Imperial City Brew House

Some guys will go to great lengths for a free beer. Take Matthew Whitney, Craig Brodie, Mike Barker and Kyle Blandford for instance. They are the four equal partners, founders and owners of Imperial City Brew House in Sarnia and when they want to quench their thirst, the beer is on the house. The long-time pals opened Imperial City in February of 2020. "Three of the four of us were home brewers while Craig has more of a passion for getting a business started up," Matthew says. "Craig has very easily slipped into kind of a marketing and advertising position because he has way more prowess when it comes to social media and website stuff."

So how, exactly, do four shift workers and friends go about opening their own craft brewery? "I used to have a keg party every summer and I would get these guys to make the beer for me," Craig says. "The people that tried the beer would tell us we should try to do something with it." Those comments turned into lots of discussions about starting a business. Talking led to dreaming and dreaming led to them putting ideas down on paper. Matthew says push came to shove when the only local brewery in town expanded to a larger location. "We figured it would be kind of a bummer if someone else opened a brewery and it wasn’t us," Matthew says. "One of our partners did some number crunching and figured our idea was feasible."

The four amigos spent a lot of time touring breweries throughout Ontario and asking questions as they set out to make their dream come true. "It’s a great community with everybody willing to help," Craig says. "We would fire off question after question to figure out what works. One thing everybody told us was when they started, they found the demand for their product exceeded expectations. So we decided we had to go bigger than we originally planned or we would regret it."

Imperial City Brew House brews a wide variety of beers and is now creating their own setlzers. "We were going to have six beers and every now and then roll in a new rotational (special edition beer)," Matthew says. "But we quickly found people kept waiting for the next rotational." Community reaction to Imperial Brews has been very good." "The reaction has been very good. Our sales were far beyond what we expected. Our product is very highly reviewed and we love the taste of the beer," shares Matthew."

Imperial City has partnered with former astronaut Chris Hadfield for their Goodbye Gravity beer (a cream ale with vanilla). "It seemed like a no-brainer to go with Chris and it’s our only beer with a specialty name," Craig says. Another big seller for Imperial City is their Milkshake IPA. Goodbye Gravity is now available in the LCBO, and the team is working hard to get their other brews there as well. In the meantime, their entire repertoire of beer is available at imperialcitybrew.com. All their profits go back into the business for now, but the boys say that’s okay. "I come here to work and I pour myself a beer," Matthew says. "And I go home with a six-pack. That’s payment enough."