Today we sit down with Blake Belding, the Co-Owner and Head Brewer of Calgary’s Cold Garden Beverage Company, which is much more than just a brewery, it is an experience.
Blake spent the first few years of his life in a small Alberta town called Rainbow Lake before moving to Okotoks at the age of 3. Like most guys growing up in small town Alberta he played a lot of hockey, but after starting football in the 8th grade he would quit hockey soon after, saying he’d finally found the sport he was good at.

His love for football would take him to the University of Calgary where he would enter the Haskayne School of Business and meet his future business partner Dan. Blake interred into the entrepreneurship program which in retrospect he admits is a little silly - entrepreneurship isn’t something that you can teach, like Cold Garden it is something you have to experience for yourself.

He would often get asked “what business are you going to open? Having been recently inspired by the success of Minhas in 2004 Blake figured “I love beer, I like money, this sound like so much fun!” Blake started home brewing soon after and the plans for the brewery would truly start in 2013. Cold Garden’s iconic space would be rented in September of 2015, followed by a rush to create their first beers in March of 2016 for the Calgary International Beer Festival, followed by the doors finally opening in January 2017. Since then the space and the brand has taken on a life of its own and as Blake describes it: “As a garden, it grows!"

Let’s Meet For A Beer!

Alberta Beer Festivals: website | twitter | instagram

Cold Garden Beverage Company: website | twitter | instagram