Barrie, Ontario.

On Saturday, February 4, at 8:00 a.m., four new beer tanks will be dropping out of the sky for the Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery. And that’s literally “dropping out of the sky.” Three new 90 hectoliter fermenters and one 100 hectoliter Bright Beer tank (for finished beer) will be crane-lifted through the roof of the waterfront brewhouse to double the production capacity of the Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery.

“We knew we would eventually need to increase our capacity from the very beginning, so we designed our building for growth,” says Peter Chiodo, the brewery’s Founder & Artisan Brewer. The 16-foot high tanks will be lifted by 60-foot crane through a removable skylight in the Flying Monkeys’ brewhouse. Unlike the highway-closing trek made by Molson’s tanks back in January, the Flying Monkeys tank drop will leave Barrie’s downtown virtually undisturbed. “We already put two new tanks in over Christmas break, and the process went smoothly. Darryl and the guys from Chalmers’ Construction showed up bright and early at 6:30 am on a Saturday with their huge crane and some coffees, and the whole job was done by 9:00am before anything else downtown was even open.”

Keeping with their directive of “keeping it local,” Chiodo has a team of Barrie and area experts who will help him complete the installation of the new tanks in his brewhouse. “ After Chalmers drops the tanks in the brewhouse, Chris and Arnie, our wiring gurus from Alltech Electrical, Cookstown, connect all our controls. Peter Kilpatrick and his gang from Services Plus in Alcona get all the refrigeration units on the fermenters working, and my city councilman from Innisfil, Richard from Richard Simpson Plumbing, connects the maze of pipes that rout the beer through the brewhouse and down to the bottling and packaging area.”

When Peter Chiodo decided seven years ago ago that he wanted to brew craft beer in Barrie, he knew what he was up against. Back then, Barrie was a Molson town, and the number of people who were seriously interested in Ontario Craft Beers could probably have fit in Chiodo's garage, where he first started his foray into artisan brewing. But the beer culture of Ontario has matured and Ontarians have really embraced the craft beer culture. Over the past 7 years since the Flying Monkeys began brewing in Barrie, the market share of craft breweries has more than doubled from 2 per cent to 5 per cent of all sales by volume.

Chiodo goes on, saying, “The Ontario Craft Brewer’s Opportunity Fund was instrumental in allowing our small brewery to expand, develop and support new brands, and create jobs in Barrie. Craft brewing isn’t as automated as the operations at big breweries, so we’ve actually brought manufacturing jobs to Barrie’s downtown. We’ve almost doubled our work force in the past two years with 25 people with full-time jobs and a host of part time positions created at the brewery. It’s a shame the McGuinty government recently cut that funding. It definitely gave us small brewers a leg up in growing our businesses in a market that’s stacked against us.”

The new tanks means the Flying Monkeys can better meet the demand for their unique craft beers and can continue developing new brands for the specialty beer market. Joking that the brewery is suffering from “a very fortunate problem,” Chiodo explained that his brewery has actually had to turn down requests for export and out-of-province distribution because of the need to increase capacity and make more beer. “Hoptical Illusion Almost Pale Ale, Smashbomb Atomic IPA, and Netherworld Cascadian Dark Ale are currently our most popular brands. And we need to be brewing more of all three of them!” Smashbomb is ranked #25 on the list of The 50 Best Beers in Canada (the highest ranked Ontario beer) by the prestigious international beer aficionado site, Rate Beer, and, at #48, Netherworld Cascadian Dark Ale is the only Ontario beer to crack the list of The Top 50 Best Black IPAs in the world.