Bad Bones Beer: From a bone-crushing car accident to an Eastern Townships brewery

TW: Images of injuries.

“My brother Dave Heuff and I, along with his wife Gillian Greenberg and my wife Éloïse Audet-Cloutier, are all big beer geeks. Dave and I traveled a lot for beer and started homebrewing together,” says Zack Heuff of Bad Bones, a new brewery out of Dunham as of August 2024.

“I used to be a musician, playing bass and singing in bands. When I started bartending (at Old Montreal’s BreWskey Pub), I fell in love with the product and wanted to learn more,”.

“Brewing has the same balance of technique and art as music, and that’s what hooked me. Talking to passionate brewers inspired me, and I found that brewing gave me a similar creative outlet.”

Working at BreWskey for three years, Zack then moved to the Eastern Townships, regularly commuting back and forth to Montreal.

But that was when his life changed in January 2020.

Going down a different road

He recounts the story in full on the Bad Bones website (edited here for length):

As I left my driveway the roads did not seem bad. The thing was that it was extremely cold out, -30⁰C (-22⁰F) but there wasn’t much snow on the roads and visibility was fine. It was dark as night as it always is at 6:30am. I was on my regular route, one of those little country highways that only have two lanes… and on both sides were ditches separating the road from the open fields that go as far as the eye can see. There was blowing snow on the ground.

…The devil himself was with me that morning in the form of black ice, hidden underneath this drifting snow. Some people believe there was something else out there with me because frankly it is unbelievable that I survived what happened next. My tiny Honda Insight hit this patch of black ice and completely lost control at the exact moment a truck was passing in the opposite lane. I remember feeling my steering wheel go limp. If you have ever been driving in heavy rain and you hydroplane while over a large puddle or if you have driven in the mud and the car pulls you in a certain direction, this is a very similar feeling. Total loss of control and autonomy.

I remember the bright lights of the truck and the sound of his horn and I remember the car dragging me into the truck and saying “Oh, fuck.” as everything went black.

“I got into a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler on black ice. I was in a coma for four days, and I had a long recovery—about a year of rehab,” Zack says.

“I broke almost everything except my heart, spine, and brain—though I had minor brain damage. After the hospital, I was in a wheelchair, then on a walker, and eventually a cane. It was a long road, but I made it back.”

These bones were made for brewing

After the accident, Zack didn’t want to keep driving that road where the accident took place.

“I had to pass by the accident site every time, and it didn’t make sense to do a short shift and then sit in traffic for hours. I asked a local brewery, Dunham, if I could start brewing with them, and they agreed. Eventually, I decided I wanted to open my own project, and Dunham supported me. They even offered to let me set up my own space in their building,” he says.

Renting out a small part of the building and bringing in their own equipment, Bad Bones would only use their utilities like electricity and steam to keep costs lower, and began to brew in small batches with a new identity, one that would nod to Zack's life-changing accident with cans of black humour.

"Our recipes, flavors, and ideas are the retelling of that experience based on our desire to turn a profoundly negative experience into something positive that can be shared by all," Bad Bones states.

Releases are regularly announced on the brewery’s Instagram as they come out: The bold, fruity, and slightly bitter Femur using hops with strong citrus and tropical fruit notes; the juicy, citrus-dominated Pre-Death Experience with a bold hop character and a medium body; and the bold, aromatic Tibia with a complex mix of tropical, citrus, and slightly wine-like flavors due to its blend of hops and high alcohol content.

“I’ve carefully selected the best ingredients I’ve worked with over the years. For example, my yeast comes from California. It’s expensive, but it’s the best I’ve found, and I don’t compromise on quality,” says Heuff.

“It’s all about brewing and experimenting. You can brew a full batch and then take a small portion to test different yeasts or hops. There’s a lot of trial and error involved… we emphasize freshness, especially with our types of beer. Once they hit their peak, they don’t get better, so we make small batches and release them when they’re perfect.”

Against the current

But despite the sense of purpose behind Bad Bones, the craft brewing scene in Canada’s facing a lot of headwinds. Rising costs threaten the survival of many businesses—materials, taxes, and transportation—while also facing competition from alternative beverages like cannabis-infused drinks and non-alcoholic options.

It’s all part of a broader trend that had the Canadian Craft Brewers Association’s executive director speculating 10-20% of breweries nationwide could close in 2024.

“The beer market is in a strange place right now. Ten years ago, people would say, ‘Go big or go home.’ But now, with so many breweries and the economy being what it is, it's riskier to flood the market with a lot of product. I prefer to keep things small and focus on quality, so if something isn’t up to my standards, it’s easier to dump a small batch than a massive one,” Zack says.

“Tastes are changing, and the competition is fierce. But we focus on big, flavour-forward beers, like IPAs that are tropical and soft, not the bitter, piney ones people think of. We’re catering to a niche market of beer geeks who love that hop-forward experience but also to people who might not usually drink IPA because our beers are more fruit-forward.”

Scope out what Bad Bones is brewing here.