Skout Brewing off to a good start in Moosomin
August 13, 2024, 3:07 pm
Ashley Bochek
Skout Brewing is a new business that opened in April in Moosomin and is doing well so far, with support from the community and the surrounding area.
Aaron Grandguillot, the owner of Skout Brewing, says he and his wife had always dreamed of owning a brewery.
“Skout Brewing was a dream of my wife’s and mine. We got to learn the business through my wife’s family who runs the hops farm outside of Moosomin. A few years ago we decided to get serious about it. We made plans for the brewery and we started building. I went to school at Niagara College, the Canadian Food and Wine Institute to learn how to make beer. They have a brewmaster program that I completed in 2022. Then, we moved to Moosomin and in April of this year we opened the brewery. We have been going strong for four months. It is hard to believe we have only been open for four months. It feels like it has been longer.”
Grandguillot says the community has been supportive of the brewery. “It has been good. The town has been very supportive. We have had good crowds and we’re starting to get our feet under us in terms of when we’re busy and when people like to come. We have made slight adjustments to our hours to reflect that. We have started doing some off-sale with our cans and we have done a few special events. It has been going very well.”
Customers from around the area
Grandguillot says the brewery has attracted people from out of town.
“If I am ever working behind the bar, I always like to ask people, ‘Where are you from?’ and people are usually pretty excited to mention when they’re out of town because it is a unique place, there is no where else like this in this area of the province so people like to come out, see what we have to offer and have a good time.”
Grandguillot says he is constantly working on improving the brewery. “I never ran a business before so I am learning something new every day. It is much different from a 9-to-5 job compared to my previous career. Now, I am the business owner so I am thinking about the business 24/7—my wife and I seem to have an endless amount of new ideas for the brewery. I am in here almost every day. It has been a big learning curve of knowing all the ins-and-outs of what you should be doing and keeping on top of ordering ingredients, stock, and making sure all of our bills are paid. It has been a big learning curve to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Grandguillot explains, “When you’re planning—you try to plan for various outcomes, but when you’re running the business you just take things as they happen. If something breaks or goes wrong you can’t really plan for that, you just have to resolve the situation. For example, I have been having some trouble with our canning machine. We bought it as used equipment and there are some parts that are broken on it. So, we haven’t been able to can as much beer as we have expected. I have had to do repairs on the machine, but getting parts out in rural Saskatchewan isn’t always easy so I am just figuring it out as I go. When those things happen it slows you down. So that is why you haven’t seen any of our beer in any of the local liquor stores yet.”
A place to socialize
Grandguillot says he enjoys seeing his customers socialize and enjoy their time at the brewery.
“I enjoy making beer and seeing how it turns out, but also just to see people come in, enjoy themselves, and have a place to meet with friends, just come and have a place to socialize. I get a nice feeling from being able to add that to the community because it is a great community already, but it is nice to see people come in. They may run across someone they haven’t seen in awhile and they’re chatting and two tables get pushed together, you see things like that happen and it is just a good feeling. I know there are other places in town people can do that, but I think it is just nice to have another additional option. People seem to appreciate having another spot to come spend some time.”
He says the work is rewarding.
“It is a lot of work, but it is very satisfying and a lot of fun. The hardest part is taking a day off because you’re just always thinking about your business.”
Grandguillot says Skout Brewing is working on a collaboration with another local business in Moosomin.
“Now, that we have our feet under us we’re starting to branch out more, especially for events. We’re collaborating with Iron Prairie Strength Lab to do a beer mile fundraiser. Where you run a mile and drink either a beer or a non-alcoholic option every quarter-mile of the run. We’re raising money for the new day care. Everyone will start at the gym and the brewery is the finish line. That is coming up September 7. Now other than our day-to-day at the brewery, we want to start supporting our community in other ways too besides people just coming to see us. We want to start doing more events and that is one of our first events we’re doing, collaborating with Jill and Spencer over at the gym. They approached us with the idea and we thought it was great so now we’re working to make that happen. Hopefully we can do more things like that in the future as we go.”
Growing locally
He says Skout beer is available at some local businesses.
“Our beer is at Red Barn now on tap and we have been able to supply the golf course with some beer, but moving forward we definitely want to start being in the liquor stores. They have approached us and we would love to sell them some beer—once we get some of the problems with the canner ironed out—we also want to reach out to some of the surrounding communities too. We sell the occasional keg to Pile of Bones Brewing in Regina, we have some of their beers on tap so they have some of ours, but for the most part I want to stick to local businesses in Rocanville, Maryfield, just our area of the province because that is what the brewery is for.
“We’re happy with how things have been going. The town has been very supportive. People are coming out and taking our beer home.”
Grandguillot says more people have heard about the brewery and they’re seeing more people each time.
“There has been a couple people out from Regina who have heard of us and are craft beer fans. After we served our beer at Waving in Canada Day at the lake, lots of people tried our beer and then came to the brewery to check it out. Just this last week, someone had one of our beers at Red Barn and then the next day they came to check it out. We’re getting more and more people all the time. We want to get some highway signs put up too so people know we are here. We’ve had people stop-in on their way to Winnipeg and one was from Edmonton and they made sure to come through and stop.”
The evolution of Skout
Grandguillot says they chose the name Skout Brewing after considering themes significant to Saskatchewan.
“When we were looking for the name for the brewery—we knew we would be in southern rural Saskatchewan—a very outdoorsy area. So, the SK in Skout stands for Saskatchewan, but we were originally looking at more of a camping theme, but there are a lot of breweries that have camping names already. In a thesaurus, scout and scouting out were some themes associated with camping. So, we explored that and added the SK for Saskatchewan, and we like the fox logo as it is an animal that is always out there scouting around. We went with an orange logo because we went in a liquor store and were looking at a whole bunch of other beers and there was a lot of red and blue cans and no orange cans. So we thought it would stand out so we went with orange.”
Grandguillot says he is enjoying running his own business and seeing the community’s support behind the brewery.
“I didn’t know how rewarding it would be. I always guessed it would be, but you don’t know until you actually do it and see what you have built. We’ve added a couple jobs to the community.
“It is a lot of work and a lot of long days, but I don’t mind because I am enjoying doing it. It has been a lot of fun and rewarding to put the work in and then see the benefit of running a business. Having a tap room full of people, enjoying the product that we have made is a cool feeling.”
