Still being on holiday, I took a drive an hour and a half to my west to talk with John Graham, owner and brewer at Church Key Brewing in Northumberland County, Ontario. It’s grown a bit since my first visit in early 2005 but only a bit. I was after some knowledge. I am working on the Ontario brewing history book Jordan and I are writing. I wanted a sense of where John thought things were in the 1990s. Near history. The days of maltier beers. The days when breweries closed as well as opened. It was a good chat as John is not only one of the more independent brewers in the country but one who has, as I learned today, not much of a work history outside of brewing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Depth.
A great talk. I learned a lot. But it was the day as much as anything. He had cut down picked his own hop bines – Goldings and Zeus – and was working on a brew. I took more time that he likely had but as we sat in the shade out back it seemed like five minutes. I asked him if he considered ever making a corn brew and, looking at the field beyond the fence at the fields around the brewery of GMO macro gak grain-like substance, he said he would if he could ever find some corn that wasn’t compromised. Heritage corn for quality good corn ale. I can buy that. And I would.