Zach Pedley and his father, Eric, had a problem. After brewing weekend-in and weekend-out, they had more beer than they knew what to do with.
It became quite an expensive hobby, Zach says. The solution? Open a brewery.
So now Zach brews day-in and day-out, producing both core beers and more adventurous varietals using rhubarb, lavender, watermelons, cucumbers and whatever else comes to his creative mind. The result? The taps in the tasting room are constantly rotating with some kegs getting kicked within a day.
Zach has transformed his home-brew hobby into a labor of love that has earned a loyal following in just a few years. Like Zach, The North Brewery works overtime to keep the fan favorites and vast lineup of new brews flowing.
Zach: “I’ve been home brewing since I was 20. I was taught by my father. I used his home brew equipment and we were brewing probably every weekend, and from there on it’s about four years since we decided to open up our own brewery. My father and I both, we went in on a building and then we went in on a business and it was fun.”
“We would brew every single weekend. At that point, it was a really expensive hobby for us, like maybe we should decide, me and my buddy at the time, maybe we should decide doing this as a full-time career. We were experimenting with new ingredients, ginger, lavender. One time we did a lavender-lemongrass EPA and it turned out pretty good. A couple weeks ago, we just did a cucumber-jalapeno beer which turned out pretty good, and we just did a strawberry-rhubarb ale.”
“We just don’t do one specific style. We have a vast, different styles that are under our belt. We use sours, barrel-aged, all that type of stuff. Most of the beers that we do have, there’s a reason why we’re naming certain things certain ways, but our pop culture reference is because I love pop culture. I just figured incorporating it with my brewery every once in a while, and if people get it, it’s an inside joke between me and the consumer.”
“We never stop creating. We’re always brewing new things, not to say that we don’t brew our old stuff. We still have a select 20 beers that we rotate through that people come to love, like Cerberus, Endorphins, American Dream, but there’s new stuff that constantly we’re coming out with. This summer, we have a series called Vortex and it’s a single hop IPA series, so every week we’re releasing a new single hop and they’re hops that no one really uses such as Yarrow from Germany, Wakatu from New Zealand. We just put a new one up with Waimea, so it’s just different hops that we’re not afraid to start doing new things.”
“One of the beers that we produce and we probably produce two or three times a month is called Endorphins. It’s our IPA. It uses Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand, uses Simcoe hops, and it uses CTZ hops, and that beer when it’s on tap, it usually sells out in one day. We let people know on Facebook and online, and people flock down to pick it up.”
“We also have a beer called American Dream that’s not as popular as Endorphins but it’s still pretty popular. It’s a mostly Citra IPA and then what we were known for and we’re still known for is our dark beers. Cerberus, our chocolate oatmeal milk stout, that’s still really popular, and we do a couple different … and we have Black Donald, our Porter, that’s another one that’s pretty popular.”
“All the breweries that are popping up, there’s new ones. There’s always a new one. Every three or four months, we see new breweries popping up and it’s definitely just quality. Galaxy Brewing announced just at our second collaboration, but we did it with Rooster Fish, Water Street, I mean we did … probably half of the breweries that did it were from the central brew region which was pretty cool. We’re definitely working with Water Street on another collaboration and another brewery, so it could be good.”
