Cormack brewery brings country vibe to beer connoisseurs
Crooked Feeder Brewing in Cormack offers a unique, down home, country experience for beer connoisseurs from near and far.
The brewery, co-owned by Robert Sutton, Ray Brake and Corey Wight, sold its first kegs on Nov. 23, 2018 and the tap room opened its doors in late July 2019.
Since then, Sutton says the market has exceeded their expectations.
The idea to start the brewery came a few years back when Wight was building a new house and bought a kegerator. They decided to try it out, but Sutton says it wasn’t very good.
Instead, they decided to try making beer themselves. They built their own equipment and were successful, Sutton says, in making “some really, really good beer.”
At that point, seeing other breweries start up around the province, they started thinking about trying it themselves.
They partnered with Brake, who had tried out the beer, and it snowballed from there.
“We sort of fell into it, really,” Sutton told Saltwire News.
The three of them were working full time but, given the level of demand and production they have achieved, Sutton left his job last November and now works at the brewery full time.
“I’ve brewed every batch that has ever left Crooked Feeder,” he said.
Sutton says it’s exceeded his expectations by leaps and bounds.
Crooked Feeder Brewing is now producing quite the variety of beer.
“We got a lot of small fermenters,” he said. “So, people will come in here and they’ll look and we got 14 beers on tap and a couple in the cooler in bottles or cans. We got something for everyone and that’s part of what helps us succeed.”
They tend to introduce different beers each month, and they often need to cycle them back into their rotation because they become so popular with customers.
Crooked Feeder started running 10 barrels of fermenters, then they went to 18, now they’re running 30 and are looking to settle in with 48. Sutton says that’s about midrange for about all the breweries on the go, but they will stick with that number for a while.
He adds the small fermenters allows them to maintain their variety.
Sutton says some of their popular beers include their Red Beer, the Coffee Porter — using Gros Morne Roaster coffee beans, their basic light beer and their sour beers.
The Good Vibrations, a strawberry rhubarb, is one of the most unique offerings.
Crooked Feeder will be adding food to its menu in the near future.
A COUNTRY VIBE
Being a Cormack brewery distinguishes Crooked Feeder.
According to Sutton, the setting very much reflects the unique country lifestyle of Cormack.
“We got a big country vibe here,” he said.
They like to bring in local entertainment and there’s a patio space for customers. They’re also adjacent to a farm, so people can go down by the fence and look at the cows and geese.
“A lot of breweries are breweries by the bay, and we’re a brewery by the hay,” said Sutton.
There’s a lot of history to the building as well. It hosted the sawmill Sutton’s parents ran for 25 years, and he says people love to hear stories about the place.