82 - Kevin Guichon (High River Brewing Company)
The Explore84 Podcast
English - November 20, 2020 08:00 - 30 minutes - 21.1 MBSociety & Culture Business personal growth entrepreneur wellness soul body mind healthy goals explore health topics self improvement Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This episode was recorded on site at the High River Brewing Company with Owner and Head Brewer Kevin Guichon. Kevin shares his journey from so-so homebrewing to being the “neighbourhood living room”, and his philosphy on distributing deep rather than wide.
Like many in Alberta’s craft scene Kevin got started out as a homebrewer, which began while he was attending the University of Calgary. He explains that his roommate’s uncle was a highly proficient homebrewer, so he and his roomate thought they’d take a crack at it. They started out by brewing brown ales and stouts because they were told it was a bit easier to hide off-flavours in dark beers, and good thing too, since Kevin admits that while they had fun doing it, their first few homebrews were not good beer.
Kevin put a pin in his brewing hobby after his roommate moved away and he had to downsize to a smaller dorm room, but this wasn’t to be the end of it. After graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce in 2014 he quickly discovered that nobody was hiring in his field, so he ended up working raising cattle. One miserable, wet, snowy March day he realized he didn’t want to do any more calving, remembered the Olds College brewing program, and thought “worst case scenario, my homebrew gets a bit better”.
At first Kevin wasn’t quite certain if he’d start a brewery, he just wanted to see if he liked brewing enough to take a crack at it. He fell into it, and fell hard. During the summer break between his first and second year of brewing school he worked at Apex, who were incredibly supportive of his goals. By late 2015 he was already starting to plan his brewery even though he hadn't even finished school yet, and in may 2018 he opened up High River Brewing Company along with the help of mom and dad on the business side.
The brewery’s reception in High River has been incredible, with the community immediately embracing them and keeping their taproom full since day one.
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