He headed home and connected with Evans that summer, pushing the idea of the two of them opening up a brewery in Muskoka.

“He looked at me like I was crazy,” McMullen said, breaking into a big grin as he spoke.

But McMullen was not easily put off. He kept pitching the idea to Evans and one faithful weekend while Evans was in Ottawa with a minor lacrosse team he was coaching, the two friends finally came to an understanding.

“I invited him over for dinner again and pried him with more magazines and more beer. When he woke up the next morning, he said it sounded like a great idea.”

McMullen moved back home to Muskoka the fall of 1994, and began to get their dream off the ground.

“We had to put our business plan together, create recipes … we did our small-scale brewing up at Northern Brewing Services in Huntsville with Jim Logan. He worked with us on some of the projects as well. We had to raise money, do a financial plan, find bank loans … it was the better part of two years to get things rolling.”

Their hard work paid dividends as Muskoka Brewery opened its doors for the first time on June 15, 1996 at a location at the corner of Taylor Road and Manitoba Street in Bracebridge.

They became acquainted with the landlord, George Snider, who helped the young entrepreneurs gain some foothold in the local business world.

“George was a retired businessman from the States. He was a VP of marketing and sales and he had great business experience that we didn't have. So he agreed to help us out and became involved in the ownership as a shareholder. He was the grey hairs for us, with the age and maturity,” he said.

The business started with six people working, including the shareholders. They were part-timers involved as things began to pick up in the summer to help with the hand labelling of the beer.

Despite these promising roots, tragedy would strike two months after the ribbon was cut. Evans was involved in a car accident that August. He died the following January.

McMullen still can’t believe his longtime friend is gone, nearly 20 years after the fact.

“It was one of those things that happens to the other person. It doesn’t happen to you. I was young when it happened, 26, and I think Kirk was 25. You don’t expect that stuff to happen ... you were young and invincible.”

He admitted that after the accident, he questioned whether or not he wanted to continue with the business he and Evans had worked so hard on for the previous two years.

“You go into something with a partner and a friend and you one day wake up and your partner and friend is in a hospital and you don't know if he is going to recover. You start to doubt yourself. It would have been easy and acceptable for people looking at the business to say no wonder they cashed it in,” he said, “but we kept going.”

It wasn’t long after that the business took an upwards swing in the craft brewing industry. Muskoka Brewery entered the Great Canadian Brewing Festival in Guelph, where their lone recipe, Muskoka Cream Ale, won for best Canadian ale.

“That was a much-needed boost. Winning that award extinguished the doubt and said we were on to something here. That first year in business cast a lot of the resolve we have here.”

One other piece that helped Muskoka Brewery and other craft breweries in Canada was a change in the way the industry was taxed at the federal level in the early 2000s. This overhaul, which was later accompanied by a a similar practice in Ontario in 2003, freed up a great deal of working capital for the company that allowed it to grow significantly.

“It changed the profit and loss statements for small breweries like us,” McMullen said. “It went from working 90 to 100 hours a week just to survive, to making a little bit of money. It really changed the dynamics for the industry.”

Another factor in the growth of Muskoka Brewery was a change at the ownership level.

In 2008, McMullen was introduced to Bob Macdonald, a longtime cottager in the region and Toronto businessman. A mutual friend, who had extolled the Muskoka Brewery product to Macdonald, introduced the two and they began talking about forming a business relationship.

McMullen said the company had around 40 shareholders around that time, which made large-scale decisions difficult to resolve at times, simply due to the large number of investors involved.

Not long after meeting, Macdonald bought out the other shareholders and is currently the majority owner of the company, with McMullen and two other individuals still holding ownership stakes.

“He loved the beer, but he really loved the Muskoka brand as much as the beer, I think,” McMullen said. “That was a big turning point because when I met Bob I think we had 12 employees. Now today, we are about 110.”

Understandably, the growth of the employment numbers is reflected on the amount of the company’s overall growth.

Muskoka Brewery grew out of its 11,000-square-foot facility on Taylor Road and moved to its present digs in 2012, a 70,000-plus-square-foot facility on Muskoka Road north near Bracebridge.

The brewery has six core brands and another five seasonal brands shipped across Canada, with the exception of Quebec. There are also plans in the works to have the beer stocked in stores in the eastern United States in the not-too-distant future.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary, Muskoka Brewery is introducing a new recipe in memory of Evans, Kirby’s Kölsch.

“We wanted to celebrate the anniversary but we also wanted to give a nod to Kirby,” McMullen said. “It’s a light German ale. It’s basically a nod to celebrate his life. It is a summer release, going out in June for three months.”

There are tentative plans for an anniversary celebration on June 25 at the brewery, McMullen said. It will be an all-day event with members of the regional crafter breweries invited to join in the festivities, along with guests and members of the public.

Looking back on the two-plus decades of living his dream, McMullen said he didn’t envision Muskoka Brewery would reach the heights it has since the doors first opened in 1996.

“I would say we outstripped our vision substantially. I love the business and this industry,” McMullen said. “For me, I always say to people, if you can get up every day and go to a place where it doesn't feel like work for 20 years, then you are doing pretty good.”