The inaugural award, named the John Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for Brewing Excellence, was bestowed upon Tony DeWald in 2023. This year, during the BC Craft Brewers Conference in New Westminster’s Anvil Centre, three award winners were announced: the Community Award, the Builder Award, and the Brewer Award. Next year, a fourth award will be added: the Graduate Award, for a deserving graduate of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University brewing program. Ohler plans to have an annual John Mitchell Signature Collaboration Beer brewed jointly by the winners of the Graduate and the Brewer Awards.

Ohler, a longtime friend of the late craft beer pioneer John Mitchell, hopes these awards will shed light on unsung heroes in the province’s craft beer industry. “These awards recognize the people who have given so much of their passion and time to craft beer, and not just brewers,” says Ohler. “If it was just brewers and entrepreneurs, I don’t think craft beer would be anywhere. Consumers need to thank so many other people as well, people who have helped bring craft beer to the forefront.” These awards highlight that a safe, healthy craft beer industry is beyond just brewing.

The Community Award

Monica Frost, one of our fearless leaders here at the BC Ale Trail, was honoured with the Community Award. In addition to her important role as Project Lead for the BC Ale Trail, Monica is also Communications Director for the BC Craft Brewers Guild. Monica has spent years writing for What’s Brewing Magazine and doing promotional work for major beer events like Vancouver Craft Beer Week and the Great Canadian Beer Festival. In addition, she served for five years as a Director for the BC Beer Awards and volunteered from 2008-2014 for the Vancouver and provincial chapters of CAMRA. There are many other ways, large and small, quantifiable or invisible, that Monica has enriched the BC craft beer community. “She’s so good at what she does,” Ohler says enthusiastically. “John Mitchell would want this.”

The Builder Award

The Builder Award was presented to Paul Hadfield, publican of Spinnakers Brewpub. Since Paul founded Spinnakers in 1984 with John Mitchell himself, he’s been out there greeting customers, being present, and ensuring high-quality beer is being served in his establishment. Spinnakers remains one of the best places – perhaps THE best place – in BC to enjoy traditional cask ale. However, Paul’s contributions go beyond beer. His ongoing advocacy helped push through several key changes to the province’s liquor policies, including the decision in 2000 to allow brewpubs to distribute their beer outside of their own restaurants. “Paul has been a tireless voice behind the scenes for advancing craft beer around BC,” says Ohler.

The Brewer Award

Finally, the esteemed Brewer Award was given to Gary Lohin. A longtime homebrewer, Gary first tried his hand at professional brewing when he began working at Okanagan Spring Brewery in the 1980s. From there, he brewed at Whistler Brewing, then made a name for himself as the brewmaster at Sailor Hagar’s in the mid-1990s. At Hagar’s, he began to experiment with a witbier recipe given to him by Hoegaarden founder Pierre Celis, and he introduced Vancouverites to their first taste of Belgian haze. In 2003, he founded Central City Brewing, which went on to win numerous awards over the years. It’s thanks to Gary that a real IPA first became popular in BC; Central City’s Red Racer IPA broke new ground in the province. Ohler recalls how much John Mitchell admired Gary for his entrepreneurial spirit and brewing expertise.  “He’s also just a good dude,” Ohler adds. “He’s the kind of guy who I can give him a hug, and that hug will mean something.  Gary has given craft beer a hug for a long time.”

Many congratulations to the three winners on their well-deserved recognition for the ways in which they’ve supported and built the craft beer industry up for decades. We wouldn’t be where we are now without them. Cheers!

Every Pint Tells a Story

Supporting Local. Celebrating Community.

The post 2025 John Mitchell Awards for Brewing Excellence appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

In 1982, John Mitchell was struggling to get a crazy idea off the ground: he wanted to brew his own beer and serve it in his pub, something no one else in Canada was doing. With the help of fellow British expat Frank Appleton, he managed to scrape together money for some brewing equipment (adapted from a dairy) and a brewing space. Appleton had the skills to create a recipe and make the beer. Mitchell managed to get the necessary permissions to open his Horseshoe Bay Brewery. But one magical ingredient was missing: yeast.

Mitchell’s appeals to various large breweries to use some of their yeast had gone unanswered or were rejected. No one was interested. No one, that is, until Mitchell reached out to one of the top breweries in his native England: Fuller’s Brewery, home of the famous ale London Pride. Under Appleton’s expert hand and using the yeast shipped over from Fuller’s, Horseshoe Bay Brewery produced a London Pride-style beer that they christened Bay Ale, the first keg of which they tapped in the summer of 1982. In his memoir, Appleton recalls the nervousness they both felt that first night, especially when the initial pour was cloudy. However, nerves proved to be wrong. Bay Ale was so popular that they soon found themselves selling out, and Horseshoe Bay Brewery became both a destination and an inspiration for other craft beer fans out there, including the people who would soon establish Granville Island Brewing, Shaftebury Brewing, and more.

