Waterloo homebrewers behind Schooner Street Brewing bring their beers to life

By Ian Hunter

Late-night conversations among friends usually end with one of three proclamations: “We should open a bar”, “we should start a band”, or “we should start a brewery”.

Scott Willard and his friends (who are also his family) chose the latter, laying the foundation for their very own brewery: Schooner Street Brewing. The partners consist of three brothers and a cousin: Jody and Patrick Schnarr, brother-in-law Mike Brown, and Willard as the cousin-in-law.

Some people decide to start a garage band, but they started a garage beer. When COVID-19 precipitated the first lockdown last year, the crew thought it would be fun to try homebrewing in Jody’s garage in Waterloo.

The brothers all live on the same street, and one night, after enjoying some fruits of their labour, they named the brewery after their street. The next morning, they realized it was Schooner Crescent and not Schooner Street, but they liked the alliteration, so the name stuck.

“We talked about other names based on where our final home will be, but we decided to keep that name because it’s a story, and every brewery has a story,” Willard said. “Because everybody’s going to ask us why we have that name, so now we have a story to tell.”

What started as a small-scale hobby last June is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged brewing operation. The Schooner Street Brewing team is working behind the scenes on their brewing operation in Waterloo. They hope to have a retail space open to the public later this summer where they can pour pints for their customers.

Within the next few years, Schooner Street earmarked some farmland on the outskirts of Waterloo for the eventual permanent home for the brewery. In the meantime, they’re refining beer recipes and working with new brewing equipment.

The crew started homebrewing with small 20-litre batches, and they’ve since graduated to making 60-litre batches of their beers. Schooner Street has plans for even bigger tanks in the works, which should triple their brewing capacity.

Willard has been a fan of craft beer for a long time, so when the chance came to live his dream, he leapt at the opportunity. He credits the team at Block Three Brewing in St. Jacobs and beer writer Robert Arsenault (also known as the Drunk Polkaroo) for sparking his interest in the craft beer industry.

“I think the people that know me the most, the first thing they say is: ‘It’s about time,’” Willard said. “They know I’ve been involved in craft beer and been wanting to take it to the next level. I’ve been lucky enough to have myself involved with my three partners who have helped make that dream come true for me, as well as themselves.”

Scaling up as amateur homebrewers has not come without its lessons, as they’ve poured out a few sacrificial batches that didn’t make the cut. As a homebrewer, it’s almost a rite of passage to have a recipe or two backfire.

In the process of making a chocolate porter, they added an entire three-pound bag of Irish moss seaweed into a recipe that only called for a few ounces.

“The whole brewing space smelled like Red Lobster,” Willard said. “Needless to say, that beer got dumped. You make mistakes, and now we’ve realized that we have to double check our recipes and read them a couple times.”

Over the last ten months, they’ve poured countless hours into research, development and the science behind their beer. The most rewarding part of the entire process for Willard has been the feedback from his family and friends.

“Seeing a finished product that we’ve made, and having people try it and having those people say they actually enjoy it, and they look forward to sitting in a place that we have available—hopefully sooner than later—to sit and enjoy our beer.”

“I can picture this down the road. Every day that goes by, we get closer to that moment.”

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