Endeavour Brewing

Friendships on tap, blending suds with socializing

For Matthew Atkins, co-owner of St. Albert’s Endeavour Brewing, beer is about community.

“Europe has that culture, right?” says Atkins, who opened Endeavour back in 2018 with his wife Georgia. “You go to a German beer hall, you sit at a long table, and you just start having a conversation with people. You sit at the bar and you know the bartender’s life story in like five minutes.”

In a time when we’ve splintered into smaller and smaller pods barely aware of each other’s existence, it’s almost a revolutionary act to get to know the person next to you. But Atkins is quite sincere about this, just as sincere as he is about making quality beer. After all, if you’re going to sit around and exchange stories with someone you met five minutes ago, the drinks better be compellingly good.

This is, of course, why the craft beer industry has grown in Alberta, and one of the reasons why Atkins left his life in the corporate world to concentrate on what was once just a hobby. The eureka moment for Atkins came about when he was awaiting the latest round of layoffs at his job. When he saw co-workers and bosses that he held in high regard let go, he decided to get ahead of it.

“I started Endeavour that day,” he says. “It was like, ‘Okay, let’s get working on the business plan and figure it out.’”

Beyond opening the taproom and brewery in Campbell Business Park, Atkins and his wife concentrated on beer making. As Atkins himself says, he likes his beer to taste like beer, and while he’ll happily experiment he does like to come back to that traditional taste. You can still find the same initial offerings of ales, pilsners, lagers and IPAs at Endeavour, though the two have also expanded into other types of tipple.

In fact, Endeavour won a bronze medal for their Lost Flip Flop Saison in the farmhouse ale category at the 2024 Alberta Beer Awards in October. They also picked up a gold for the double IPA Awning Attack, as well a gold at the Canada Beer Cup for its sixth anniversary English IPA. Impressive wins for a brewery more concerned with fostering community than gathering hardware.

“That’s the part that we love the most,” Atkins insists. “We love watching customers make friends with other customers and then it becomes a big social event. It was like that at the very beginning. All these people would come and sit at the bar and talk to us, and then within six months they’re sitting at tables with other customers and getting to know each other. Endeavor is the sort of place where you know 70 percent of your returning customers, and how many places are like that?”

In this day and age offering everyone a seat at the table is something of a political act, and the Atkins take the idea of community very seriously. Since starting Endeavour they’ve been using the brewery as a hub, offering drag queen bingo nights, beer and yoga, even pairing beer and fly tying. There’s the always-popular trivia night every second Tuesday, an often-crammed event that now has a waiting list for tables.

During the early days of the pandemic the Atkins took to heart a lesson, and that was to diversify. While many other breweries decided to explore the usual options of spirits or soda, the Atkins opted for coffee. As Atkins himself says, he’s not patient enough to wait 12 years for a whiskey to finish maturing in its cask, but he is patient enough to wait a short amount of time for a perfectly brewed cup of joe.

“Coffee has always been our second love,” Atkins notes. “A lot of people are the same, they love both beer and coffee. Somehow, they just go together. We started figuring that out, and then we kind of got the opportunity to take over the bay beside us through our great landlord.”

Opening around August of 2022, Endeavour Coffee Roasters made use of a refurbished West German roaster and began offering single roast coffees originating from Brazil, the Honduras, Peru, and Guatemala. While they’re still working to get a separate online presence, Endeavour’s coffee is making an impact in the community, showing up at a few restaurants and shops around town. The Venn diagram between coffee fans and beer lovers might cross over in terms of quality, but Atkins finds that their coffee clientele is somewhat different from their beer followers. 

“Beer customers want to socialize,” he notes with a laugh, “whereas the coffee customers often just want to sit there and work on the computers. They don’t want you to bug them. So that was a little bit of change for me to get used to.” t8n

Endeavour Brweing
215 Camegie Drive #4A
endeavourbrewing.com