It’s getting easier to stock up on Full Beard.
Two beers — Five O’Clock Shadow and the Bearded Prospector — from the Timmins craft brewery are now being sold in eight Beer Stores in Northern Ontario.
“It was in our plan to go to the Beer Store and LCBO in Northern Ontario because people have been asking for it. We go to Kapuskasing or Hearst and you’ve got customers saying ‘where can I get it in town?’,” said owner Jonathan St-Pierre.
The stores carrying the beer are in Hearst, Cochrane, Iroquois Falls, Kapuskasing, Sudbury and North Bay. By June, he hopes to be in the LCBO, including the one on Waterloo in Timmins.
“It’s pretty cool to finally get into the stores across Northern Ontario, especially for myself coming from the Beer Store background…to be able to see our finished product at the Beer Store shelves in display is pretty sweet,” he said.
The brewery opened its doors on Wilson Avenue a little over a year ago.
Since then, they’ve been overwhelmed by the community support. At the Timmins Chamber of Commerce’s annual Nova Awards last week, the company even took home the President’s Award.
“Obviously I knew that Timmins needed a brewery, a craft brewery of itself, and expanding into bigger markets like going to the beer stores and LCBOs and even with the licensees, we’ve got 70 accounts right now in Northern Ontario that carry our beers on tap or in cans, and it’s growing still. We started off with maybe four, so within a year we’re up to 70, that’s not including Beer Stores,” he said.
“It’s overwhelming for the community support even if it’s outside, even northern towns like Cochrane, Kap, Hearst have really supported us big time. And it’s huge, and…on the Nova Awards when we went up and have everyone cheering for us as a brewery is pretty cool, pretty phenomenal.”
While the past year has been a huge learning curve for the team, he said it was good for learning.
“There’s never a dull moment, you’re never standing doing nothing, there’s always constantly something doing, and we have good staff that really kind of helped us out to get us to where we are now,” he said.
Along with brewing beer for their regular inventory last year, they took part in events such as Rock on the River and Stars and Thunder. Those festivals, and more, are on the brewery’s schedule again summer.
“It’s going to be a huge balancing act when it comes to inventory on cans and just production in total. We’re working at it right now, it’s doing really well so hopefully we’ll get some good numbers out this summer again as compared to last year,” he said.
This summer, St-Pierre said there is still more coming up for them to announce.
That could potentially include new summer beers, but he said they “can’t leak anything yet until we actually get to launch it.”
To keep in touch with new product launches, keep an eye on their Facebook page.
