Church-Key Brewing

Ahhhhh, long weekends. Is there anything that warms a Canadian’s heart more then piling into a car and driving to a cottage? In my case, yes. Knowing that I can stop in at Church-Key Brewing ups my temp by at least one degree.

Church-Key Brewing

Church-Key Brewing

For the uninitiated: Church-Key is located in Pethrick’s Corners, which is just outside of Campbellford, which is a town on the Trent. With me? It’s not too far from Peterborough.
They literally occupy an old church building, though they have expanded a bit. In the old days, you would walk in through the front doors of the church, and right on to the brewery floor. You would then walk up a rickety stair to an upper level that held both the beer store and the offices. There was a massive collection of beer cans and bottles, as well as beer kitsch. It was very quaint and very personal. With the need for expansion, you now enter a side building that connects to the church, which has both the beer store and more brewing stuff. Not as quaint, but still pretty personal. Also they still close “at dark”, which is to say, sometime around when the sun goes down. Generally a bit after.

Church-Key brews a regular line-up as well as seasonal and even smaller batches.

The regulars include Lift-Lock Lager and Northumberland Ale, both of which are fairly nice examples of their style, not challenging, but perfect for cottage drinking. More recently they introduced their West Coast IPA, which I had the pleasure of having a growler of this past weekend. Very hoppy, as you would expect, but very drinkable. And lastly, their Holy Smoke Scottish Ale is classic. A Scottish style ale that is made with smoked malt. It is malty, with vanilla notes and a delicate wood smoke aroma and taste. I find Holy Smoke leans a little more on the malty side, which you would expect from a Scotch Ale, but I’m okay with that. I didn’t have any trouble working through the growler of that either…..

They also seasonally produce one of the few fruit/wheat ales that I really like, a Cranberry Maple Wheat beer. Perhaps it’s the romanticism of two things I link to childhood cottaging (maple syrup and cranberries; I was a Bala boy), or perhaps it’s the near perfect balance between the tart berries, the rich sweet maple, and the yeasty wheat beer, but I covet this beer, and anxiously await each new batch.

Of late they have also been dabbling in more experimental brews, in their “heavy-weight” series. Beers only available in dinner bottles at the brewery, or at very limited bars. Included are a double IPA, Flanders Sour Brown, “Scarlet Pilsner”, and a purple loostrife flavoured mead (the last two we will be drinking this Sunday at the tasting at Castro’s).

I know of at least one one-off batch, “Holy Smoke Tobacco Road”, which was a batch of Holy Smoke dry-hopped with Virginia tobacco for Cask Days ’08 at Volo.  It was stellar, and made my top three.

Thirsty yet? I’m glad I left the dinner bottles out of the fridge, or I would be sorely tempted right now (beer tasters be thankful).

So they make a cool selection of quality beers, but are they cool people?  In a word, yes.

Where to begin?

Heart for the Community:
Aside from taking an active role in community events, they went so far as to buy a local restaurant, The Stinking Rose, and struggle through educating a public who might not have known it was legal for anybody other then the big three to produce beer.  They are slowly converting people to the beauty of a finely crafted beer.

Heart for the Environment:
When they expanded their brewery they included solar-power in the expansion, to significantly off-set their hydro usage.  Providing growlers that you can have filled at the brewery is another indication of their green leanings.  If you didn’t know, a growler is a 64oz bottle, that is perfect for taking to dinner or spending an evening in with.  They fill them from a line of draught taps on the wall behind the counter, so you know your beer is really fresh.  Because you pick up and return the growler yourself (and there’s a $5 deposit on the bottle) they insure that there is a near perfect return rate, and limit the amount of beer and packaging that gets shipped by diesel trucks.  The growlers are nearly infinitely reusable (until they break, really) and they look awesome when you walk into a party with one.

Heart of Gold:
If you followed along the Beau’s Brewing story, you will also remember that Church-Key opened their doors and brew tuns to the fledgling brewery when their new premises were not ready for production, and they were going to miss their launch date.  In the “real” business world, this is insane.  You are providing your competition with a leg-up.  In the world of Ontario Craft Brewing, this is the norm, as exemplified by Church-Key.  Giving of your time and resources to help out your fellow brewers.  Taking an interest in the success, not just of your own product, but the industry as a whole.

A trip to the brewery displays the staff’s genuine hospitality and friendly attitudes.  It’s pretty much impossible to go in without chatting for a while about just about anything, from brewing to sport to the latest happenings in town.  As the people you deal with at the beer store also work in pretty much all the other brewery roles, they are generally quite knowledgable about their business and products.  I have visited a lot of breweries in my day, and Church-Key is one of the most unpretentious and welcoming.  Incidentally, it was the first brewery we took Bentley to, aged about 1 month.

So seek out some of their awesome products, and ask your local to bring them in, if they don’t already.  You won’t be disappointed.  And raise a pint to John and the crew at Church-Key, for keeping it real.

http://www.churchkeybrewing.com/

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