The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company’s History

While Grizzly Paw owner Niall Fraser was living in Sydney, Australia he got the idea of opening a brewing company during his frequent visits to “The Rocks” in Sydney for a pint of beer. The Rocks was a fantastic brewery/pub set up on the old granite rock piles of Sydney’s inner harbour in the historic old town quarter, nestled between the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House.

When Niall arrived home in 1992 he started looking for a suitable place to build his own brewpub. During a mini vacation to the Bow Valley Niall found the place where his brewery was to be located, Canmore.

In late 1994 The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company was born, and after a few challenges getting things off the ground, such as raising capital and securing a long term lease for the new brewpub, in November 1995 The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company broke ground on Main Street.

April 29th, 1996 saw The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company open its doors to the Bow Valley’s beer drinkers.

In 1996 the brewery used a partial mash, brewing 200 litres from scratch and had a company based in England make wort. Once Niall could dedicate more time for brewing instead of running the day to day operations of the business he decided to buy a mash tun, and in 1998 The Grizzly Paw became a full mash brewery.

Since then we have added a canning line (the first brewpub in Canada and second in North America to can its beers) and a bottling line.

2004 heralded a major milestone when we changed our license from a brewpub license to a microbrewery license, and in December 2004 we started selling The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company’s beers outside of the pubs walls.

We brew numerous beers throughout the year but only have space for 8 beers on tap at one time.

In 2005 we added 6 microbrewed sodas to our portfolio as well as launching our food line including our award winning burgers.