A picture of the 948 telephone taps

Creating a fresh, flavourful,
creative beer community

Our Story

Many fellow Airdrie residents will remember the days where all the phone numbers started with 948 and did not have to dial the area code. 948 represents Airdrie and reflects on how it was and how it has grown today. We look forward to adding our story to Airdrie’s timeline and with our home-town roots, we decided 948 would be the perfect name!

948 Brewing Company is an Airdrie based, small batch brewery. Founded by two long time friends, we wanted a way to bring our unique beers to Airdrie and help grow the community we grew up in. We have a small, ten hectolitre , brewhouse with 12 fermentors. We partner with several businesses in Airdrie to grow our brand as well as theirs. The Stitching Bees brand our clothing, Sorso provides us with their house blend Earl Grey tea for our stout, Switchback Creative helps us create our digital pressence and we use local artists to design our labels. 948 is the original telephone prefix for Airdrie phone numbers and we are proud to name our brewery after three numbers that connected our city for so many years.

948 Founders

A drawing of Dave + Kyle, Co-Founders

Dave + Kyle, Co-Founders

Over a beer. That’s how most of these stories start. Ours started three years ago while I (Kyle) was sitting around for just another homebrew pint with Dave and we get to talking. “This is really good. You’re brewing some wicked beers!” Dave says. And then the question some homebrewers inevitably ask: “What do you think about starting our own brewery?”

Wow. That’s a big step. Homebrew to pro brew. Questions flood my head. Where do we even start? The laws had recently changed to make small production a possibility. A lot of other breweries had started to pop up; over 20 in Alberta in 2016. Where do we get equipment? How do we find a location? Neither of us has really started our own business before.

The conversation and beer continue to flow. Is it really such a crazy idea? What if we just start small, right here in Airdrie? Now my insecurities catch up: would other people even like the beer? Is there enough interest? Would the community want something like this here?

a person is pouring beer from a 948 telephone beer tap
a pile of 948 Brewing Company hats

When questions came up in 2018 as we sat in meetings with other breweries and their owners, that question “What’s your brewery called?” Came up.

We start to throw around names. What do we call ourselves? How do we want to be recognized? Airdrie is our home town and we want to stay here. We want to hear all of our neighbors stories. Yankee Valley Brewing? Nah. Airdrie Brewing? Nope, a little generic. How do WE say Airdrie? Do residents still remember getting the first traffic lights? Do they remember the rat hole, the old Post Office…? “What about the original phone number? 948!” says Dave. That’s it. The number. Those numbers you knew by heart growing up. They connected everyone. Three simple numbers. When you met up with friends after school, riding on the bus home, making plans to get together on the weekend. You exchanged your last four digits. You didn’t need anything else; everyone in town had the same prefix and there was no need for the area code.

Everything started with 948, and so will we. This is it. 948. This is how we begin.

Read About Our Journey
Our Beers
a person is pouring beer from a 948 telephone beer tap
Events News
Vist Our Taproom
948 beer mugs with beer.