Reinvention on tap: How Tool Shed Brewing turned setbacks into success

Reinvention on tap: How Tool Shed Brewing turned setbacks into success

Graham Sherman has taken his hobby from a backyard experiment to a 22,000-square-foot brewery.

On a cold February day in 2012, Graham Sherman stood in a modest shed in his Calgary backyard, crammed full of brewing equipment. He was 10,500 km away from his previous life, working in Afghanistan on contracts for the Canadian and U.S. governments installing communication networks. At home, he wondered if his love of his so-called “geeky hobbies”—beer and barbecue—could turn into something more than just passion projects.

“I thought, what if I didn’t have to go back to the war zone? What if I could brew beer for a living?” says Mr. Sherman.

That ‘what if’ question became the foundation of Tool Shed Brewing, a company tha