Luke Pestl: On site at Bellwoods Brewery

It’s been four years since Luke Pestl sat down with Beer Idiots in Belgium to tell us how he and Mike Clark turned a former art gallery on Ossington Avenue into Bellwoods Brewery. This time, we came to him — to Hafis Rd., the production facility, taproom and bottleshop that’s quietly become the backbone of the whole operation.

From backup plan to backbone

When Bellwoods opened Hafis Rd. in 2016, it wasn’t meant to be the main event. Back then, the Ossington retail store was the brewery’s biggest revenue driver, and it had simply outgrown the brewpub’s tiny footprint. “We expanded into this space to supply Ossington, because retail was our main driver and we couldn’t keep up with sales out of there,” Luke told us. “We had a small footprint, so we couldn’t ramp up production any further, and we didn’t want to contract brew.”

Growth here was slow at first — just enough extra capacity to start wholesaling, with a salesperson hired to build out an account base that was entirely new to Bellwoods. By the end of 2018, they’d started working with the LCBO. The timing, it turned out, was either terrible or perfect, depending on how you look at it.

The COVID pivot

Bellwoods had built its early identity partly on something unusual in Ontario: the ability to sell beer to go, straight out of the Ossington brewpub. Then COVID hit, and that advantage disappeared almost overnight.

“We once had a bit of a monopoly in being able to sell beer to go to the public,” Luke said. “That changed overnight during COVID, as a move by the provincial government to help restaurants and bars survive — they allowed to-go purchases everywhere. It completely shifted demand, and our retail store essentially tanked.”

What had been a brewery built around its own retail counter had to become, very quickly, a wholesale brewery — kegs, package product, bars, restaurants, and licensees, with the LCBO now doing the heavy lifting retail used to do. Luke credits staying small and staying two owners with making that pivot possible: “We had the fan base that supported us, and we were able to pivot as we needed to.” Not every part of the business got the same breaks — their restaurant survived COVID, but because it operated under the brewery’s manufacturing designation, it couldn’t access the wage subsidies that helped other restaurants through the worst of it.

The numbers today

Bellwoods started with one hire outside the founders — John, now head of production back at Ossington — and a restaurant crew of about 30. Today, the company employs over 100 people.

Production has scaled in step. Ossington alone once pushed out roughly 2,500 hectolitres a year at its peak, squeezed out of a space never built for it — tanks have since been pulled back out for the sake of sustainability. Combined with Hafis Rd., Bellwoods now produces a little over 15,000 hectolitres annually. The market is still overwhelmingly Ontario, with wholesale now outpacing retail by a wide margin, but Bellwoods beer travels: Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Alberta are strong markets nationally, and a small slice — under 5% — heads further afield internationally. US exports have been harder to come by since the collapse of Shelton Brothers, their former American importer.

Cans, seltzers, and a quieter bottle filler

This year brought a major packaging upgrade, centred on a new canning line capable of running up to 140 cans a minute, alongside improvements to the bottling side (the original 2016 bottle filler is, remarkably, still in service). The beer programme remains the core of what Bellwoods does, but it’s no longer the whole story — the brewery has expanded into seltzers and non-alcoholic beer, a reflection, Luke says, of changing tastes and a more diverse market.

Ossington, transformed

The neighbourhood around the original brewpub has changed as much as the company has. “The area has transformed like crazy,” Luke said, pointing to how hyper-trendy Ossington Avenue has become — while crediting local developers for keeping it mostly independent businesses rather than handing it over to chains. Bellwoods itself has expanded into neighbouring space there too, adding seating and room for events so people aren’t queuing out the door of a very small restaurant.

Handing off the brewhouse

Luke isn’t on the brewery floor the way he used to be. As Bellwoods has grown, much of the creative direction for new beers has shifted to the wider brewing team — something he sees as a deliberate, and good, change. “I kind of miss the creative satisfaction of that,” he admitted. “So in my personal life, I’ve taken up a lot of art, because I need that in my life.” These days his role is closer to director than brewer: weekly check-ins with the team, more oversight, less time with his hands actually on the equipment. “We have a great team, and developing ideas with them now is great.”

Inside the brewhouse

Luke walked us through the facility: a brewhouse , the original row of tanks along the back wall, two brite tanks, a small army of fermenters, a centrifuge, and a flash pasteurizer. Upstairs, where Bellwoods once hosted its Witchstock beer festival with tents and barrels filling the space, there’s no longer room to spare — growth has claimed the square footage.

The barrel and foeder programme — Bellwoods’ sour and barrel-aged beer, the thing that first put them on our radar back in 2022 — is still running, including fully spontaneous beer brewed via their own coolship since 2017. It’s a smaller slice of the business proportionally than it once was, but Luke is clear that it hasn’t been forgotten: “We’re still super proud of it.” Clean barrels are stored off-site to keep things manageable.

On ingredients, grain comes from across Canada rather than strictly Ontario, while hops are still mostly sourced from the US, supplemented with New Zealand and some Australian hops — Canadian hops haven’t made much of a dent in the recipe. Yeast is largely propagated in-house, with Escarpment Labs as a trusted local backup.

Watch the full interview

Pestl took us through all of it — the COVID years, the numbers, the brewhouse floor he’s stepped back from, and the barrel programme he hasn’t let go of — in our full sit-down at Hafis Rd. Watch the full 11-minute interview above.

Missed where this story started? Catch our 2022 conversation with Luke in Belgium: “Bellwoods: Toronto’s king of sour.”