ST. JACOBS - By the time the doors opened at Block Three Brewing Co. on Saturday morning, the four friends who started Waterloo Region's newest microbrewery were ready for a beer.

But as the crowds poured in, there was no time to relax.

The four friends and co-owners - Bryan Maher, 23, Philip Hipkiss, 26, Graham Spence, 28 and Derek Lebert, 30 - worked night and day for months leading up to the opening of the brewery on King Street in the heart of St. Jacobs, in a building tucked in just behind Benjamin's Restaurant.

The building was entirely renovated. The fermenting tanks and equipment from a manufacturer in Niagara Falls were installed. Last week, they were busy brewing and bottling to get enough beer ready for the opening.

"We've been here until 1 a.m. on a number of nights," says Maher, who had beer brewing experience for several years at the Wellington Brewery in Guelph before venturing into his own microbrewery.

The other three co-owners were accountants who were itching to get out of accounting. "This is a lot more fun than accounting," Hipkiss says. "I don't see this as work, even though I am sweating more now."

Maher says he feels lucky to have three friends with financial backgrounds who can help him with the business side of the brewery. "It's all about teamwork," he says.

The team also had a lot of support from family and friends who were constantly on the site, helping them with the packaging and doing a lot of construction to renovate the facility. "I can't tell you how much our friends and family members have helped out," Lebert says. "I couldn't have done it without them," Maher adds.

Maher, who was home brewing from the time he was in high school, wanted to start a brewery, but didn't think it was going to happen when he was just 23. "I thought it would be a few more years down the road, but these other guys approached me and I was ready to try something new," he says.

"It was quite a bit of work," Lebert says, adding that there is paperwork and licensing involved. They had initially hoped to launch the brewery on the Canada Day weekend but there were delays in the process.

On Saturday, they were finally able to let people taste the first two beers - Sugar Bush Brown, a beer made with local maple syrup and King Street Saison, a crisp ale made from a yeast that produces notes of cloves and citrus.

They sell their beer in kegs, liter sized bottles and also milk-jug sized bottles known as "growlers" that can be washed out and refilled. The beer is sold at the brewery and is on the menu at local restaurants.

Block Three started out with about 3,400 litres of beer in-house, but by the end of the first day, they had already sold out of their first batch of the King Street Saison, so they bottled another batch on Sunday. The opening was "was over and above expectations," Hipkiss said.

The four friends started a beer club about a year ago. "We would bring in different types of beers from all over the world and then, after one of the meetings, we decided to make our own beer," Lebert says.

They developed a business plan for a brewery and contacted Mercedes Corp. in St. Jacobs. It so happened that the white building with the arched entrance on King Street was a perfect spot and it was available. "So that really kicked our business plan into high gear," Lebert says.

The name, Block Three Brewing, is taken from history. Block Three was the plot of land on the Grand River that was deeded to one of the first settlers of the area that is now part of Woolwich Township.

"Our focus is handcrafted beer, made on a small scale," Lebert says. The brewery has three fermenting vessels but is planning to expand with two more in the near future.

They put in their own money, a lot of "sweat equity," as well as getting bank and government loans.

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Lebert says that although there is a fair bit of competition in the microbrewery business, there is a growing taste for handcrafted beers. "There is a huge shift from some of the bigger players in the industry and more toward craft beers," he says. "People are now experimenting more with beer."

Waterloo Region is historically famous for beer and whisky making but the Labatt plant and the Seagram distillery closed in the early 1990s,

Brick Brewing, which started in 1984, remained. It now owns three facilities in Kitchener, Waterloo and Formosa Springs in Bruce County and it also makes the Seagram vodka coolers. Another microbrewery, Grand River Brewing, opened in 2007 in Cambridge.

But now, Block Three will be an additional microbrewery that hopes to get its beer mainly into local restaurants.

"We think there is enough room for everybody," Lebert says. "The support we got from Woolwich Township was really great. They helped us figure everything out," he adds.

Right now, the business employs the four owners plus one other person. As more beer gets sold, more people will be hired, Lebert adds. "We are already realizing that we actually have more demand than we originally thought."

Lebert adds that other beers are already in the works. "We plan to make seasonal beers and specialty one-off beers from local ingredients," he says.

Beer is made from four main raw ingredients: malted barley, hops, water and yeast. The different colours and the flavours come from the recipe, including the strain of yeast and how dark the malt is, as well as when the hops are added, Maher says. It takes about three weeks to go "from grain to glass," he adds.

The brewery's website is still under construction, but Block Three is on Facebook and Twitter. "We are open every day of the week except Wednesdays," Hipkiss says.

Now that the opening is behind them, the four co-owners can finally celebrate with a brew. "There have been a few beer reviews online so far, and we are getting some decent feedback," Hipkiss says.

Block Three Brewing Co.

Address: 1430 King St. N, Unit 2, St. Jacobs (open every day except Wednesdays)

Telephone: (519) 664-1001

Employees: 5

Web: blockthreebrewing.ca (and also on Facebook)

