Grand Canyon Brewing Co.

Before opening a brewery, John Peasley’s only experience with beer was drinking it. That was enough, it seems, because Grand Canyon Brewing Co. has become a thriving business with four locations in Northern Arizona.

Peasley (pictured), a U.S. Navy veteran, was looking for something to do after leaving the military. He knew he wanted to open a business, so he started with a gift shop in Williams. He settled in and became friends with the owner of the restaurant next door. When that restaurant closed and the building was put on the market, he bought it and turned it into Cruiser’s Route 66 Café. Not long after that, he thought about opening a brewery.
And then he did.

In 2007, with the help of a good investment and the skills he’d acquired in the Navy, Peasley opened Grand Canyon Brewing Co. — despite his limited experience with beer. “I’d only home-brewed a couple of batches in my whole life,” he says. “I’m more in management and leadership. … The stuff I learned in the military, you can use that to lead a kitchen staff, [and] you can lead people to make good beer and grow a brand-new product.”

Finding those people wasn’t difficult. “The brewery industry was taking off, everybody wanted to drink craft beer, and everybody wanted to brew it,” Peasley says. 

After some trial and error, he now has a team that makes several popular beers. The most popular are the Sunset Amber Ale and the American Pilsner. Customers love the year-round ales and India pale ales, too, and the seasonal brews such as Deep in the Green (a double IPA) and Sacred Saguaro (a Mexican amber lager). Peasley says there are about 20 beers on rotation, and each brewery has 18 taps or more. 

Shawn Jones, a customer for the past three years, says the friendly staff is part of the reason she loves visiting. “They always greet you with a hug and a warm fire in the fireplace,” she says. She loves all of the beer, but the pale ale is her favorite — and she also enjoys the huckleberry margaritas. Mixed drinks, Peasley says, are the result of a group process for coming up with drink flavors and combinations: “Everybody goes over it, samples it and writes down their notes.”

Now, some of those mixed-drink ingredients are being made in-house. After getting the beer-making process down, Peasley added a distillery to the Williams location to expand its offerings and allow for more creativity. The distillery opened in 2017 and produces whiskey, vodka, rum and gin varieties. There’s a tasting room, too, with a view of the distillery to give customers a behind-the-scenes look at the process. “The idea is to create local small batches that people can get excited about,” Peasley says. 

And there’s more. Recently, the company further diversified by adding a roastery that operates in conjunction with the distillery and offers fresh-roasted coffee. The idea came from Peasley wanting to make better use of the morning hours, when customers aren’t as likely to come in for beer or booze.

“Tesla decided to build a supercharging station on our property,” Peasley says. “That means customers coming around 24/7. So, I thought, My staff is already there brewing and distilling; why not run a coffee roaster with a little coffee shop?”

Peasley says the coffee shop is a natural next step toward becoming a full beverage house that offers everything from flavored waters and sodas to more-elevated craft beer and spirits. “We have a bourbon-flavored coffee,” he says. “The best thing about it is that it tastes like bourbon … but there’s no alcohol in it.”

Grand Canyon Brewing Co. has locations in Williams, Flagstaff, Page and Kingman. The flagship, in Williams, is just steps away from the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel and is within walking distance of many of Williams’ Historic Route 66 gift shops and attractions.