Redwood Brewery / Drewry's Brewery

Redwood/Drewry became one of Winnipeg's major industrial breweries and later fed into Western Breweries and the Carling site lineage. Legal entity: Herchmer and Batkin Brewery; Redwood Brewery; E. L. Drewry brewery; Drewrys Limited. Production evidence: Historical production — Edward L. Drewry took over idle brewery in 1877; early-1880s capacity reached about 10,000 barrels of ale, porter and beer annually; sold in 1924 and reorganized as Drewrys Ltd. Family operation then corporate reorganization; exact shareholder structure incomplete. Owner as recorded: Edward Lancaster Drewry family; George Montagu Black / Drewrys Ltd from 1924. Status as recorded: Closed / site later carling. RELATED 2026-09-24: e-l-drewry-brewery (TB-32FCY1MR) now carries the sourced history of this same Redwood Avenue brewery (1877-1997, demolished 1999). One of the two should become a tombstone; decide with both open.

A summary written during research. The sourced facts are in the sections below.

1. 1877
   Drewry takes the idle Herchmer and Batkin brewery

   Edward Lancaster Drewry "settled in Winnipeg in May 1877. He took over the Herchmer and Batkin Brewery, which was idle, and operated it until he sold out in 1924. Along with the brewery he assumed possession of the home connected with it, Redwood" — hence the name, at 55 Redwood Avenue by the Red River (MHS).

2. 1924
   Drewry sells out

   "operated it until he sold out in 1924" (MHS). The buyer is not named there; the archive's own account continues the plant as Drewrys Limited within Western Breweries. Drewry died in 1940.

3. 1957
   Carling

   "In 1957, it became Carling Brewery and later Carling-O'Keefe" — continued on carling-brewery-manitoba-carling-o-keefe-redwood-site (TB-CP1SAPVD).

4. 1997
   Closed under Molson; demolished 1999

   "Bought by the Molson Brewing Company, it was closed in 1997. The former brewery building was demolished in 1999 and the site stood vacant at the time of a 2024 visit."