A love story in Peel’s first solar-powered brewery: Caledon couple makes beer with the power of the sun

From the solar panels powering the brewery to the regenerative hops grown just steps from the kettle, every part of the process at GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co. is rooted in climate action and community resilience. Tree Hug, the latest brew, is more than a drink—it’s a love letter to the land, a call to reimagine sustainability in every sip, and a model for how small, local businesses can make a big environmental impact.

The Caledon brewery teamed up with the Credit Valley Conservation Foundation and Wilder Climate Solutions to launch Tree Hug—a sweet, distinctive beer brewed from the sap of Canada’s national tree, the sugar maple. But this isn’t just about taste. Proceeds from each bottle will help protect ecologically significant lands in the Credit River Watershed, ensuring they’re preserved for generations to come.

“The idea behind Tree Hug was to create a beer that not only tastes like Canada, but actively works to protect its landscapes for future generations,” GoodLot Farmstead Brewing’s co-owner Phil Winters says. “This initiative aligns perfectly with our values of sustainable brewing and local stewardship.”

Gail and Phil Winters at their farm in Caledon.

(GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co.)

Winters first began tapping maple trees on their farm in the early years—boiling sap for days to make small batches of syrup for family and friends. Then, in 2018, just before the pandemic, he had an idea: “What if we brewed beer with maple sap instead of water?”

It wasn’t a new idea—he had heard of others trying it—but it was rare. And for good reason. “It’s the most expensive syrup you can make when you do it in small batches. It takes 40 liters of sap to get just one liter of syrup,” Winters explained. “But sap itself—fresh from the trees—is a real, tangible, amazing, foraged element. And it’s the first thing you can collect from the forest in early spring.”

By 2019, GoodLot was brewing small-batch sap beer each year, limited to what could be collected from their own trees—usually just enough for a few dozen bottles. 

In 2023, they took it further, launching Tree Hug Wilder Sap Ale with two new partners: the Credit Valley Conservation Foundation (CVC) and Wilder Climate Solutions.

“By enjoying Tree Hug, a proudly Canadian-made drink, Canadians can take pride in knowing they’re making a tangible difference,” Credit Valley Conservation Foundation’s executive director, Dayana Gomez, said in a statement.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

The partnership is as local as it is ecological. The CVC, responsible for managing much of the land along the West Credit River, which runs through the Winters’ property, has long collaborated with the couple on reforestation. Together, they’ve planted over 9,000 trees across the farm, turning fields into carbon sinks and rewilding the landscape.

The sap for Tree Hug now comes from CVC forests, and 100 percent of profits from the beer are donated back to the foundation. “I cover the cost of the cans, the labels, the ingredients—everything. Whatever’s left goes straight to CVCF,” Winters says.

Carly Turner, who works at the brewery, says the maple sap beer is one of her favourites.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

A spokesperson from CVC told The Pointer that in March 2024, they supplied the first 1,500 litres of sap collected from the sugarbush at Maple Hills in Terra Cotta Conservation Area for the inaugural batch of Wilder Sap Ale. This marks the second year that CVC has provided sap for the project, with an additional 1,500 litres delivered to GoodLot this past March.

This year’s proceeds will help fund land acquisition for the Credit Valley Trail—a long-envisioned route stretching from Port Credit in Mississauga to Orangeville, connecting communities through a continuous, immersive natural corridor, Winters added.

His commitment to climate solutions stretches far beyond the brewery.

His direct relationship with climate change began in 1997, when he was hired to lead a student campaign on climate justice at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the time, he was already a seasoned political organizer, having worked on issues ranging from water access to sexual assault. But that year marked a turning point—when climate change and efforts like the Kyoto Protocol became the central focus of his activism.

“That’s when I first started to see solar as a solution to climate change,” Winters told The Pointer. “By 1998, I became obsessed with solar power.”

