46 - Haydon Dewes

Cabin Brewing co-founder and New Zealand transplant Haydon Dewes is this week’s guest on the podcast. We chat about how the connections he made through the Cowtown Yeast Wranglers led to Cabin’s super-group founding team and the 32 unique beers that followed.

Haydon got accustomed to moving around long before making Calgary home. Born in Opotiki, growing up in Hastings, attending university in Wellington, and spending a short time living in Ireland before coming all the way back to Wellington left more miles behind him than most ever experience. He and his wife would find themselves looking at a move across the globe to Canada, and after his wife got accepted for a job in Calgary they would make the journey here without having ever visited the city. Like many who come to Calgary they’d planned to be here for a short time, just a single year, but a decade later they’ve cemented themselves in the city.

Haydon had been an avid home brewer for more than 25 years and joined Calgary’s home-brew club The Calgary Yeast Wranglers where he met his business partners Jonas and Darren. The three of them had all landed in the top 12 in Canada’s national home-brew competition, and along with Jonas’ history working with Wild Rose Brewery the trio began formulating a plan to create their own brewery. They originally envisioned a massive 20 barrel system but couldn’t quite raise all the capital they needed, so the determined brewers locked themselves in a room for 6 hours to figure out what to do and came back out with a scaled-down brewery plan that they thought just might work, and Cabin’s doors opened in December of 2018.

Now over a year and dozens of unique beers later their scaled down plan is a clear success as Haydon sums up perfectly: “At the time it was heartbreaking and we thought we were going to fail … but now we’re better for it."

Let’s Meet For A Beer!

Alberta Beer Festivals: website | twitter | instagram

Cabin Brewing: website | twitter | instagram

Haydon Dewes: twitter | instagram