Bay Ale was the first collaboration in the history of Canadian craft beer, and the spirit of that partnership is now being replicated in a new beer – The Transatlantic Collaboration IPA, a beer produced in collaboration with Spinnakers Brewpub in Victoria and Fuller’s Brewery in England. This is the first John Mitchell Signature Collaboration, with more planned for the future. The proceeds of this beer and future Signature Collaboration beers will go to the KPU John Mitchell Legacy Endowed Scholarship. After much anticipation, the Transatlantic IPA was released this week at special events held at Spinnakers Brewpub in Victoria and the Barley Merchant in Langley. To say that craft beer fans in BC were excited to try it is an understatement.

But why Spinnakers? Since Horseshoe Bay Brewery has long been closed, Spinnakers was the natural choice. Spinnakers’ history extends back to 1984, when John Mitchell helped architect Paul Hadfield realize his dream of opening a brewpub. As one of the few breweries in BC serving beer on cask and producing traditional English ales, it seemed only right that it was the site and the partner for this new Fuller’s collab.

John Mitchell’s longtime friend John Ohler spearheaded the collaboration, and planning began over a year ago. When Ohler first reached out to Fuller’s head brewer Guy Stewart, Stewart was initially taken aback: “Who’s this mad Canadian?” he recalls asking himself. However, as soon as he heard the history, he was on board. He contacted their yeast labs immediately and asked them to ship some to Paul Hadfield’s brewing team at Spinnakers. Along with the yeast, Stewart sent the recipe for Fuller’s famous Extra Special Bitter (ESB).

With the ESB recipe, Fuller’s yeast, and Hadfield’s vision for producing an old-world style IPA, the Spinnakers brewers got to work. After a couple of test batches, they arrived at that perfect balance of rich malt and earthy, slightly floral hops. The Transatlantic Collaboration IPA was born. A beautiful, clear, bright copper, it’s somewhere between an English IPA and an ESB, with a healthy dose of nutty malt richness balancing the moderate hop bite. It’s not your usual West Coast-style IPA; it is more subtle and points to its origins in the English ale tradition. It’s a beautiful beer, and fairly sessionable at 5.2% ABV.

The events at Spinnakers in Victoria and The Barley Merchant in Langley were crowded with brewers, brewery owners, and other supporters of the BC craft beer industry. Longtime industry advocates like Ken Beattie and Lundy Dale were there, and Guy Stewart himself flew over from England for the celebrations. This collaboration marks an important moment in BC craft beer history, so it was meaningful to see such a gathering of craft beer luminaries present to honour it.

John Ohler, who has worked tirelessly to support the BC craft beer industry and memorialize Mitchell’s legacy, agrees.

“It’s an important milestone in Canada’s craft beer history. Forty-three years after Fuller’s in England sent yeast to John Mitchell to open Canada’s first craft brewery, we’re doing it again!” he says. “And this is at a time when Canada’s craft beer industry is struggling. We need to recognize the importance of collaboration in craft beer – it’s what characterizes craft beer. Collaboration brings multiple people together to create an interesting product for the consumer. The industry desperately needs this.”

The Transatlantic Collaboration IPA will be available at various private liquor stores on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, including Vessel, Jaks, and Legacy. Spinnakers will be donating proceeds from the sales to the John Mitchell Scholarship at KPU’s Brewing and Brewery Operations Program.

Every Pint Tells a Story

Supporting Local. Celebrating Community.

The post New Beer from Spinnakers Replicates Canada’s First Craft Beer Collaboration appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

Those were the words spoken to Michael Friesen, head brewer at The Patch Brewery in Maple Ridge, by a fellow brewer shortly before their grand opening in August 2024. One year later, as the brewery celebrates its first anniversary, that brewer’s words seem prophetic. I sat down with Michael and co-owner Rebecca Laity to chat about The Patch’s first year and plans for the future.

A Slow Burn: Opening a Farm-Based Family Brewery

Rumours of The Patch were circulating years before their opening day. As other farm brewery owners will understand only too well, the bureaucratic hurdles required to open The Patch were substantial. 

The Laity family has lived and run businesses in the area for generations. However, it wasn’t until around 2017 that brothers Doug and Jeff Laity, along with their wives Kaitlyn and Rebecca, considered the possibility of a farm brewery.  The hard work that Persephone Brewing in Gibsons did to change the laws around agricultural land use inspired them. “We have this land, we could start a brewery!” Rebecca remembers the family thinking.  

It didn’t happen right away. They planted barley and hops and hired an architect to design the brewery buildings, but had to contract-brew out of Taylight and Locality while they slowly hacked away at bureaucratic red tape. At last, in summer 2024, they received final approval for opening their brewery. 

This delay wasn’t all negative, though. Rebecca recalls how those years of planning revealed the welcoming and collegial nature of the craft beer community. She and Jeff visited almost every brewery in the lower mainland – and others overseas – and at each one, Jeff would try to talk to the owner. “Everyone was so open and collaborative,” Rebecca says. “They were all willing to help us out.”

