There’s a new brewery in Maple Creek
By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com
MAPLE CREEK - For the past seven months, Maple Creek residents have enjoyed beer on tap at Rafter R Brewing Company located at 13 Pacific Avenue. The newly constructed facility houses a brewery at the back and a welcoming taproom in the front. Minors are welcome if accompanied by a parent, and well-behaved pets are never turned away.
Ryan and Teresa Moncrieff are the enthusiastic owners, and Ryan’s five years of experience at Ribstone Creek Brewery in Edgerton, AB, has helped the couple pave the way to a successful business. Their beer can also be found on tap at Lakeview Grill in the centre block of Cypress Hills.
“We do a little bit of outside sales to a liquor store in Swift Current, and we deliver to Pile of Bones by Regina. They have some of our beer on tap there, but the bulk of the beer is sold at the tap room,” Ryan explained.
The couple decided to build a new structure rather than retrofitting an existing building. “When it came down to it, the difference in the dollar value wasn’t a whole lot more to build something new,” Ryan said.
Rafter R Brewing opened amidst the Covid health regulations, but nevertheless, they have forged forward. “It’s been a weird kind of year. Obviously, we had plans that had to be changed. For the most part, it’s been alright. We are down in seating capacity, but the front door is still open, and people can sit down,” Ryan said.
He admitted they missed some of the summer rush when they opened at the end of July. Many vacationers on their way to Cypress Hills didn’t know there was a brewery in town. “One of the things that stood out in the first three or four months for sure was that our modelling had flip-flopped a bit,” Ryan said. “We were planning on a lot of out of town visitors during the summer and a portion coming from the local community. But we’ve seen those numbers are flip-flopped quite a bit. There’s lots of local support; it’s absolutely wonderful.”
Ryan and Teresa do some local advertising and use social media and some tourist publications; however, a great deal of their business is generated by word of mouth. “When people have a great experience, it’s pretty easy for them to tell their friends,” Ryan said.
Ryan uses a base malt that comes from Alex, Alberta. “Having a new location and different equipment, I wanted to use familiar ingredients. Using the base malt I was familiar with saved me a lot of headaches,” Ryan explained.
Ryan said base malt is the lion’s share of any beer recipe and noted they also use specialty malts out of Rosthern, Sask. “We’ve got nine completely different beers on tap right now. Some of those are mainstay beers that stay on the list. Some of those are single one-off batches that customers were asking for, or we decided to brew something like that because we thought customers would like it,” he said. “Most of the recipes are ones I’ve developed here or beers that were created strictly for our customer base.”
Ryan and Teresa are looking forward to warmer weather since summer is definitely busier at the brewery, but winter has turned out to be OK as well. “People are looking to get out of the house in the winter and have a beer. It’s more about the quality of the beer, not so much the quantity,” Ryan concluded.
Teresa and Ryan Moncrieff