Beer & burg: Four Fathers Brewing Hespeler
Located in Hespeler, like the eponymously-named hockey sticks that were crafted in the town for a century until 2021, Four Fathers Brewing Co. has recently hit the ice with their “60 Seasons” Rangers light lager craft beer alliance supporting the Kitchener OHL team and their RangersReach community fund.
There are roughly 270 craft breweries in Ontario, and in Cambridge, population 140,000, there are about a dozen, including Four Fathers. Such alliances are one way the brewery engages with the community around them.
Four Fathers started very humbly near Rockwood in 2015 but moved operations to Hespeler in mid-2018 landing near the Speed River and reclaiming an old factory that, in 1914, was manufacturing electric and gas-powered washing machines.
The airy brick-and-beam facility is thousands of square feet: brewery equipment, a 130-seat taproom and dining area (with ping pong tables), upstairs event space, bar, a stage, a patio and a disc golf course beyond the glass-and-aluminum roll-up garage door, a retail store with merch and bottle shop — and a kitchen.
All of that is to say that what breweries learned to do as fast as you can say “ale,” amid the rapid and competitive microbrewery growth around them, was differentiate their brand — including with some sort of food offering.
For more of the story, please visit Cambridge Times.
