Slake Brewing

New brewery crafts fine beer with a view

Aserpentine driveway leads up to a spacious white building perched atop a limestone outcrop that affords a stunning view of the County landscape in its autumn glory. The building houses the County’s newest craft brewery, Slake Brewing. On the ground floor, which is partially hewn into the rock, gleaming stainless steel tanks are used for mixing and fermenting the craft beer. An adjacent room takes advantage of the natural temperature stability of the limestone outcrop and is used for barrelaging some of the beer. The tap room is located on the main floor. It is a wide expanse, with an entire wall of windows perched far above the treetops below. It is also, in this time of COVID, mostly empty. Two of the staff draw glasses of beer for a handful of customers, who then go outside on the patio, where there are picnic tables and straw bales for seating, and a firepit or two for some warmth on a sunny but cool fall day. And then there is the view.

The brewery is located on a farm owned by Greg Landucci, and is operated in partnership with Eric Portelance and head brewer Nick Bobas. Landucci and his family bought the farm some nine years ago when they moved to the County. They were raising pigs at the time, and Landucci used the spent grains from Barley Days Brewery for pig feed. He then took a job with the brewery as sales representative and delivery for clients in Toronto. Some time later he took on the job as head brewer and got experience in all facets of the brewing operation. He was enthralled by the industry. “I loved everything about it, the creative aspect, the fact that on the brewing side of things you can iterate and keep getting better. But ultimately, it’s fun. It’s great to put on a show for people. They love beer, they love breweries. It’s hard work, but there’s something about craft brewing that appeals to my acting nature. When you see people here and you see them drinking beer, you see them with a smile on their face, it’s a beautiful thing,” he says.

A few years ago Landucci and Portelance formed Halo Brewery based in Toronto. Portelance had been a home brewer, and when the tech company he had been working for closed up shop, he was looking for a new career path. They operated the brewery for a few years and then sold their interest in the company so Landucci could pursue his vision of opening a craft brewery in the County. “I really wanted to plant roots in Prince Edward County, because we love it here, we’re very fortunate to live here and to be able to do something on our land, with friends around us and family nearby is just an awesome opportunity,” says Landucci. They started work on the brewery in 2019, and were expecting to open late that fall, but it was not until July 2020 that they were able to brew their first batch of beer. It took another couple of months for the construction work to wind up, and they welcomed their first customers at the beginning of October. Portelance says that brewing good beer is less about the recipe and more about the process. “It’s all in the details, the patience, the time that we take. A lot of breweries will rush their beer out the door, and we will take a lot longer every step of the way to make sure the quality is extremely high and the beer is clear and soft and delicate. That’s actually the side of it that we spend the most time on, and that I think is the difference between great beer and just okay beer. What we do here on one part of the operation is really balanced, clean lower alcohol beers that we tend to like to drink. The other side of the business is the barrel cellar, where those are going to be longer term projects. Those are going to age six months to two years in Ontario wine barrels and those will have a lot more complexity to it.”

They make their beer using exclusively Ontario malt, and to reduce their carbon footprint even further, the spent grains are distributed to farms along Mowbray Road—where the brewery is located—for use as animal feed. Currently, they make five different kinds of beer, including a table beer with 3.5 per cent alcohol and an effervescent refresher. Initially, they were expecting to have plenty of seating in the tap room, plus a wood-burning fireplace. However COVID-19 restrictions have put a hold to those plans, and visitors now have to enjoy their beer outdoors. “In a lot of respects we have been lucky,” says Landucci.

“The weather’s been great, and when the weather turns and winter comes, that will be the challenge. Ultimately, for the first few weeks we have been able to handle it well. We keep the traffic in the tap room to a minimum, and keep people outside.” For now, over 90 per cent of their beer sales have been through the tap room, either through glasses sold on site, or in take-away cans. Their original business model incorporated a higher percentage of beer sold in kegs to restaurants and bars, but that source of in come has virtually vanished. There is some glimmer that restaurants will soon be able to sell beer to go, and they are hoping to tap into that market. “What we are trying to do here is to create something special that people can really connect with. Because of the physical location with the farm, and the animals and the view, and our passion for beer, I think we can give people a unique and special experience. That is something we take very seriously. The beer’s got to be great, but we really want people to relax, have a break, to check out for a while. We have something special to offer, says Landucci.”

Slake Brewing is located at 181 Mowbray Road, and is open Wednesday to Sunday.

(L-R): Eric Portelance and Greg Landucci stand with the mixing tanks at Slake Brewing.