FANS OF FERMENTATION: LIFTING THE HOOD AT KJ URBAN WINE & CRAFT BEER SUPPLIES

KJ brewer Jeremy Morris smells the fresh hops from GoodLot

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VICTORIA RD S FANS OF FERMENTATION:

LIFTING THE HOOD AT KJ URBAN WINE & CRAFT BEER SUPPLIES

WORDS & PHOTOS BY CHRIS TIESSEN

GUELPH ‘We harvested these this morning,’ Jeremy Morris calls out to me while he lowers the tailgate of the work truck, raises the rear door of the bed cap, and beckons me to take a look inside. 'I would’ve grabbed even more but I just didn’t have the space.’ As I come closer, allowing time for my eyes to adjust from the harsh morning sunlight to the shaded interior of the truck's bed, the smell hits me – like a wallop to the nostrils. Dank. Pungent. Familiar. Fresh hops – and a whole lot of them. But for what?

‘These are surplus hops from our friends at GoodLot,’ Jer tells me, giving props to the Caledon farm brewery where brewer (and friend) Mike Brooks helped Jer load the truck just hours before. 'We'll be distributing them for free to our customers here.’ I wait to hear more. Jer continues: ‘For the past two years we’ve worked with GoodLot to collect some of their excess hops, which we distribute to the small army of homebrewers who support us. It's a token of our appreciation.’ Sweet stuff.

It's early-ish morning, late August, and I’m at KJ Urban Winery & Craft Brewing Supplies. Located just off the busy Guelph intersection of York and Victoria, KJ sits in a cute plaza that also houses Royal City Brewing Co and the Guelph Grotto – two wicked destinations where I’ve spent more than a fair share of my time. KJ has always intrigued me but, until this morning, never got my full attention. After all, I never registered a need for what KJ has on offer: wine-making and craft beer supplies. I’m a huge fan of drinking wine and beer, but I’ve never put much thought into making

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either. After just a few minutes at KJ, though, I’m beginning to think differently.

‘Let’s put these up near the front door,’ KJ owner Adrian Trochta tells Jer as he grabs a fistful of hops and pulls the entangled plants from the truck and onto a skid. Together with KJ General Manager Connor Creighton, Jer and Adrian wheel two overflowing skids of hops from the rear loading door to the front of the store where, when the place opens in just a few minutes, customers can easily collect these fresh hops for their homebrewing projects. In fact, a handful of customers are already lined up outside – waiting for the place to open so they can claim their share of the dank stuff. ‘We should open a bit early to let them in,’ Adrian says.

So Connor unlocks the doors, the hop-craving crew enters, and another day at KJ begins.

Over the next few hours, I experience the hustlebustle of this seemingly non-stop business, watching as wine is bottled, grain is milled, a pilot batch of beer is conceived, and a constant flow of customers keep staff on their toes with questions about everything from brewing equipment to hop strains, wine ordering to recipes, yeasts to juices. But one thing at a time. Let’s begin (as so many lovely occasions do – and as KJ did) with wine.

‘Each year,’ Adrian tells me as he leads me to KJ’s wine-bottling station set up in one corner of the large retail space, ‘we import up to one hundred thousand litres of fresh juice from Europe for wine production.’ I attempt to fathom what the numbers mean. Adrian helps me out. ‘In other words,’ he explains, ‘we produce more wine in a year than many cottage wineries in Niagara produce over the same period of time.’ I’m baffled. I take a look at the bottling station – comprised of a dishwasher, large sink, four winefilling spouts, and a single corker – and marvel at how this can possibly be. I watch as KJ Assistant Manager & Production Lead Devon prepares the station by cleaning lines and gathering empty bottles for filling. She pops on the first four bottles of the day, filling them with red wine from a large drum. Connor mans the corker – one bottle at a time.

‘You mean to tell me that almost one hundred thousand litres go through these four spouts each year?’, I ask incredulously. Adrian is quick to respond. ‘Eighty percent of this juice is made into wine on-site; the remainder is sold to customers for their home wine-making operations. Anyone can walk in here and purchase as little as ten litres of fresh European juice for their wine-making pursuits. We’re probably the only business in Canada that offers this.’

