Back in January 2014, Ben Leon and his friends Dylan Nosal, Matt Gaetz and Derek Waghray made the decision to start up an ambitious side project – a small brewery called The Dandy Brewing Company.
At the time, the Alberta government had just changed legislation, finally making it possible for smaller breweries to set up shop in the province. Ben – who was a teacher at the time – had been home brewing beer with Dylan for years as a hobby. Ben’s friend Matt had been working on the business and retail side of the liquor industry for years and was looking to further explore his passion for craft beers. Derek – the resident scientist of the bunch – was a friend of Ben’s from high school with a chemistry degree and a passion for beer.
The four guys sat down for a round of pints at the Cat n' Fiddle, and by the end of the night (and a few beers later), the idea of starting up a brewery seemed entirely possible. “At the end of the night we were like, ‘Let’s write down a number on what the four of us can conceivably contribute to start this project.' And that number was very small. It was extremely small,” Matt says. The guys settled on a budget less than $50,000 for their brewery project – a shockingly low budget compared to the millions of dollars usually required to start up a brewery. But that budget ended up being the cornerstone for everything that made Dandy Brewing what it is now - Calgary's first nanobrewery.