In 1999, he trained as a solar installer and by 2000 was immersed in the U.S. presidential election, hoping to help steer national attention toward renewable energy. What followed was a 14-year career dedicated to solar, shifting from activism to entrepreneurship in the belief that business could be a powerful catalyst for climate solutions.

Winters returned to Canada in 2003, initially settling in Alberta, where he worked in the renewable energy sector. He later co-founded a company focused on home energy retrofits and eventually took on a national role, designing turnkey solar projects for commercial and utility-scale use.

In 2009, Winters and his partner, Gail Winters, a filmmaker originally from Caledon, traded solar panels and film reels for farmland, relocating to Caledon to start a new chapter as farmers, following their parents’ footsteps.

“It was time to become partners in both business and life,” Phil Winters said with a big smile on his face. 

“We aspired to be farmers. We'd never been farmers. She was always growing flowers and plants in her backyard, wherever she was, and I was always growing food in all my backyards, wherever I was. I just loved having gardens…We didn't know what we were going to farm. We knew Caledon was where we wanted to be.” 

Gail Winters working on her farm.

(GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co.)

Little did they know they were planting the seeds for what would become Peel Region’s first solar-powered brewery.

Their first winter, unsure of what to grow on their 28-acre farm, they buried themselves in research. Hops—a key ingredient in beer—“kept showing up in specialty crop reports.” Curious, they began reaching out to Ontario brewers to gauge interest in locally grown organic hops.

By 2010, they began building hop-growing infrastructure. Within two years, they were producing small batches and exploring organic, chemical-free farming methods.

From the start, their farm’s goal was to be climate-neutral; “so, all organic, no chemicals, no pesticides, no herbicides.” 

A hop bin at the Winters’ farm.

(GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co.)

At the time, they were focused solely on hop farming, but they had already achieved carbon-negative status. With a 10-kilowatt solar system installed to meet all their energy needs, they were producing more green energy than they consumed, even supplying surplus electricity to their neighbours.

Shanelle Orie, who works front of house at GoodLot Farmstead Brewing and studied environmental sustainability, said the experience has made her more mindful of her environmental impact at home. “The way the world is moving, it makes me feel like I'm contributing to the cause as well by being employed here.”

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

As one of just five hop farms in the province at the time, the Winters also helped establish the Ontario Hop Growers Association to advocate for government research and support. 

For nearly a decade, they sold their hops exclusively to local brewers. But by 2017, feedback from those brewers started shifting the story.

“One varietal—Cascade—was producing something really unique on our farm,” Winters recalled. “They hadn't really smelled the properties of a cascade like that before.”

Hops are a key ingredient in the beer brewing process.

(GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co.)

That distinct flavour profile led them to wonder: what if they brewed beer themselves, capturing the unique terroir of their land, its ingredients, its water, its soil?

At a time when much of the industry focused on mass production and stadium sales, they wanted to revive the ancient craft of brewing rooted in place—where local ingredients shaped distinct regional styles. It's how world-famous beers like IPAs first came to be. 

In 2017, eight years after planting their first hops, they released their first legal, farm-brewed beer—an expression of Caledon's soil, water, and spirit.

GoodLot Farm's first beer, Farmstead Ale, remains a customer favourite to this day.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Eventually, the couple had the resources to build their own brewery, but one challenge loomed: brewing beer is surprisingly energy-intensive, and most breweries rely on natural gas to heat their water and extract flavours from malt and hops. 

Growing and drying hops has a hefty carbon footprint, with emissions of 3.1 to 3.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of dried hops. A large part of this comes from the energy used during cultivation, including fuel for tractors and electricity for harvesting. The drying process alone consumes 72 percent of the energy, contributing to nearly half of the emissions. All of this is a necessary part of producing hops, but adds to the environmental impact.

Phil Winters was determined to break from this tradition.

“We don’t have gas lines here on the farm, so we were already all-electric,” he said. “I didn’t want to start using fossil fuels just because we were opening a brewery.”

