CALEB NICKERSON
CAMPBELL’S BAY
Dec. 8, 2019
On Sunday afternoon, the restaurant at Brauwerk Hoffman brewery in Campbell’s Bay celebrated their first anniversary. Over the past 12 months, their location just outside of town on Hwy. 148 has seen some considerable upgrades and changes.
Owner Todd Hoffman explained that customers had been asking for an area where they could sit and enjoy one of the many traditional brews on tap, along with some food. He said they began construction on the restaurant located just across the parking lot from the brewery building in April and were ready to open by October, with indoor seating for 52 and patio space for close to 200. The interior is a classic bierhalle, with long wooden benches and a plain concrete interior.
“We originally started exactly a year ago with just the brewery, but a lot of people that were coming to the brewery … expressed interest that they wanted to have a consume on premise, that they could actually sit down and drink a pint of beer here,” he said.
Hoffman added that the restaurant will be closed for the winter months after Dec. 21, but will be fully operational in the spring.
In celebration of the first anniversary, he had samples of his newest creation, which is a step outside his focus on German beers. The new brew is called Royal Hunting Party, a delicious, copper-hued English pale ale.
“The new beer, it’s sort of a breakaway,” he said. “We’ve always been doing German-style ales and lagers, but this one we decided to do a traditional English-style pale ale. We called it Royal Hunting Party, it has some historical notions to it, about in 1872 when Prince Arthur came up, he’s one of Queen Victoria’s sons, and he went up the Picanoc River, he did some moose hunting up there.”
“There’s still lots of German style beers that we can make, but we wanted to bring a Pontiac theme into it,” he continued, adding that over the winter he will be working on a beer that pays homage to the Francophone heritage of the Pontiac region as well. “This winter when we shut the restaurant down for a few months, we’ll be doing some experimenting.”
