Perry Mason pours a cold glass of Sergeant Major. (Darren Brown, OBJ)

Perry Mason might well earn himself a gold medal for his endurance, but the Fitzroy Harbour businessman will settle for a silver.

For eight years, Mr. Mason has toughed it out in the unforgiving beer business. Now, his little Scotch-Irish Brewing Co. has earned a national silver medal and has become part of the area's largest microbrewer, Heritage Brewing Co. Ron Moir, owner of Heritage, confirmed last week that he has acquired Scotch-Irish Brewing and brought Mr. Mason into the fold.

The purchase includes Scotch-Irish's bestselling Sergeant-Major's India Pale Ale, which recently earned a silver medal at the Canadian Brewing Awards.

Mr. Mason has been buoyed by his recent success and is now focusing on building up the Heritage and Scotch-Irish brands in Ottawa and Toronto. He develops his own recipes and delivers his kegs to Toronto and Eastern Ontario bars himself.

"Last year, I put 100,000 kilometres on my car," he said. "I (was) not only the president, but also the delivery guy. That's something I'm anxious to get out of."

Mr. Moir said he is looking at making changes to allow Mr. Mason to focus on product development. He is eager to see what Mr. Mason can do with an expanded product line and said Mr. Mason's track record speaks for itself.

"The knowledge that he brings is hard to find," he said.

Mr. Mason's Sergeant Majors Indian Pale Ale consistently ranks high on beer lovers websites. His other brews, including his Black Irish Porter, have been selling out at local pubs, including the Highlander Pub on Rideau Street, where Mr. Moir said the porter goes head-to-head with Guinness.

Although Canada's three dominant brewers, Labatt, Molson and Sleeman's, have made it difficult for Ontario microbreweries to sell their beer in the Beer Store, Mr. Mason said he's constantly surprised with the demand for premium microbrewery beers.

"There's definitely a niche market out there," he said. "If you try to do anything else, Labatt and Molson will hand you your lunch really fast."

Mr. Mason's success is in part due to luck. Sergeant Major's India Pale Ale was supposed to be a one-off batch of beer four years ago. He recalled putting together the batch for a Hamilton bar for beer aficionados, or "hopheads" as he calls them. The bar, the Winking Judge, was looking for a different style of beer that was not produced in Canada.

He brewed an usually bitter beer that owed its taste to the northwestern United States and was skeptical that Canadians would take to it.

"I told the bar, 'You better buy most of it,'" he said.

In a week, the 30 kegs had been snapped up and his bestselling product was born.

A year and a half ago, Mr. Mason was finally able to get his Sergeant Major's brand into bottles. Getting his ale into provincial LCBO outlets wasn't easy. He had to go through 11 months of label, packaging and product approvals before the ale hit the shelves.

"They're not averse to having new product," he said. "But it took the better part of a year when it should have taken a month."

Happily for Mr. Mason, beer drinkers in Eastern Ontario and Toronto have taken to his award-winning ale and other seasonal products. He admitted that it's always a risk producing microbrews since small operations like Scotch-Irish and Heritage have to price their beers higher than the national brands to account for proportionately higher production costs.

Despite his success with beer lovers, Mr. Mason has found it difficult to crack into the Ottawa market. Some of the city's corporate pub chains make it difficult for small breweries to sell their beers on draft, he said. Nor has the City of Ottawa, he added, been eager to have a brewery in the city.

That's old news for Mr. Moir. He's has been brewing his beer out of Carleton Place for a year and a half after his Ottawa brewery was declared a nuisance to other tenants in his building on Canotek Road.

After being given 90 days to relocate, Mr. Moir moved his operations down Hwy. 7. He said Ottawa has treated breweries like his differently than brew pubs and brew-your-own-beer operations.

"It's kind of interesting how the city has one standard for microbreweries, but not brew pubs," he said. "They don't treat us the same."

By Michael Hammond

Special to the Ottawa Business Journal