Editor’s note: This week, we profile the six winners of the Lunenburg Queens Business Excellence Awards.
After five years of small batch brewing, Dan Tanner took a giant leap and started his own brewery.
Since opening in October 2017, Tanner & Co. Brewing has become known across the South Shore for its German style beers and quaint location.
The brewery was also recently recognized by at the Lunenburg Queens Business Excellence Awards with the new business award.
But Tanner can’t help but grin when asked how the brewery got started.
“By accident,” he said with a laugh. “We went from brewing 20 litres in the garage to 400 litres in the garage.”
In fact, Tanner had been experimenting with beer since taking a sommelier course which had a beer section.
He eventually worked his way up to 20 litre batches and was giving beer away to friends and family to try.
Following requests and encouragements for more beer, Tanner took the plunge and joined the craft beer industry.
Tanner said he tried to find an element to separate his own beers from the dozens of other breweries across the province.
Given his location in Chester Basin, he turned to Lunenburg County’s German heritage.
“We’re focused on German style beers. We’re concentrating on having a good hefeweizen, we do a dunkelweizen,” he said, although he also brews other styles.
“Our motto of being traditionally different is a good take on that,” he said.
“We use the old recipes but we’ve played with them a little bit to give them more of the desired qualities that I wanted in styles of beer.”
And although Tanner wouldn’t give an exact location, he did confirm that he is in the midst of expanding to a retail space in the Village of Chester. The paperwork has yet to be finalized.
When asked to reflect on the steps he’d taken over the last several months, Tanner said he was thankful to be able to make a life close to his native Lunenburg.
“This last year has been crazy,” he said. “I’m looking to hire more employees for the summer. It’s amazing to be able to do this in rural Nova Scotia.”
