“Farming forms our foundation” says farmer, co-founder of popular Paris brewery

The Paris Beer Company brewery occupies a former garage at the back of the Wincey Mills in the Paris tourist area.

By Diane Baltaz

Paris has long had the Paris Fair, but a seventh-generation local family created a new agriculture-themed landmark for this town.

The Paris Beer Company, which opened in October, 2020, boasts of its farm roots; and like the long-popular Paris Fair, is primarily farmer-operated.

Its five partners - brothers John and Ken Edgar, their spouses Marsha and Jennifer, and managing partner-German Master Brewer Christian von Der Heide - grew up on farms and still share varying degrees of on-farm involvement. Some of their ingredients, notably their hops, come from E3 Farms Limited --the Edgars’ farms around Paris and Harrisburg -- with their website stating, “Great beer is grown here on the von Edgar hop yard”.

The Paris Beer Company is situated in the back of the Wincey Mills, a refurbished 1880s mill that is now a year-round market in downtown Paris, beside the Nith River. It began winning awards in Canadian craft brewing competitions soon after opening. The brewery and its attached restaurant remain a popular day tripper destination.

“Farming forms our foundation,” states the Paris Beer Company website. It then describes the Edgars’ decades-long commitment to sustainable agricultural practices in addition to being “Paris’s first taproom and beer experience”. The brewery’s branded clothing and wooden beer trays are imprinted with the words “Farmers” and “Brewers.” A pitchfork centres the company’s logo. And other farmers are among the brewery’s visitors: in early February, the Edgars hosted an Ontario Grain Growers tour.

“We call ourselves farmers and brewers,” stated Ken, 58, who manages the farm’s crops.

The Edgar story begins in the 1830s when their ancestors moved from Ayr, Scotland to Ayr, Ontario. Edgar’s branch of the expanding family moved south to a farm on Rest Acres Road near the Power Line Road in the former Township of Brantford in the early 1900s.

By the late 1960s, two Edgar brothers -- Harold and Allan – farmed in this location, on neighbouring farms. Their families became involved in multiple community and farm organizations; the Brant Soil and Crop Improvement Association was one such organization, with Allen serving as its president at one point.

The family cash cropped corn and soybeans on a large scale by the time of Ken’s birth in 1968. The family adopted soil and water conservation practices such as planting grassed waterways by 1970, long before it became commonplace in Ontario.

“Our family practised no-till before it was widely accepted,” explained Edgar. “They were very ahead of their time. But it doesn’t take long to notice its benefits as it creates less erosion, lesser fuel bills with the tractor as there are less passes over the land.”

Edgar grew up as “the typical farm kid”, helping out in the shop, driving the tractor and similar tasks. However, while he was still attending high school in 1984, Edgar’s father formed a limited company with himself and his elder brother, John in order to sell pigs.

“John and I started out with two sows but it taught us a lot about pork production.”

The brothers presently rented a hog barn near Drumbo where they ran a 100-sow farrow-to-finish operation. They maintained it while attending the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) in Guelph.

“It seemed to be a good business,” said Edgar.

The landlord sold the farm shortly after Edgar’s graduation from the OAC; the brothers exited swine production “in spite of the good money at that time.”

But Edgar had immediately begun working for his father upon graduation.

“That was my first job out of school --- I was the tractor driver and fixer and breaker of things.”

The brothers and their father cash cropped 1,400 acres of corn and soybeans on land around Paris and Princeton.

By the early 1990s, Edgar married Jennifer; the couple and John switched to growing produce such as melons and squash; and they also sold plastic mulch manufactured by a Montreal company.

Edgar discovered pleasure in growing produce.

“I found that I enjoyed it over livestock.”

But their farm focus changed after the brothers’ parents returned from a holiday in Australia. Their mother, Mary Ellen turned entrepreneurial. She developed a no-rinse, lanolin-based cleaning product for woolens: Eucalan Delicate Wash. Adapted from an Australian Ministry of Agriculture recipe a friend gave her during that trip, Mary Ellen ran the product line from Paris and found a factory to produce it. After Jennifer took over as CEO of Eucalan, Mary Ellen remained involved with operations until her death in December 2024.

Next, Ken, John and Jennifer established the Calendar Club, a national retailer of toys, games, and calendars, with a warehouse that is currently located in Brantford.

Both enterprises became part of the extended Edgar family’s focus, while retaining their farm production.

“These (businesses) are germane to our farming enterprise: as you know that in agriculture, there are some good years and bad years. My parents recognized their (off-farm) risks could balance it.”

