“In my previous career, when I travelled, I always hit up brewery taprooms and used bookstores,” said Filbert. “I had a lot of conversations in those taprooms. I learned about what I was tasting and what I liked and didn’t like.”

Filbert worked for a banknote company as a technical artist. He says that a technical artist takes the work of a graphic artist and deconstructs it for the printing process. That graphics and printing training is why Filbert has a deep appreciation for book covers. In particular, he scours used bookstores for paperbacks from the 1950s because he likes the cover art. His personal collection includes about 200 such books.

“I think everyone should collect something,” he said. “And it should be something very specific. Then you leave it to chance when you find something to add to your collection. I like the discovery. I like the chase.”

The beer

To date, Bookstore has released 11 beers. If all goes to plan, the brewery will release three more this year. The first ever Bookstore beer was The Quick Fix Coffee Cream Ale, a 5.5 per cent ABV cream ale with locally roasted coffee beans added five days before packaging, to impart aroma and flavour without changing the blonde colour. “I wanted to start with something odd,” said Filbert.

However, that oddity is not without research and precision.

“I want my beers to fill a hole in the market,” he said. Having kept track of the flavours he likes and dislikes in beer, Filbert designs Bookstore beers based on the flavours he knows he likes, rather than strictly adhering to beer styles. “All my beers are novel,” said Filbert, pun intended.

Filbert delegates recipe development to his friend Ryan Fisher, a trained brewer. Then, the beers are brewed at Winnipeg’s Oxus Brewing on a 30-barrel brewhouse built by Newlands. “I’m a big fan of hiring people who know what they are doing, and letting them do it,” said Filbert. “I’m an idea guy, not a full-out story creator.”

Oxus Brewing also produces beer for six other brands. By combining efforts, the breweries can achieve economies of scale in raw material procurement and ensure the tanks are always full. This was a low-cost, low-risk way for Bookstore to enter the beer market, although a small brewery of his own is Filbert’s ultimate goal. Bookstore’s beers have been well received, not just by Winnipeg’s beer drinkers, but by critics as well. Bookstore’s awards include:

• 2024 Canada Beer Cup gold for A Brighter Shade of Doom, a 6.5 per cent black New England IPA
• 2024 Canadian Brewing Awards gold for Flirting with Goth, a five per cent dark ale
• 2023 Prairie Beer Awards gold for Another Deadly Sin, an English amber ale
• 2023 Prairie Beer Awards gold for A Brighter Shade of Doom
• 2022 Prairie Beer Awards silver for Escape From Narrow City, a 4.8 per cent easy IPA

“I try to focus on myself as the first customer,” said Filbert. “I’m just going with what I like and hope it works.”

The art

All of the label art is original, says Filbert. Having found a kindred spirit in Ontario-based artist Randy Preising, Filbert retained him to do all of Bookstore’s label art. Those labels have a lot of details.

“If you look at one of my cans, you’ll see a book cover, a spine and a back cover. Historically, these types of books had coloured page edges, so my labels have a strip of page edge colour as well,” said Filbert.

The back cover, in addition to satisfying required disclosures such as ingredients and alcohol content, always includes a tease to a story that doesn’t actually exist. It’s an homage to the books Filbert loves and collects. There are even recurring characters, “because that’s a lot of fun,” says Filbert. There are even consistent themes to Bookstore’s labels: ales have covers for detective mysteries, lagers and pilsners are westerns, IPAs have science fiction covers, sours are romance and dark beers have a horror look.

Filbert works with Preising to ensure the labels mimic shelf wear. Since these books would have been mass-printed, they often contained printing errors. Filbert and Preising carefully mimic these errors on their labels. “It’s a little Easter egg for drinkers to find, especially if they know about printing,” said Filbert.

Also similar to the books Filbert collects, each beer label includes a three-character catalogue number. The two digits are the year the beer was first released and the letter represents the number of the beer that year. For example, “24-B” was the second beer Bookstore released in 2024.

The community

For Filbert, it is important that Bookstore be part of the Winnipeg community. In 2024, Bookstore released Timeless, a light lager with proceeds assisting CJNU, Winnipeg’s community radio station. CJNU’s frequency is 93.7, so 93.7 cents from every can was donated to the station.

After the Winnipeg Pet Rescue Shelter was robbed, Filbert helped organize a tap takeover of Bookstore’s beers so that money could be donated to replace the shelter’s losses. Each year on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Bookstore hosts “orphan parties” for those who feel loneliest during this time of year. “My parents died before I started Bookstore Brewing,” said Filbert, explaining his motivation. The annual parties help ensure nobody spends the holidays alone.

Bookstore also partners with local food manufacturers. Bookstore’s beer was used by Loaf and Honey, a Winnipeg fromager, to make cheese. Also, the company’s beer was used by Mr. Biltong to make South African-style beef jerky.