Adrian continues: ‘We take our wine game extremely seriously. Every year I spend a few weeks in Europe sourcing our juices from production centres in Italy, France, and Germany. I choose which juices KJ will offer, balance them on-site so they’re perfect for our wine-making, and have them shipped here directly.’ He goes on: 'I’ve been in this industry for thirty years now – a tenure that began here at KJ [then Kamil Juices] when my parents first opened the business back in 1980. At sixteen I moved to Europe where I continued to learn the wine game at massive production wineries. I did everything from cleaning floors and sterilizing equipment to bringing in the harvest, conducting lab analysis, and ringing in front of house sales – whatever helped me learn more about this craft.’

Devon joins in: ‘Our clients include everyone from nineteen-year-olds to folks who’ve been coming here for forty years,' she tells me. 'They’ve all got questions. And we give them our best answers.’ Connor, in the midst of corking, pipes up. ‘And when we don’t have answers, we find answers by asking more questions – often directed to other customers.’ He adds: ‘It’s amazing how much knowledge there is in our customer base. We certainly don’t take them for granted. They are our community – our friends.’

Friends who, over the past decade especially, have expanded their passion for wine-making to home brewing. Adrian leads the way to the business’ beer operation, which features a small milling room, pilot brewing system, a phenomenal array

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of grains and hops and brewing equipment, and everything else a home brewer might desire. ‘In 2015-2016,' he tells me, 'when the craft beer boom was really heating up in Ontario, Connor [who began working at KJ way back in 2012] convinced me to get into the craft beer game.’ Adrian chuckles while recalling those heady days. ‘And so I let him spearhead the brewing side of KJ. In that first year alone, he must’ve brewed fifty different beers, figuring out what’s good and what’s not. In those days, we definitely learned alongside our customers – and from them.’

At about this same time, Adrian tells me, he gave the business a serious facelift – transforming it from a tired old-school winemaking joint to a dynamic urban winery and craft beer supply mecca. He was aiming to create some sort of fusion between Tuscan winery and bodega. And with exposed wood, brick walls, and a high ceiling he succeeded in creating this airy space: a blissful destination with style to boot.

Fast forward to today, and KJ’s craft beer game is on point – thanks in large part to Jer's being brought on board as the business’ research and development brewer. A former Wellington Brewery hose dragger (an endearing term for ‘brewer’ that my next-door neighbour and career ‘hose dragger’ Andrew Henry taught me), Jer knows his way around a brewhouse – or, in KJ’s case, a pilot system: a smaller version of a larger brewing system, that allows for experimentation and smaller scale brewing.

‘I brew about five or six times a month on the

pilot,’ Jer tells me as he preps the equipment. ‘Many of these brews will become monthly recipes that we send out to our customers.’ A great idea. ‘Brewing on a pilot system,' Jer continues, 'allows me to keep on top of the latest trends in homebrewing, where

the advancements in equipment over the past five or ten years have been dramatic. It’s now possible for a homebrewer to craft on a small scale what breweries do on a large scale.’ In fact, complete newbies can learn the craft of homebrewing, which is why Jer has been developing homebrewing courses to be taught at KJ beginning late October. ‘Over the past little while,' he tells me, 'we’ve been running trial classes as we build our curriculum. We’ve had guest brewers attend to give input. It’s our mission to offer a full range of instruction, from introductory classes for beginners to courses for intermediate and expert brewers. We'll deal with subjects like kegging, clarification, carbonation, and more.’

And KJ’s relationship with brewers extends beyond the homebrewer. ‘We actually work with many area breweries – to supply them with wholesale ingredients, mill grain for them, provide them with juice, you name it,’ Jer tells me. In fact, KJ has worked with – or continues to work with – a number of regional craft breweries, including Grain & Grit (Hamilton), Fairweather (Hamilton), Hop Society (Georgetown), Wrinkly Bear (Orangeville), GoodLot (Caledon), and Elora (Elora). What’s more, KJ works with the brewery next door Royal City Brewing (Guelph), to facilitate after-hour pick-up for KJ customer orders so that KJ staff can prioritize a great work-life balance. And KJ is the largest reseller of Guelph-based Escarpment Labs yeast – which, over the last few years, has seemingly taken over the craft beer industry.

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After my hours-long journey of discovery of another dynamic enterprise just around the corner from home, I make my way back to the front door where I notice a small group of customers pulling fresh hops from the skid on the floor. I pause to look around, embracing the heartening realization that the community Adrian and his tight-knit team have created here extends well beyond the passion for fermentation that initially brought them together.

KJ URBAN WINERY & CRAFT BREWING SUPPLIES

199 VICTORIA RD S, GUELPH kamiljuices.com 125