“For years Dad and us sons grew crops and harvested them; when we were not harvesting, our parents were promoting their products at trade shows,” said Edgar.

John and Jennifer managed the Calendar Club, along with some additional family help, including John’s wife, Marsha. Edgar still focused on crop production, but he added, “Sometimes I had to park the tractor at the end of the day and walk into the warehouse.”

“It was a good business, but we stopped growing corn and stuck to soybeans, rotating it out with wheat.”

By 2015, the brothers and their spouses considered developing a more farm-based business using product grown in their fields.

“We were in our late 40s by then and we began talking about our past experiences. We didn’t want the farm to go away. The farming gene was in us – it was in our DNA.”

The conversation centred on different varieties of drinks, such as wine, but presently focused on beer. They dreamed of creating an on-farm brewery, providing a public venue comparable to those by some Niagara wineries.

“That’s a very romantic setting,” said Edgar. “We can grow barley, wheat and create an appealing on-farm destination.”

When their discernment process deemed that option as financially impractical, they considered setting up a brewery-restaurant at the Wincey Mills, which had recently been revamped after being a Canadian Tire store.

“We decided that we can still bring our intention to this location.”

The Edgars partnered with a family friend who immigrated to the area in the mid-1990s: Christian von Der Heide. A certified German Master Brewer, von Der Heide grew up on a Bavarian farm, gained extensive international brewing experience; and according to the Paris Beer Company website, owns a farm in Bruce County. With von Der Heide as a managing partner, the group converted the Canadian Tire’s garage into a brewery, restaurant and sales room.

“The beauty of this relationship is that all five of us are of the same age with families wanting a passion project,” said Edgar.

In 2017, the partners planted an initial hop yard on the farm of John and Marsha Edgar, on Rest Acres Road near the 403 exit. Hops varieties were based on the ones popular with Munich brewers.

“It’s a highly-visible location and we wanted to show what we were doing. We were growing hops but we didn’t have a brewery yet,” said Edgar.

The first hops were harvested in 2018, while the partners concurrently worked on installing the brewery and hauling multiple, 1,000-litre fermentation vessels or Bright Beer Tanks into the Wincey Mill’s basement, even after pandemic labour conditions began.

In 2019, each partner assumed defined duties in the brewery operation while maintaining their previous business interests. Edgar changed his work to “focus 100 percent on the farm and the brewery.”

“We developed the concept of farming in this location for the brewery,” said Edgar. “Part of the plan is to grow our own barley.”

The malted barley portion of their farm-based concept has not yet been fully realized, said Edgar.

The malting process is biochemically complex. It requires that raw grain be steeped for several days in order to activate the enzymes required to break down its starch into fermentable sugars; this is critical because the sugars are what yeast will convert into alcohol during the fermentation process. The malted grain is then dried down to four to five percent moisture to halt germination while preserving the brewing enzymes. The resulting starch content enables greater activation of the enzymes needed for brewing.

”Malting is a different investment. We still hope to do that and we’ve grown our own barley in the past, but we decided that we can purchase malted barley and focus on the brewing instead.”

But the hops crop continues to expand: last summer Ken and Jennifer installed three acres of trellising at their Harrisburg home farm, which they purchased in 2021. They intend to plant hops varieties delivered from a source in British Columbia this spring, with an initial harvest in 2027. Edgar said that this will raise the brewery’s on-farm production level to seven varieties of hops growing on six acres.

“That’ll give us ample hops,’ said Edgar. “All seven varieties are used for different reasons: basically, hops provide the ‘bittering’ and stabilizing properties to the beer. Malt gives beer the body. Together, hops and malt gives balance and the flavours, such as floral – they’re what make beers drinkable.”

Edgar expects to grow soybeans and rye this season with assistance from John and Jennifer.

The Paris Brewing Company creates beers using barley, wheat, and sometimes oats. The brewing team recently-released one using rye; they also make hard cider, as well as a gluten-free beer brewed with imported sorghum.

Edgar’s son, Tobias, completed his brew master’s training at Niagara College and currently works full-time at the Paris Beer Company. The restaurant and store have also expanded. Harold often visits the brewery to eat; and added Edgar, “My parents were, and my dad still is, a great promoter of this endeavour.”

“We’ve got a great team here – there’s an inherent work attitude from growing up on a farm,” said Edgar. We hope to pass it on to our children, to the people who work here. The farmer in us will never leave us.” 