BLYTH, ON – Cowbell Brewing has announced expanded distribution for its debut flagship brand, and has provided an update on the construction of its bricks-and-mortar facility in the village of Blyth, Ontario.
Absent Landlord Country Kolsch was launched in late May at select licensees and LCBO locations, and is now being ramped up to province-wide availability. Currently brewed under contract while the Cowbell brewery is being built, Absent Landlord is described as follows:
Absent Landlord is Brewmaster Stephen Rich’s expression of a Kölsch-style beer, designed to be both approachable and uniquely delicious. The beer is brewed with both old world and new world hops and malts, and is left honest, unfiltered, and unpasteurized to let the best of its aromas and flavours shine through. It does not fit squarely into the traditional definition of a Kölsch, since it is fermented warm to help accentuate new and distinctive flavours, hence its unique moniker, “Country Kolsch.”
The permanent home for Cowbell which will include a brewery, restaurant, retail shop and large events space is in the early stages of construction on a 59-acre property owned by brewery founders the Sparling family. Plans for the environmentally friendly facility include the following:
Working with the visionary team at Allan Avis Architects in Goderich Ontario, the farm and brewery will be Canada’s first closed-loop brewing facility. Well water will supply 100% of the brewing water, and an onsite wastewater treatment facility is being engineered to handle all of the effluent produced by the brewery. 12,000 trees have been planted on 29 acres of the Cowbell Farm, which will potentially offset the carbon emissions from the brewery.
The building is being constructed from sustainable materials, such as timber and local, ethicallysourced reclaimed, natural materials. The heating and cooling system is brilliantly engineered to use the least amount of energy while maintaining temperatures year round, including automated windows and cupolas to use outside air to the building’s advantage.
A state-of-the-art, Canadian-built, four-vessel brewhouse and cellar from Newlands Systems in Abbotsford, British Columbia will be installed with water and energy-saving technologies and auxiliary components. Cowbell Brewing Co.’s target water-to-beer consumption ratio is 4:1 – much lower than the relative industry standard of 10:1.
The Cowbell destination brewery is expected to open in the spring/summer of 2017. For more details, see the Cowbell Brewing website and Facebook page.