Ursa Minor Brewing out of Ootsa Lake in Burns Lake, will be giving away proceeds from the sale of their newest brew in supporting the Give a Hug to our elders in the Pines.
Nathan and Gwyn Nicholas, the owners of Ursa Minor are starting a fundraiser of sorts for the Pines.
“We heard that the Pine was having a hard time due to the pandemic and ongoing isolation and under-staffing. My father spent the last three years of his life at the Pines and we felt it was time to give them some love,” said Nathan about the give a hug campaign.
The idea behind the fundraiser will be to not just donate funds from their sales, but also to encourage other business to give.
“We are donating $10 from each of the 20 cases of Misery Slippers Winter Ale, for a grand total of $200 and our plan is to encourage local businesses and individuals to donate until the end of April, after which the money would be given to the Pines activities’ budget,” he said.
Ursa Minor Brewing was started by Nicholas last year to turn his passion into a business. What started as just plans roughly four years back, finally turned to reality when they launched the craft brewery in June last year.
The family had the farm since 1950s and didn’t know what to do with it. Nicholas however dreamt of returning to the farm in some way.
During the brewery’s first beer tasting event on Father’s Day, Nathan had told Lakes District News, “I like beer, I have been brewing beer since I was 18, so I said ‘why don’t we try craft brewery’. We started researching it and here we are.”
The brewery, located on the Southside at the family’s farm at Ootsa Lake, is now a family business as apart from Nathan and Gwyn’s work on the brewery, their youngest daughter designs all the labels for their brews while their older daughter helps out at the brewery when not away for university and has also worked on their website.
People in and around the community can order beer from this website or shop locally at the liquor store and various other places.
The Nicholas family is setting up an account at the credit union, the details of which are expected to be available this week.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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