Northern Maverick carves slot amid battle of the brew pubs
Armed with nine beer lines, brewhouse plans to run classes
In this near-saturated brew pub market, every new opening has to offer and serve something special to break through.
Northern Maverick Brewing Co. on Bathurst St. near Adelaide St. W. promises enough differentiators to carve out a market share.
Central location, a cavernous, bright space, promising menu, serious brews and multiple revenue streams. Plus a cool backstory.
Owner Jason Kaptyn, 36, as tall as he is affable, named the joint after his uncle Ron. This talented guy was a writer and city dweller who moved up near Dorset to live a bit of a maverick life. Kaptyn says his uncle, who has since died, “practically raised” him and was a huge influence on his life.
“He loved beer,” Kaptyn says. And one of Ron’s favourite animals was a polar bear. These creatures make their home quite a bit farther north than Dorset, but still, the animal now serves as a brewpub mascot. (The mascot, who appears on beer cans, doesn’t yet have a name; expect that to change soon.)
Kaptyn grew up in Richmond Hill and started working in his family’s restaurants, stacking boxes by age 15. “After a while, they let me cook something,” he recalls. “Aside from maître d’, I’m not sure what job I haven’t done.”
While he loved food and became a home brewer in his spare time, his expertise fell on the restaurant management side. Eventually, his parents retired and he, with support from his brother, took over man- agement of those restaurants. Nine years ago, he did a renovation and relaunch of Crave Restaurant and Spirits Bar & Lounge, which are both located in a Sheraton hotel (which itself is owned by the extended family and which Kaptyn has also helped run) and they’ve been thriving.
But Kaptyn always wanted a place of his own. When he turned 35, he started to worry he was running out of time. “If I don’t start working on this, I’m never going to get there,” he told himself.
He looked to his own finances and secured a 10-percent equity partner for the rest.
So, he started the long hunt for a space large enough to hold a decent-sized dining room and to make beer — still a side passion for the restaurateur.
When his agent suggested this space at the base of a new condo, he resisted at first. But when he arrived to see this 11,000-square-foot space with floor-to-ceiling windows, he was convinced. “It was beautiful.”
With space to not only house the brewing equipment but 400 seats in total — thanks to a second floor and a sizable patio on Bathurst St., — it was actually bigger than he’d planned.
It meant Kaptyn could add a revenue stream. That second-floor private dining room could double as a beer school. The plan is to hold introductory classes on beer but also advanced workshops on brewing.
Kaptyn got the space last January and soon hired Andrew Crowder, formerly of Muskoka Brewery. (Before the space was complete in September, Crowder was using a pal’s facilities to get brews underway.)
Now working with a 10-hectolitre brewhouse with eight 20-hectolitre fermenters, Crowder has put together nine brews to run through the pub’s nine beer lines.
The company is already selling its Handcrafted Lager in nearly a dozen LCBO stores ($3.10 for a 473-millilitre can). The pub’s bottle shop off Bathurst St., meanwhile, stocks a larger range of brews such as Heart of Tartness for $6.75 to $7.75 per 500-millilitre bottle.
For the kitchen, Kaptyn landed Mark Cutrara, formerly of Cowbell. “Mark was the perfect chef for the vision here,” Kaptyn says. He’s doing scratch cooking, which includes making beer nuts with wort (a beermaking byproduct) and charcuterie. Otherwise, the locally focused and very pub-y menu includes elk tartare, smoked chicken wings, beer and cheese chowder and smoked trout.
Yes, there are many brew pubs in town. But at this scale and level, there’s actually little competition.