“There is a state of mind people have,” said Taras Manzie, president and co-founder of Kenora, Ontario’s Lake of the Woods Brewing Company. “We all appreciate ‘lake time.’”

In 2013, Manzie and his partners opened the first brewery in Kenora, since 1954, built around an appreciation of the outdoors and the relaxed attitude that comes with time at the lake. “Lake of the Woods – it’s in our name and it’s in our beer. Literally. Our beer is made from Lake of the Woods water,” said Rob Dokuchie, director of marketing. “There are 14,522 islands on Lake of the Woods. We are part of the lake. It’s where we live, work and play.”

Ian Bergman, head of sales and commercial development calls Lake of the Woods “heaven on Earth.” It’s not clear if he’s referring to the lake or the brewery, but that ambiguity is because he probably means both.

“It’s where family and friends come to connect and unwind,” said Bergman. “That translates to why the company and the brand resonate with beer drinkers.”

Original brewpub

Although it shares its name with breweries founded in Kenora in 1898 and again in 1927, the current Lake of the Woods Brewing started as a brewpub in 2013 in a century-old firehall. Located in downtown Kenora and home to a 10-hectolitre Kaspar Shultz brewhouse purchased used from South Korea. The 9,000-square-foot brewpub serves up to 275 people over two floors and its patio. A full menu of pub fare accompanies six core beers, rotating seasonal beers, non-alcoholic beers, hand-crafted sodas and a line of hard seltzers under a sibling brand, Steep Rock Hard Seltzer.

At the height of summer, the population of Kenora is triple that of winter months. That seasonality presents unique financial, operational and staffing challenges, but integrating itself into the community has ensured over a decade of success.

“We are part of this community. We all use the lake,” said Dokuchie, referring to the brewery itself, which sources its water from its namesake, and the staff, who all live the lake life and most of whom, including all of the Lake of the Woods Brewing leadership team, live in Kenora.

Being part of the community means supporting it. To that end, Lake of the Woods Brewing sponsors annual community clean-up efforts, serving as a base where volunteers can pick up gloves, bags and pickers. Lake of the Woods Brewing also sponsors an annual tree planting day, annually paying for 10,000 trees that staff and volunteers will plant in a single day. Manzie also notes that Lake of the Woods Brewing was the first local restaurant to stop using straws and plastics; protecting nature is part of enjoying the lake.

This strong support of the community has yielded fierce loyalty from customers and staff alike. Lake of the Woods Brewing’s head brewer has been with the company for over nine years and many of Lake of the Woods Brewing staff has been with the company since Day 1.

New opportunities and new locations

In 2019, Lake of the Woods Brewing opened a second brewery and location in Warroad, Minn. Located on the southwest shore of Lake of the Woods, the location features docks for customers to arrive by boat. That location, like its older sibling, is also housed in a former firehall. The Warroad brewery offers pizzas and supports local food trucks every weekend. A 10-barrel brewhouse brews draft and packaged beer sold throughout Minnesota and in neighbouring states.

“Lake of the Woods – it’s in our name and it’s in our beer. Literally. Our beer is made from Lake of the Woods water.”

Rob Dokuchie, Lake of the Woods Brewing Company

In 2020, the brewery opened a third location in Winnipeg. A 7.5-barrel brewhouse is located in a glassed-in room in the middle of Hargrave Street Market. Customers can order food from any of the market’s half-dozen restaurants and enjoy it with Lake of the Woods beer while watching it being brewed. Although Winnipeg is not located on Lake of the Woods, the Manitoba capital draws its water from Shoal Lake, northwest of the Lake of the Woods.

“You don’t have to be on the lake to enjoy lake time,” said Manzie.

Today, Lake of the Woods Brewing is putting the final touches on a new, 20,000-square-foot production facility in Kenora, which will also have a tasting room, outdoor space and vendors’ stalls. Dubbed “Brewers Village,” the new facility is being built at a cost of $8 million. A 30-hectolitre, four-vessel brewhouse will take over production of the brewery’s core beers to ensure consistency among the multiple locations. That will free up capacity to allow those smaller breweries to focus on product piloting and research. Lake of the Woods Brewing has always taken pride in their small batch brews. “We’ve probably perfected over 100 recipes,” said Manzie.

However, the new facility will not just make beer. It is being built from the ground up as a beverage production facility.

“Part of the purpose of this new facility is to [produce] other products,” said Manzie. The facility will have state-of-the-art equipment, including a pasteurizer and a 100-can-per-minute, counter-pressure packaging line. This means that all of Lake of the Woods Brewing beers, non-alcoholic beers, hand-crafted sodas and hard seltzers, some of which are currently produced at contract facilities, will be made in-house.

“A long time ago, when we were just one small brewpub and constantly running out of beer, we asked ourselves, ‘Do we want to just service the firehall, or are we going to grow and serve our beer to the broader community?’” said Manzie.

So, while building a new beverage facility while managing three breweries located in two provinces and two countries is difficult, Manzie has become an expert in navigating different regulations and accepts the tribulations that come with running a successful business.

“It’s just the nature of the beast,” he said. “You have to navigate the landscape. You have to figure it out. This is just the business we chose to be in. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. You have to surround yourself with great people.”

Those great people include Dokuchie and Bergman, who are childhood friends and uniquely positioned to promote the Lake of the Woods Brewing’s “lake time” ethos.

A part of the beer community and the community at large

Manzie served on the board of Beer Canada from 2017 until 2022 as the Ontario small brewers representative. “I was honoured to be part of the board,” he said. “Beer Canada is a great resource for information. And there is strength in numbers, so it’s great that Beer Canada is a voice for brewers. They also do good things in research and are an industry voice for all brewers across all categories.”

Manzie also served on the board of NOIC Academy and currently serves as the business representative for the Crime Prevention and Community Well-Being Advisory Committee for the City of Kenora. Despite being busier than yeast working on a barleywine, for Manzie, it is important to make time to serve the community that supports him and Lake of the Woods Brewing.

Who knows what the future holds?

“I always swear I’ll never do another one,” said Manzie of the stress of opening new locations, but he enjoys the process. “The reason we have Warroad and Winnipeg is because these incredible opportunities came to us. We would evaluate any opportunity. But these things take time and money, and we’re kind of out of both,” he said.

If one thing is clear, it is that despite the day-to-day stress of the job, the Lake of the Wood Brewing team is always rejuvenated by lake time.