The next chapter

Filbert’s dream to have a physical space to call his own may soon come true. “If things go as planned, I hope to open this year,” he said. Unlike most brewery taprooms that look similar to bars, Filbert wants “a different kind of thing.”

“I want to take over a café with small menu items, with fancy coffee, and my beers on tap,” he said. “And it will be a bookstore. Customers can read a book and leave it there. We will make a note of the book and page number, so when the customer comes back, they can pick up where they left off. COVID-19 killed a lot of bookstores. I want to get people back into them.”

All my beers are novel.

Parris Filbert, Bookstore Brewing

For Filbert’s bookstore taproom to come to fruition, he will require some regulatory changes. While the café bookstore will have a small pilot brewery, current regulations prevent him from selling Bookstore’s contract-brewed beer without paying high levels of provincial government mark-ups. That’s where groups like The Manitoba Brewers Association and Beer Canada can help.

“I’m just a one-man show. I’m a sales guy,” said Filbert. “I took a distinct financial hit to leave my career and do this, but it’s better to be happy and pinching pennies than well-paid and stressed and unhappy.” After five years, Filbert says new customers are still discovering his brand. A café will help give his brewing company a face. Despite Filbert’s modest claim that he’s not a full-fledged story creator, through Bookstore, he is actually writing his own story.

Bookstore’s beers are available only in Manitoba, at Liquor Mart, boutique beer shops and on draught in the Oxus Brewing taproom and elsewhere.

The place is packed during summer months, which of course is a boon to a business like Interlake Brewing Co., a family-friendly brewpub that’s a recent addition to Gimli’s lakeside restaurant row.

Summer, however, only lasts so long. So, how does Interlake Brewing keep their taps flowing and the brewpub buzzing during the off-season? Well, thanks to the owners’ ingenuity and a warm welcome from the people of Gimli, it’s been easier than one may think.

Gimli: A gem in Manitoba

The owners of Interlake Brewing are Graeme Maclean and Kristin MacCary, a young Manitoba couple whose shared love for beer led them to found the brewery in 2021. The building housing the brewpub required extensive renovations, so it wasn’t until the summer of 2022 that it opened its doors for business.

Since then, they’ve been tremendously busy, raising two small children – a three-year-old and a six-month-old – while juggling multiple roles at the family business. However, for Maclean and MacCary, starting and running their own craft beer business has been a labour of love.

They are long-time home brewers and have spent time learning about and working in craft breweries in places as far afield as Japan. When they decided to take the plunge and establish their own craft brewery business, they chose their favourite place to do it.

Maclean, who is Métis, has many memories of cottaging in Manitoba’s Interlake region, which includes Gimli. After scouting for locations in the Interlake area, the couple decided Gimli was where they wanted to set up shop.

“This is such a special place. I think people in Manitoba don’t even realize what a gem we have here in Gimli,” said MacCary. “When we decided to settle down and start our family and our business, we realized this is the place for us. It’s the lifestyle we want and the community we want to be a part of.”

Maclean notes there were good economic reasons to settle in Gimli as well. “Personally, this is a very important place to us. We did the math, and it made sense to be opening a business out here,” he said, adding that Gimli has a more consistent year-round population compared to other communities in the area, which helps keep the taps flowing.

“We’re right across from the beach and [the Lakeview Gimli Resort], and [we’re] on a street full of restaurants,” he said. “There’s lots of foot traffic… to make a business like this viable.”

A drinking town with a fishing problem

According to MacCary, what also made Gimli the logical choice to set up shop was the fact that it’s chock-full of people looking for fun things to do.

“The joke Gimli people say is that ‘it’s a drinking town with a fishing problem.’ We find it a very social town. People want to go out and meet their friends. They want something to do, somewhere to go, and they’re happy to do it here,” she said. “Year-round, we do trivia, we do live music, we do karaoke, we do craft nights. We’re bringing in different types of people for different reasons.”

MacCary says since they introduced live music at the brewpub, every Friday night is booked throughout the summer.

This is such a special place. I think people in Manitoba don’t even realize what a gem we have here in Gimli.

Kristin MacCary, Interlake Brewing Co.

“Bands are approaching us all the time. It’s been fun to tap into that community of musicians. The word gets out and lots of people want to play here. Then, they want to come back and play here again,” she said. “They say our customers are just so friendly, our servers are so positive, so that’s a huge compliment. People just like the vibe. That’s a big thing we hear a lot: ‘You’ve got such a good vibe.’”

What’s on tap

There are nine types of Interlake Brewing beer currently sold in Manitoba liquor stores. They include pale, red and blonde ales as well as wheat and Kolsch beers and an assortment of others.