The solar-powered brewery is one of the first sights visitors see when they enter the farm.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

The Winters renovated an old barn to meet Passive House standards—a high-efficiency German building code that minimizes energy consumption, and added another ten kilowatts of solar panels. 

With the passive house standard, structures are ultra-insulated and designed to stay warm in winter and cool in summer without excessive heating or cooling.

(Passivhaus Institut) 

“Maintaining energy consumption below 120 kilowatt-hours per square metre annually is a defining feature of a Passive House,” UK-based sustainable consultant and building physics engineer Divyaraj Choudhary, who is currently working on Passive House projects, told The Pointer. “It’s remarkable to see a brewery embrace this level of sustainability—something that’s quite standard in Germany but still rare elsewhere.”

It didn’t stop at the building itself. 

“Then, we specially designed the brewing equipment to recapture the steam energy, as opposed to going to waste, which most breweries just blow into the atmosphere. We reuse that,” Winters explained.

They even created a circular economy on the farm: spent grains are sent to a nearby farm as animal feed, and the waste from their food truck, including bones and compostable items, goes to a permaculture compost facility. Worms turn the waste into soil, which then nourishes their crops.

"We've made almost no waste," he noted, "and everything serves a purpose, coming back to fuel the farm in one way or another."

The brewery was recognized by the Canadian Brewers Association, which named them the most sustainable brewery in Canada in 2023. "We’re small and local, so it’s beautiful to get that kind of recognition,” Winters says.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

Phil’s commitment to sustainability has been a lifelong journey, starting in solar energy and continuing with his belief that every business today must consider its carbon impact. “We can’t afford to add more carbon to the planet. It’s just the right thing to do.”

Climate change is quietly reshaping the future of beer—from the fields where ingredients grow to the breweries that craft it. 

Water, which makes up more than 90 percent of every pint, is under increasing threat as reduced snowpack and shrinking groundwater supplies strain resources needed for both irrigation and brewing. Barley, the grain responsible for beer’s colour, flavour, and fizz, is highly sensitive to heat and drought—conditions expected to intensify with rising global temperatures. Hops, too, are taking a hit. 

A 2023 study revealed a near 20 percent drop in yield in key European hop-growing regions, alongside a significant decline in the bitter acids that define beer’s signature taste. As drier, hotter summers become the norm, scientists warn that not only will beer taste different—it may become a lot more expensive.

There’s a growing need for more brewers like the Winters, who weave sustainability into every stage of their process.

With 80 percent of their energy now produced on-site by solar, and a goal to electrify their delivery fleet, Phil and Gail Winters continue to innovate, striving for a greener future, one pint at a time.

But federal and provincial funding will be a key factor in helping them reach their goals.

“We currently use a gas-powered van and truck for deliveries and tried switching to electric vehicles but couldn't afford the upfront cost, which is frustrating since we already have solar power and EV charging on-site,” Winter explained.

In 2023, the brewery received the Small Business Big Impact Award for Sustainability from Meridian Credit Union, which came with a $50,000 prize that helped them purchase and install an electric vehicle (EV) charging station right outside the brewery.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

“An electric fleet would close the loop on clean transportation for us. But again, without targeted funding, it’s not feasible for a small, low-volume, low-margin business like ours. Brewing and farming simply don’t generate the revenue to support those kinds of capital investments on their own.” 

They also hope to implement a few more advanced technologies, especially around carbon capture in the brewing process. 

“When yeast ferments sugar into alcohol, it releases carbon dioxide. While we use carbon dioxide to carbonate and move beer around the brewery, much of it is lost to the atmosphere. There’s technology, developed in the U.S. but not yet available in Canada, that captures this carbon dioxide directly from the fermentation tanks and allows us to reuse it. Unfortunately, even the smallest available unit costs around $300,000—well beyond our reach without external support,” he says.

“If federal or provincial governments roll out funding for technology-based carbon reduction in small businesses, we would absolutely apply.”

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