Beer being brewed as long as customers stay thirsty

Deemed an essential service, Creemore Springs Brewery intends to remain open and keep the beer flowing.
When the impacts of COVID-19 started to be felt locally, general manager Paul Swindall said the brewery was assessed to make sure their employees would be safe. He said tasting and brewery tours were halted, anyone not directly needed to make beer was asked to work from home, strict hygiene practices and employees began practicing physical distancing and staggered lunches. The goal is to protect their employees so they can keep making beer.
“We were assessing the risk as information was coming in and we weren’t waiting for governments or health authorities to tell us what to do, we just knew that people walking through the brewery in close proximity doing tastings was not good for our employees and probably not good for the community as a whole so we made that choice to lock things down,” said Swindall.
“It has been a big change for us,” said Swindall. “From a production standpoint we pretty much just hit a wall with keg production. Once most bars and restaurants were closed.”
He said they stopped filling kegs but continued packaging beer in cans, which makes for 65 per cent of the brewery’s production. He said the LCBO is their biggest customer and they have actually had a bump in sales, so production levels have not decreased.
“That may be temporary, I don’t know and no one knows how long – with people getting laid off – people will have money to buy beer,” said Swindall. As of now, he said, between the can production and packing a mixer pack, all employees are still working.
The mixer pack contains the new spring/summer seasonal brew Helles, a German style lager.
Typically, Swindall said the brewery would send the beer out to be packaged but they have brought it in-house to make up for the elimination of keg production, therefore avoiding layoffs.
As of Monday, Creemore Springs Brewery has initiated a curbside pick-up service… Customers place their order, pay, and then arrange to pick it up at the door of the retail store.
“We’re working as hard as we can to keep making beer and as long as people are drinking it, we hope to continue to make it,” said Swindall.
To order curbside beer pick-up, call 705-466-2240 ext. 1, or e-mail retail@creemoresprings.com.