“It’s nice to be offering more and more varieties. Our first and second releases are still some of our most consistent sales, and we’re getting offered on tap at more and more locations,” MacCary said. “Most of our recipes come from our home brew days, when we were first learning. We’d say, ‘okay, I like this flavour.’ We’d make the same thing over and over again, but tweaking it with different flavours or different effects, playing with different hops and that kind of thing.”

All the Interlake Brewing beer styles are brewed in partnership with Oxus Brewing Company, another craft brewery located in Winnipeg, although the plan is to have a 500-litre microbrewery operating at the brewpub location soon. Maclean and MacCary point out it isn’t usual for businesses like theirs to start off this way, using contract breweries.

“At Oxus, they’re brewing up to 6,000 litres, so their capacity is way bigger, and they can package all of that. They can can it, they can warehouse it, they can distribute it,” said MacCary. “We knew as we grew, Oxus would be able to grow with us and support us with bigger and bigger batches.”

It’s kind of like a scaled-up version of home brewing, where we can see what we have or try what we’re curious about. There’s that creative aspect, which you’re less able to do when you are mass producing for a huge market.

Kristin MacCary, Interlake Brewing Co.

She notes some smaller batches are also being brewed at Oxus, which are Gimli exclusives available only at the brewpub. “One was so popular that we did scale it up and package it. It’s our newest release called Foxtail Blonde. We tested [it] here in Gimli, and people liked it so much that we decided we would can it for the wider market,” said MacCary.

Small batch brewing

Maclean and MacCary say once their microbrewery is set up in Gimli, it will be used for brewing small, 500-litre batches just for the brewpub location. “We’ll still have Oxus-produced beers for the wider market, [since] they’ve got the scale,” MacCary said.

One advantage of small batch brewing, she says, is “everything’s fresh. That also means there’s a wider variety of ingredients we can use, since we don’t need beer that has to be shelf-stable for six months if it’s going to be consumed quickly and stored cold instead. It’s in kegs and it’s here, on site.

“We can play a little bit more with ingredients that don’t necessarily scale. There’ll be lots of local things. We already work with wild rice and rhubarb and highlight some Manitoba ingredients that way. We also want to work with chokecherries and Saskatoons,” MacCary said. “It’s kind of like a scaled-up version of home brewing, where we can see what we have or try what we’re curious about. There’s that creative aspect, which you’re less able to do when you are mass producing for a huge market.”

Beyond beer

The innovation taking place at Interlake Brewing extends to their menu served up at the Gimli brewpub. “We’re a restaurant as well. People are happy to drink here, but I think people are really excited to have our food offerings too,” MacCary said, adding their food not only caters to different tastes, but to different food requirements as well.

Most of our recipes come from our home brew days, when we were first learning. We’d say, ‘okay, I like this flavour.’ We’d make the same thing over and over again, but tweaking it with different flavours or different effects, playing with different hops and that kind of thing.

Kristin MacCary, Interlake Brewing Co.

“Our customers can still enjoy the Manitoba craft experience without having beer. Mead and cider are good options for that, and we have a full bar of wine as well. I like having something on tap that’s gluten free. I think it is the future, too – I mean, we get so many requests for gluten-free [food and beverages]. There’s a huge market for it,” she said.

“We want to be inclusive, and that means having non-alcoholic options, having kid-friendly options, gluten-free options, all of that.”

Founders Amber Sarraillon and Morgan Wielgosz are committed to inclusivity and say that means ensuring there are options for anyone who comes through their doors. Between fruit sours, milkshake sours and cocktail-inspired beers, in addition to more traditional style kölschs and pilsners, the duo say they want people to be able to explore options while sitting in their taproom. “Beer doesn’t have to be so serious,” said Wielgosz. “Beer should be approachable. Beer should be fun. It should be a little bit more relaxed.”

Together, Sarraillon and Wielgosz have over three decades of beer experience. Sarraillon, who runs the brand and marketing side of the business, began her career working for Labatt, before moving to Red Bull and then eventually as a brand and marketing director for Amsterdam Brewing Co. in Toronto. That’s where she met Wielgosz, Good Neighbour’s brewmaster, who was working as Amsterdam Brewing Co.’s brewer.

Good Neighbour’s beginnings

In 2021, the pair endeavoured to strike out on their own. “We’re pretty lucky that we both found a passion at a young age and have been inspired to continue through the industry,” Sarraillon said. A hazy pale ale, bumbleberry milkshake sour and Czech premium pale lager are the three brews that kickstarted Good Neighbour and have remained mainstays throughout the business’s growth. Since that initial trio, Good Neighbour has brewed over 100 beers.

We love the storytelling of beer.

Amber Sarraillon, Good Neighbour Brewing Co.

