Checking in with Farmery Brewery

St. Vital

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/05/2024 (695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As we learned in my first column about Farmery Estate Brewery (“Rambling on with Farmery Estate Brewery,” The Lance, Sept. 29, 2021), the company is owned and operated by three brothers from Winnipeg via Neepawa — Lawrence, Chris, and Eric Warwaruk.

Lawrence and Chris take care of the farm and brewing operation, while Eric takes care of “everything else”, which apparently also includes dealing with media, like me.

Farmery produces delicious farm-to-table beers and an increasing variety of non-alcoholic drink options and I think of the brewery every time I use my hand sanitizer, — the company supplied it with their orders during the pandemic. The amount of hand sanitizer I have is a clue to how much product I ordered, and still order, from Farmery…purely in the name of journalistic reasearch.

When I asked Eric what’s new, he said they have an intriguing collaboration with local Manitoba honey staple Bee Maid Honey to create honey-infused beverages — a four per cent alcohol beverage called Auntie Bea’s Hard Brewed Teas, and a non-alcoholic line called Auntie Bea’s Cold Brewed Tea. Auntie Bea’s is available in three flavours — lemon, peach, and blackberry.

“We were intrigued by the idea of using local honey as a sweetener, because of its more natural and healthy taste and flavour, and we wanted to support Western Canadian apiaries,” Chris Warwaruk said in a press release announcing the new products.

Farmery has a presence in Saskatchewan and Alberta and its goal is to expand across the country and into the U.S. The Warwaruks grow their own barley and hops on the family farm, located near Neepawa, Man., and brew their beer just 10 minutes in the town of Neepawa. They are vertically integrated, in that they grow their own commodities, process them into beer and non-alcoholic products such as malted soda, NEDI energy drinks and non-alcoholic beer, and sell to consumers directly or through participating vendors.

In the few years, Farmery established a direct-to-the-consumer sales channel through its online sales portal, farmery.ca. It also operates a store at the brewery in Neepawa, and the Farmery Craft Beer Outlet in Winnipeg (2B-2 Donald St.).