NAIT grads follow their passion and open a brewery
By Admin User on December 11, 2019
Kevin Danard, who was in Landscape Architectural Technology in ’97, dreamed up the idea of The Growlery Beer Company two years ago.
Danard and his partner, Jeff Pollock, who was in Business Administration in ’95, saw potential in Edmonton’s craft beer industry.
“You anticipate the problems you might have, and try to budget as closely as you possibly can. There’s just a lot of things that can come up while trying to build something like this brewery. There’s a lot of complexity, a lot of moving parts, so you learn a lot,” said co-owner, Kevin Danard.
Both Danard and Pollock worked in the banking industry, Danard quit his job to work full-time at the brewery, Pollock splits his time between the bank and the brewery.
“It was a long process like it took us almost a year and a half to actually to build out the brewery. We’ve been open since June,” said Danard.
With the wide variety of craft beer on tap, they hope to quench the thirst of their customers.
The Growlery is located five minutes from NAIT, right behind the Blatchford area. They wish more students knew about their brewery since that’s their target demographic.
Their head brewer, Matthew Cockle, loves to spend his time answering questions from customers about home brewing.
“It’s a little more freedom here than the places I’ve been at before, to experiment with more beer styles. It’s a small growing company so it’s a little more engaging,” said head brewer, Matthew Cockle.
The brewery has 10 different craft beer on tap. It also sells custom merchandise.