Perth Brewery
Once upon a time...
...a long long time ago (1973) Terry Steeves, a really hard-working hippie buffalo farmer, started making beer in his summer kitchen to share with friends. After a few years the buffalo were retired, timber framing became Terry’s 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 (PBC) 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.Things took off from there. Friends became customers, customers became friends, and friends of friends became 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, PBC became the first BoP to offer customers the option to can their beer and we established ourselves as one of Canada’s largest BoPs and original craft breweries.
As their circle of friends and customers expanded, PBC outgrew its cozy timber-framed downtown Perth location. In 1997, the opportunity to migrate to a renovated warehouse on Highway 7 presented itself, and PBC’s new, larger home took shape, building on its recognizable craft character. Fast forward to 2013 and many memorable hours of shared beer brewing later. The broader world of microbreweries crafting unique brews was gaining traction. Never being ones to rest on our hops,
their unwavering enthusiasm to share our beer with even more people lead to our next natural evolutionary step … the creation of Perth Brewery, sister company to PBC, a licensed microbrewery able to put cans of our freshly crafted beer directly in the hands of our friends and customers.
A whole new world opened up to them that they excitedly embraced bringing our PBC staff, friends and customers along. Many of these folks have been with Perth Brewery from the start and are founding members of our Loyalty Club with fun and quirky stories of their own! Recipes, like those for Last Duel Lager and Easy Amber originating in Terry’s 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 flagship styles of PB.
Ongoing curiosity and passion shared by all of us has grown their line up to 20+ beer styles, all of which are available for free home delivery across the province of Ontario, and many of which are available at your local LCBO, grocery and Beer Store. Today, Perth Brewery's home since 1997 still sits on Highway 7 albeit several incarnations later, more fermenters have been added, their canning seamer upgraded a couple of times and ever more distinctive Terry-style timber framing accents added. With longevity and commitment to those sharing this journey comes gratitude. Gratitude for their staff, customers and community. All of whom they gratefully call friends and family.
