From the Archives… A spotlight on Dominion City Brewing not too long after the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to rapidly unfold across the globe in the Summer of 2020.
The Ottawa River is Canada’s eighth largest watercourse. It’s also the chief tributary of the St. Lawrence. Starting in the Laurentian Mountains, the river flows west before turning southeast. Here, it forms a portion of the border between Ontario and Quebec.
Although it takes in 1,200km from start to finish, the Ottawa River’s journey begins some 500km from the home of Dominion City Brewing Co. Though at its closest point the river flows, at a push, a mere one kilometre north of Gloucester-based brewery.
For a company that was built on the idea of beer and community going hand-in-hand, it’s fitting that the river that passes its doorstep itself connects more than 50 communities across Ontario and Quebec.
“Beer brings people together,” explains Josh McJannett, co-founder of Dominion City Brewing Co. “When new towns are going up, places where you can enjoy a beer in the company of others are the environments where people gather. That’s always inspired us.”
But the notion of beer’s role in the community during these challenging recent months have, as McJannett tells us, meant breweries like Dominion have had to “toss the playbook out” and adjust to find their feet once more.
He says: “I remember that weekend in March very clearly. We had a birthday booked in the taproom. It was a commitment we fulfilled but, at the same time, you had a sense of this chasm opening beneath your feet.
“It was a dichotomy where there’s a busy taproom environment but there we were, in the background, building a make-shift drive thru operation to cater for new logistical challenges that lay ahead. “The next day we announced the taproom was to shut.”
McJannett, co-founder Andrew Kent and the team were facing the question…
What does a community brewery do when it can no longer provide that role for the community?
“People have really got behind us and come through for this brewery, and everything we stand for,” says McJannett. “They’re voting with their feet and voting with their wallets”.
With a system for off-site sales in place, the team added the option for consumers to round up the value of their orders. In doing so, the extra revenue would go direct to a local food bank the brewery supports.
It worked, and it worked well. At the time of writing, more than $40,000 has been raised through those donations.
“It’s been a real difference-maker for that organisation,” he says proudly. “We’ve regularly heard that our customers were grateful that they were given the opportunity to do something useful, so we’re really happy with how it has turned out.”
Being able to “do something useful” was one of the key drivers behind Kent and McJannett opening their own brewery. Graduates of Ottawa’s Carelton University, the duo we were working for an airline and in telecommunications, respectively.
“I envied people that could physically make things for a living. I felt that we wanted to do more and that kept us going early on,” recalls McJannett. “We tread the common path of keeping our main jobs while working on this project. There was little time for luxuries like sleep, but these are the compromises you make. Everyone was everything at all times.”
Starting out in 2014, the duo launched with a 7bbl electric system, complemented by four 7bbl tanks and a 7bbl brite tank.
“The beer I made early on was good. But we’ve improved immeasurably thanks to the efforts and talents of our head brewer Scott (Denyer),” he says. “Scott walked in the door and asked to volunteer, and he’s still with us! And when you get to know Scott, you realise he is allergic to compromise. He’s a guiding light for us and our beers.”
Denyer, according to McJannett, was also something of a beacon in those early days.
He explains: “In the business of making beer, you might have the prospect of staring at a batch that doesn’t meet your exacting standards and you have to ask yourself whether you’re going to sell it.
“There is a commercial pressure, and to compromise could be easy. But Scott is clear-minded, in that people are paying good money for these beers. Yes, it’s heartbreaking to destroy a batch but we wouldn’t be here today if we compromised on quality at any point.”
And it’s the quality and consistency of the brewery’s output that enabled the operation to expand into the unit next-door within two years of starting out.
Demand for beers such as Town & Country Blonde Ale, A 5.5%, Sunsplit IPA, a hop-forward 6.5% IPA and Two Flags, a punchier 7% IPA allowed the outfit to invest in a 30bbl brewhouse from Deutsche Beverage Technology of North Carolina.
“One year, we found ourselves at the Craft Brewers Conference and we were stood on the brewhouse at the Deutsche stand,” McJannett says. “Sure, we didn’t have enough money but we dreamt about owning it. That kit would be sold, then unsold, twice before out chance came along!”
The 7bbl tanks of early years have been replaced with 60bbl and 30bbl vessels, and the global pandemic has resulted in the beer that emerges from these tanks reaching consumers via can, rather than keg dispense.
“We are grateful that we made certain moves, like bringing canning in-house, along the way,” McJannett explains. “We initially worked with mobile canning partners before investing in our own system two years ago.”
Before the pandemic hit, 60% of the brewery’s volumes were distributed in keg to bars and restaurants, but societal changes has allowed the team at Dominion to fast-forward their approach to getting more of their beers direct to the consumer.
“Connecting with the consumer directly works best for all parties, with us delivering beer in its best and fresh form. The demand for this has enabled us to create new jobs in that side of the business as a result,” he says.
And making decisions that do well by others is part of the Dominion City DNA.
In April last year, together with Beer.Diversity. and Niagara College, the brewery announced the establishment of the Dominion City Beer. Diversity. Scholarship.
It was revealed that the scholarship will be awarded annually to one outstanding senior level student in the Niagara College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program with a background presently underrepresented in the brewing industry.
“We had the realisation that yes, beer can bring people together but it can also be doing so much more. It’s so important to bring people into that place, to ensure it is inclusive and give an opportunity to those that aren’t represented.”
Little more than a year later, the brewery proudly announced that it had provided seed funding to establish the Canadian Brewery Inclusion Toolkit.
This will be a resource of licensed materials and training, created by Ren Navarro and her organization Beer.Diversity., to empower breweries with the tools, tactics and resources to institutionalize and cultivate stronger, more diverse, equitable and inclusive businesses.
The toolkit helps breweries put words to action when it comes to creating truly welcoming spaces and hiring the best people, especially those presently underrepresented in the beer industry.
“This builds on the work we started together in 2019 with the establishment of the Dominion City Beer.Diversity. Scholarship” says McJannett. “This annual bursary and paid internship provides talented and promising brewing students from the Niagara College Brewmasters Program presently underrepresented in Ontario’s craft beer industry with valuable first-hand experience to jump-start a successful career.”
He adds: “Now more than ever, we feel the weight of that most persistent and urgent question, “What are you doing for others?We share Ren’s conviction that breweries like ours need to do more to make room at the table for everyone. We may not solve everything with a beer, but from where we sit it’s a hell of a good place to start.”
And some seven years in, despite these accomplishments, it’s easy to get the impression that McJannett and the team feel as if they’re at the beginning of their own particular journey in beer.
“People are excited to go on this journey with us, and that’s very rewarding,” he explains. “Early on, we knew we needed to work to get our beer out there, get our name out there, and bring people in to our space.
“Beer is about working hard, and building relationships, and we love doing that”
SOURCE: Brewers Journal Canada | SUMMER 2020 Edition
PHOTO CREDIT: Brewers Journal Canada
