The Community Brew Shop Will Help Saint John Homebrewers Get The Ingredients They Need
SAINT JOHN – Homebrewers in Greater Saint John have a way to pick up their ingredients close to home thanks to a new online business.
Christian Goldie and Derek Dygos are the owners of The Community Brew Shop, an online retail store that sells common ingredients, like yeasts and grains, people need to brew beer at home.
The idea for the business, which is a side hustle for both Goldie and Dygos, came when the local brew shop they usually went to, The NB Craft Brewers Market, closed due to the owner passing away.
“After that happened there was nowhere in the market really to buy grain except for driving to Fredericton to Noble Grape, which is mainly a wine store, and the brew shop is very much secondary for them,” says Dygos. “There’s always been a market in Saint John for brewing, especially home brewing.”
Goldie and Dygos started ordering their ingredients from suppliers in Ontario, which is how they realized an opportunity to fill the hole in the market the NB Craft Brewers Market left open.
“We’re still buying grain that’s getting shipped in from Toronto, and by the time you do that, you could order enough that you could share with the community or sell off for a reasonable price to allow others to join the hobby as well,” says Dygos.
The Community Brew shop carries a variety of grains, yeasts and adjuncts, with plans to add locally grown hops to the shop too.
“We have a pretty good selection of commonly used base grains as well as specialty grains and adjuncts like corn and rice hulls and things like that. We also a pretty broad selection of commonly used yeasts that we keep refrigerated for proper storage,” says Goldie.
“We’ve been in touch with two local hops suppliers, both Bloomfield Hops and Moose Mountain Hops and we’re hoping to get some local hops from them as well as some of the commercial varieties that they grow. We should have them in stock very soon.”
Right now, the Community Brew Shop serves customers in Greater Saint John. People place their orders through the website by Wednesday night for pickup on Sunday evening at the parking lot at Atlantic Superstore on Rothesay Avenue. They chose to go this route because they knew their market was in Saint John and wanted to keep costs low starting out.
“I think big key right now was to focus on Saint John, only because we knew there was a market for it,” says Goldie.
“We have very little overhead and right now we just have a local pickup model where people place orders on the website and we do local pickup on Sunday evenings. We realized it’s not the most convenient system, but it’s the best way for us to get started and not overstep our boundaries or overextend our funding and things like that.”
Though the Community Brew Shop only opened this week, they have been getting inquiries from homebrewers as far away as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Many face the dilemma of having their local brew shops close too. Goldie says they’re now looking into a possible shipping model.
“Right now it’s only local pickup, and that’s by design,” he says. “But I think there’s interest out there that we may be moving at least to a limited shipping model sometime soon.”
Dygos says there are two main reasons for the increased interest in home brewing over the last several years.
“You go to the liquor store and you buy a $5 can of the newest product on the shelf. Or you can make a bunch of it at home for next to nothing. I think there are two drivers there,” he says.
“There’s a renewed interest in beer to begin with, but there’s always those cost savings when you do home brewing, especially now when people are not going out as much. They have a little more time on their hands. I think more people are going towards those kinds of things.”
