate in the past, sometimes a gluten-reduced or a gluten-free product hasn’t always been viewed as an attractive product or a tasty product. Go back some 10-to-15 years ago and when the local bakery or supermarket started carrying gluten-free bread, many of us had a perception that it probably didn’t taste as good as the other product, right? Most of us were not attracted to it from a favour standpoint.

“So as a brewery, we were always hesitant to market the gluten-reduced aspect of our beer for fear that people would think we compromised on favour. But that is certain- ly not the case and that’s a key reason why we get increasing demand and inquiries from gluten-sensitive patrons.”

Being a brewery that always listens to its customers, one to two patrons had asked the outft if it could produce a gluten-sensitive beer. So they duly obliged and researched the possibilities available to them...

“We looked into it and found that there was a European enzyme that was quite easily introduced to the fermentation process, one that was actually developed to clarify the beer and help pull out the haze,” says Steeves. “But a byproduct of that was this, it rendered the product gluten-reduced, and actually hydrolyzed the gluten molecule.”

Perth Brewery went on to produce some small batches using this enzyme. The results were excellent with no impact on favour, so the penny soon dropped.

“So, with no impact on favour, we just wound up saying ‘you know what’ let’s just make all of our beers gluten-reduced.”

To be labeled ‘gluten-reduced’ the gluten protein levels must be under 20 ppm (parts per million). Perth Brewery beer is under 5 ppm. The beer has been brewed this way, traditionally for 30 years, using only the four key ingredients: water, hops, yeast and grain.

Grains naturally contain gluten in varying amounts according to grain type. As a result, traditionally brewed beer contains gluten. However, what makes Perth beer unique is during the fermentation process they add an enzyme to reduce gluten protein levels to under 20 ppm (parts per million) while not compromising on favour.

The brewery points out that its beer is gluten-reduced, not gluten free as only beer brewed entirely from ingredients without gluten, such as sorghum, can legally be identifed as gluten free. But that aside, many consumers have been enjoying their product and unbeknownst to them it has been gluten-reduced the whole time.

However, for many that seek out gluten-reduced beer, Perth Brewery has become their brewery of choice. Those beers are beers without compromise with favour at the forefront.

“We want to have something for everyone, with or without the alcohol. And in doing so, we always want to ensure our team here can express themselves in the beers they brew,” says Steeves.

As the brewing business approaches its 30th anniversary this year, the team of 24 remain focused on making excellent beer for all, all the time listening to this loyal consumer base.

“We remain focused on the business. With how crazy the last few years have been, and with all the uncertainty that comes with it, 2023 is back on track to being another major growth year,” he says.

“We’re so grateful for the support everyone has shown us over the years, and extremely grateful to our fantastic team, who are committed to making beer people really enjoy.”