Waterloo region's smallest brewery is a big hit among neighbours: Andrew Coppolino

There are many garage bands, but garage breweries are few and far between. In fact, there is only one in Waterloo region, and perhaps even further afield, according to Curt and Holly Crossman.

Just over a month ago, the Kitchener pair, along with business partners with strong ties to the community, opened Twas Now Brewing in their 200-square-foot home garage in Kitchener's Auditorium Neighbourhood.

The brewery's name is a nod to an iconic scrawl of graffiti spray painted on the train bridge across the Grand River that was for decades visible from Victoria Street near the community of Breslau.

For the Twas Now Brewing crew, the graffiti captured part of their childhood — just as the enigmatic phrase and its paradoxical, Zen koan-like oxymoron rings a bell for a generation who grew up in the region and recall seeing the graffiti through the car window as they passed by the spot.

"There are a lot of people in the area who are familiar with the bridge and the graffiti. We wanted something nostalgic to childhood and growing up around this area for Twas Now's name. We all thought: 'Hey, many people know exactly what that bridge is!'" says Holly Crossman.

On the other side of the trestle is the rejoinder to the near-inscrutable tag: "'Tis Now." Curt says as a kid he and buddies from the neighbourhood, including a few of the brewery partners, would venture to the river near the bridge to catch crayfish..

Joining the Crossmans as brewery co-owners are Curt's brother Robb Crossman, as well as J.P. and Sarah Fleras, who live a few blocks away, Erik Balodis, who grew up on Borden Avenue; and Ben Cousineau, who also grew up in Kitchener.

Like many brewers across the country, Curt experimented with home brewing, pouring the first unsuccessful batch down the drain.

But the recipes and techniques improved over time, and the group began talking about starting a brick-and-mortar brewery. The plans were derailed by the pandemic, and when they started up again, it was with a new idea for a home-garage pico brewery.

There were only a few precedents, one of which was Evergreen Craft Ales in Kanata which started in a garage in 2015.

The Twas Now partners invested in refurbishing the Crossman's garage by installing mash tuns, fermenters, glycol chillers and growler-filling equipment. They also built a 125-litre — in beer talk, a 1.25 hectolitre — system.

"That's incredibly small. Compared to the smallest brewery you can think of, it's incredibly small," Curt says. "We're brewing at a home-brew scale."

The Twas Now retail window is open for walk-up sales Saturdays 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. Beer cannot be consumed on-site and must be taken home for drinking.

Twas Now is about experimenting with flavours. With their small scale, they can quickly brew what they want, and what they hear their customers want, and not be limited to being known as an ale or sours brewery.

"We take traditional recipes and add something a little bit different," says Holly. "We sold out of our Belgian pale ale. We added hibiscus flowers and rose hips for a different flavour, and it's a nice summer beer."

Filling only one-litre growlers, currently on the beer menu is a hoppy Enzo Gorlomi Italian pilsener and 100 Resolutions New England IPA, along with Paper Hearts witbier. So far, they've sold seven or eight different beers.

"I'd say we're doing better than expected. We're selling out of beer," Curt says. "Our business plan had us brewing once every two weeks, but we brewed six times in the last two weeks."

A sense of community

The set-up, regulatory and licensing process was relatively easy. Working with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario was smooth but dealing with the city was less easy because there wasn't a precedent for a garage brewery, according to the Crossmans.

Mainstream beer brands used to rule the roost when it came to suds, while craft brewing was in its infancy in the 1980s. But that was then, and this is now: big-brewery sales have slumped recently, and while the craft industry has shaken out a bit and remains small, there are nearly 300 craft breweries in Ontario, and the vast majority of them are larger than Twas Now.

But as much as the partners are about the suds and honing their brewing repertoire, what has materialized at the garage has been a sense of community.

Twas Now, according to the Crossmans and their partners, is benefiting from people seeking the hyper-local brew while feeding a desire for walkable and cyclable cities — the kind Jane Jacobs advocated for starting in the 1960s.

Holly says that's a serendipitous ancillary benefit to their garage brewery: aside from making the beer they love, Twas Now is about people.

"We've met neighbours that we didn't know before," she says. "It's been fun that way. Everyone we've talked to has been super supportive."

That includes a customer from Oshawa visiting a friend in the east ward. When he heard about the brewery, he walked over to make a purchase.

"A couple from London were driving by, saw our sign and said they had to stop. They said this isn't something you see every day," adds Holly. "They asked: 'How is there a brewery attached to a house in a neighbourhood?'"

Another east ward resident, Rob Rittinger, says it's compelling. A neighbour tipped him off that there was going to be beer in the ward.

"I love it. Because of the garage, it's something unique, a neighbourhood thing. You walk to it from your house, buy beer, chat with the people here and go home. It's really quite comfortable," says Rittinger.

Holly Crossman isn't surprised by the success.

"It's my experience that the K-W area has always been supportive of community. This is unique, and people have really been drawn to it. People can walk over, buy some beer on a Saturday, and take it back home for their barbecue."