With new brewery opening, older Welland residents remembering brew pub at Atlas Hotel

With eager anticipation, Welland residents are smacking their lips at the opportunity to taste some fresh suds when the Bridgewater Brewery at 60 Niagara St. opens this Sunday (June 18) on Fathers’ Day.

While to the younger crowd, it’s Welland’s first craft brewery, old-timers tell the tale of another.

It seems the now-long-gone Atlas Hotel, formerly at 35 Southworth St. North, was actually home to Ontario’s first micro brewpub.

The old Atlas Hotel at 35 Southworth St. North in Welland, home of Ontario’s first micro brewpub. 

The hotel, which was torn down in 2012 after being gutted by fire, first opened its brew pub on April 22, 1986. (Wellington Brewing in Guelph opened in 1985 but is a full-blown brewery as opposed to a brewpub.)

At the helm of the new brew pub? None other than a very young Jon Downing, now the brewmaster for the highly-successful Niagara College Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program.

In fact, in 2016, the Niagara College Teaching Brewery recreated the brewpub’s signature beverage, the CAS XXX, a beer ahead of its time with its liberal use of Cascade hops.

At the grand unveiling of CAS XXX at the college in April 2016, Downing sampled the 30-year-old recipe along with brew pub’s former manager Moe Coutu and former employees.

“Back then we were ahead of our time. We were educating people about beer with Cas XXX, letting people know the ingredients using Cascade hops,” said Downing at the time. “You see breweries doing the same thing today.”

The specialty Atlas Hotel CAS XXX made by Jon Downing and his brewing students at the Niagara College Teaching Brewery in 2016. On the right, merchandise from the old brewpub.

So when Bridgewater Brewery, the brainchild of owners Melissa and Nick Reim, opens on Sunday, remember that it may be the newest (and at the moment, only) brewery in Welland but it has a predecessor as far back as 1986. Though well-known by the city’s old-timers, it seems little-known outside its borders.

You can can glimpses of the old brewpub employees on the Facebook page, Atlas Hotel Remembered, but beyond that, little information is available.

In the meanwhile, filling the ample shoes of Downing’s Welland brewing past will be the Bridgewater head brewer Alex Mountenay. That said, he comes with impressive credentials, having formerly been the lead brewer at Bench Brewing in Beamsville, one of the best breweries in the Niagara Region.