Serving up the micro-suds.

A Thunder Bay entrepreneur who's commercializing his love for beer-making into a microbrewery is whetting the local appetite for homebrewed suds.

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Geoff Schmidt, owner of Great White North Craft Brewery, has high hopes his small operation located just off the downtown core of the Port Arthur side of the city will exceed his first year expectations.

In mid-April, Schmidt was dealing with mechanical contractors hooking up floor drains, piping and connecting boilers, kettles and vats in preparation for an early summer launch.

Located in a former dry cleaner's shop, Schmidt says there wasn't much extensive renovation work to be done.

"It's pretty much the perfect set up. "There's a wide-open space in the back where the production equipment is with a counter up front. It's situated well for putting in a store front."

For two years, he commuted between Thunder Bay and Alberta where he worked as a contractor specializing in instrumentation and control systems for the oil and gas industry.

"When I was in the contracting business, it was in my mind to do this in five years. I didn't want to spend the rest of life traveling back and forth to Alberta."

But the money he pocketed out West helped finance a good chunk of the brewing business.

Schmidt had been a home brewer for about eight years, beginning on the just-add-water-to-yeast kits, before morphing into brewing beer from scratch.

While there's plenty of industry consolidation among the Canadian brewing giants, Schmidt says it's a good time to start something small in Thunder Bay.

"The opportunities for a microbrewery in a small town are greater than ever in the U.S. and Canada with so many popping up in many communities."

And it's a wide open market locally.

Doran's-Northern Breweries closed their Thunder Bay shop in the mid-1990s and another microbrewer only lasted a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

"In the brewing industry, beers are becoming more like wine. People are branching out their tastes to try different types and you're seeing more beer paired with food.

"That works in my favour and small brewers in general. Typically we;re more flexible and it's easier for myself to make a batch of 125 cases and sell over a month" than for a larger brewing company.

Acting as his advisor is John Tilbury, who worked at a local brew pub. He's also enlisted his father to help run the bottling line and plans to hire a full-time employee to work the retail end.

His first-year production numbers will be a modest 700 hectolitres (one hectolitre is 100 litres), "but I'm hoping to double it to 1,400 by year three."

Schmidt will use the industry standard 341 millilitre bottle, distributing to local bars and the LCBO.

Local managers of the Crown corporation are ready to stock his brand but there's still some paperwork to sort through with the Toronto headquarters to get his product registered in their system.

On their recommendations, he'll start with a single Pale Ale brand selling six and 12 packs.

Those he has no product to sell, the community interest is there, and Schmidt thinks he'll have no problem filling the order book.

"I think I underestimated the market." Based on talks with bar owners, he's expecting to surpass his production numbers.

However, the start-up date for his first batch remains tentative, since the bottling machine he purchased from an Edmonton brewer is still in use.

Alley Kat Brewing is upgrading their bottling line but the new machine won't be installed until late April.

"I'm hoping (to start up) early or late May," says Schmidt, who's anticipating filling kegs to supply some eager local bars to get some cash flow.

By IAN ROSS 

Northern Ontario Business