Travel to countries such as Czech Republic, Germany, and Mexico, to name a few, has inspired much of the brewery’s variety. The pair say their first instinct when enjoying new and interesting flavour profiles is, “How do we get this into a beer?” “That’s where we find a lot of the passion and the creativity of it, and really wanting to find a way to share our experiences through beer for the consumers,” said Sarraillon. “We love the storytelling of beer.”

The pair’s three mainstay brews are examples of how Good Neighbour develops its products – travel, community and plain fun and exploration. The Czech lager is something Wielgosz learnt to perfect on a trade mission to the Czech Republic in 2018. She was one of 10 North American brewmasters invited to be submersed in Czech beer culture for 10 days and says the trip inspired her to have the premium pale lager be a part of their core brand.

Through connections made on that trip, Good Neighbour is able to use all Czech ingredients in its lager with the only exception being water, which itself gets manipulated so that its minerals and pH match that of the Czech Pilsen region. The Bumbleberry milkshake sour was inspired by Saraillon’s mother’s bumbleberry pie. As for the hazy pale ale, “That’s been a fun road trying to dial in and perfect that recipe,” Wielgosz said.

Portfolio pairs core beers with innovation and rotation

For some of the series in Good Neighbour’s portfolio, the beer style remains while the flavours rotate. The fruit sours, for example, change with what’s in season and what the team is excited about. “We have a huge kitchen of folks that are just super creative and bring different ideas to the table,” said Sarraillon. Some of the flavour combinations they’ve experimented with include dragon fruit and watermelon, and peach and apricot to keep consumers engaged with new varieties, and keep themselves excited as well.

The pair say they also feel inspired by the local shops and restaurants in Winnipeg. They say their neighbours have a plot of land where they grow Saskatoon berries. That was the catalyst for Good Neighbour’s annual Saskatoon milkshakes. “You’ll find inspiration everywhere if you are looking for it,” Wielgosz said. “We have those kind of core, standard, very traditional beers. And then we have a highly innovative rotational side of our portfolio as well.”

On top of that, it’s important for the pair to offer alcohol-free options, too. Enter the Good Neighbour sparkling hop water series – filtered carbonated water that’s cold steeped with hops for 24 hours and then the hop varieties are paired with fruit. They offer amarillo hops with grapefruit, azacca hops with mango and ekuanot hops with passion fruit.

“So again, we talk about inclusivity and diversity, and just welcoming folks whether they drink beer or not,” Sarraillon said. She says it also provides an alternative for gluten-free folks and for kids if they want to try it. “It’s not a non-alcoholic beer, per se, but it is a non-alcoholic option for folks to at least experience hops or the profile of hops,” said Sarraillon.

Finding their own place in the ’hood

Since their 2021 beginnings, Sarraillon and Wielgosz have been contract brewing out of Oxus Brewing, another Winnipeg brewery, brewing and packaging their beers through Oxus’ facility. Now, Good Neighbour is getting its own brewery. It’s been a year in the making, and Wielgosz and Sarraillon are opening the doors to their new space this spring. In the front, they plan to have a retail store and tasting room. Out back is what they’re calling the Good Neighbour backyard. There they’ll have games and movies for folks to enjoy with a beverage.

Beer should be approachable. Beer should be fun. It should be a little bit more relaxed.

Morgan Wielgosz, Good Neighbour Brewing Co.

“We talk about it being a community hub, that’s really something that’s important to us; to bring people down [and] provide a meeting space for folks [to] have a few beers and connect, and have a nice time,” Sarraillon said. “We’re super pumped to be a part of a neighbourhood. We have this vision of people showing up to our little retail store on their bike and filling their basket with beer, and heading out for the day and things like that.” Sarraillon says she plans to retrofit a bike to facilitate beer deliveries. “Just really embrace that local neighbourhood vibe,” she said.

In part, the pair’s effort to make inclusion a priority for Good Neighbour stems from being women in a male-dominated industry. “There’s more folks out there beyond just men and guys drinking beer,” said Saraillion. “I think a big part for us, and Good Neighbour as well, is trying to invite diversity in and welcome people who may not have had the opportunities that we have, or who have had similar challenges that we have had.” We want to try to break those barriers for folks,” she said, whether it’s people looking to work with the team or consumers.

As the first all-female and 2SLGBTQI+ owned and operated brewery in Manitoba, the pair notes that earlier in their careers, seeing women in leadership roles in the industry was rare. “The demographic of craft beer is changing in a very good way,” said Wielgosz, and the pair want Good Neighbour to reflect that in the portfolio of drinks they offer, and in providing a safe and welcoming space for all.

It’s important for Sarraillon and Wielgosz that Good Neighbour’s portfolio, space and ambiance be about more than beer. When people walk into their shop, they want guests to kick back and have a good time. “I think the only thing that we’re asking is that people just explore and have an equal amount of fun with this as we do.”