Longtime buddies Shae de Jaray and Shawn Bethune, like many young dudes before them, often bandied about the idea of opening their own brewery.
The two even started cooking up their own home brew on the patio of the Deep Cove apartment they shared.
Last May, however, Bethune came home from a particularly crappy day in his civil engineering job and something snapped.
"He threw his bag down on the fl oor and was like, 'I can't do it anymore.
This (brewery) is happening now,'" said de Jaray, recalling the incident. "Literally since that moment we have not stopped working on this."
It's all happening now. Last week the crew at Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers was hard at work going through test runs and setting up a custom made silver bar in their almost-ready brewery and tasting room on Dollarton Highway.
Dodging around soon-to-be-fi lled wooden barrels, de Jaray could barely contain his joy.
"I have never been happier," he said. "It's the dream job."
It may be every young dude's dream but, in fact, these aren't your ordinary young dudes. The pair both have engineering degrees from Queen's University with de Jaray specializing in designing wineries and breweries, and de Jaray also went to Heriot-Watt University in Scotland to earn a masters of science in brewing and distilling.
When he came back to the Lower Mainland he worked as a brewer at Steamworks before taking a job for a company that designs and builds breweries. It has all built up to this moment.
The pair has brought on brewer Kevin Emms, formerly of Coal Harbour Brewing Company, and marketer Trish Garratt to round out the core crew that hopes to start pumping out their three main beers, Wise Crack West Coast Lager, Loud Mouth Pale Ale and Quick Wit Wheat Ale, in the next week or so with spirits such as gin and vodka to follow by summertime.
Not bad for a couple of young dudes. All four of the Deep Cove crew are, in fact, under 30 years old. They may be young, said de Jaray, but they are ready.
"I think it gives us an interesting edge. We're all young, we're all extremely driven, we're extremely passionate about what we want to do here," he said. "In the grand scheme of things when you look at our core team, we all come from different backgrounds but have been doing this for just as long as lots of other guys. We just got into it a little younger."