A Year of Challenges and Celebrations

Once The Patch opened its doors, that prediction about a tsunami of people came true. The huge outdoor patio space that welcomes children and dogs, combined with a solid taplist and delicious pizzas, immediately drew in the crowds. On busy weekends, parking attendants were on duty to facilitate the flow of traffic. Speaking as a regular brewery patron myself, I’ve rarely seen this kind of popularity. The Patch must be doing something right.

A large customer base is great, but every benefit has its drawbacks. “There were non-stop adjustments, and staffing was one of our biggest challenges,” Rebecca says. “We had to hire 50 additional staff within the first week of opening.” And the hiring has continued – along with the additional work required for staff training. The hundreds of customer seats available mean that they need more staff if they want to optimize their space. 

Providing efficient customer service as they welcome people in is another priority. The brewery’s popularity required a waitlist system almost immediately. Rebecca remembers that they began with a handwritten waitlist, then moved to a texting system, and now they use an online program. Customers can now add themselves to the waitlist while they’re still at home and check their spot before they head out. It’s been a game-changer.

Once patrons were inside the brewery, there were other difficulties to sort out. The flow of customers from counter to table – and the different options, like table service or counter service – has gone through several iterations. Rebecca acknowledges that this can be frustrating for repeat customers, who may have experienced different “rules” during different visits. It’s also difficult for staff. However, they’ve now found a good balance, and they plan to stick with it.

A final hurdle of their first exciting year was the beer supply. They were selling almost all of their beer directly to customers at the counter. This is great news for any brewery, but it meant that they didn’t have enough beer to fill the cans in their off-sales fridge. Increasing production within their existing brewhouse space required a skilled game of fermentation tank Tetris.  

What Makes The Patch Unique?

A craft brewery won’t find success just by brewing fantastic beer or having a trendy taproom. It needs to hit that perfect balance of high-quality beer (and food, if offered), a welcoming, community-oriented space, and staff who care about the customers. The Patch seems to have found that balance in their first year.

Head brewer Michael Friesen is passionate about this brewery and what it can offer to Maple Ridge. He’s designed the brewhouse for top efficiency, using large serving tanks rather than kegs for the front of house taps (trust me when I say this saves a great deal of time and hassle) and piping the lines underground to feed the taps in the little “Beer Barn” outside. He’s also crafted a taplist that embodies local flavours and histories within a range of beer styles that will appeal to the brewery’s broad demographic. 

It starts with a good lager. “Gotta have a good house lager,” he told me. A lager is a good litmus test for a brewery; you can’t hide any flaws. The Laity Lager is excellent. It’s crisp, clean, and approachable – not too “crafty” for the folks who are used to macro lagers, but a quality beer that craft beer nerds will appreciate. Another popular lager on tap is the 1879 Patch Pilsner, Michael’s twist on a Czech pilsner. It’s named after the year in which the Laity family settled in the region. To Michael, understanding both local history and beer history are crucial if you’re a brewer. “Brewers should have a core knowledge of traditional beer styles,” he says. “They have their foot planted in the past – they know the history. But they should also be aware of innovations happening in beer. Once you know what the rules are, then you can break them.” 

And he’s done a bit of breaking with the 1879 Patch Pilsner. Using imported European floor-malted barley, he puts the wort through an extra-long boil, ages it for three weeks in a foeder (a big wooden barrel), then krausens it to allow natural carbonation, then does a final dry hop. It’s served with a traditional Czech side-pull tap. The subtle vanilla and toffee notes drawn from the wood aging stop it from being a conventional Czech pilsner, but that’s part of its charm; this pilsner is the Laity version of the traditional Czech beer. 

Other core beers, like the Fat Tractor Hazy IPA and the Three Peaks West Coast IPA, evoke local landmarks and sights. Early in our conversation, Michael and Rebecca described the haze that settled over the fields in early August, when the barley was being harvested. I thought of that when I picked up a can of Fat Tractor and looked out the window to see the farm’s tractor sitting in the freshly shorn fields. The rotating taps, including the Sour Patch series and the hefeweizen, reflect seasonal aspects of the local landscape – berries, wheat fields, mountains. 

There are plenty of non-alcoholic options as well, including Phillips Brewing’s non-alcoholic beers, Ole mocktails, and lemonade, iced tea, and Italian sodas. However, one unique inclusion is their coffee bar – a big draw for tired parents who stop by when the brewery opens at 10 am. After discovering an amazing coffee shop on Vancouver Island, Drumroasters, the Laitys went into partnership with the owners. Drumroasters supplies their espresso machine and makes a special roast for The Patch based on Maple Ridge’s water chemistry. You can get anything from a drip coffee to flavoured lattes to matcha to cold brew to hot chocolate.

And finally – food! If you’re in the mood for more than something to sip on, The Patch has you covered with their new menu. While they started with pizza as their mainstay, they’ve expanded to include muffins and pastries, fried chicken, burgers (there are vegan options for these latter two), and salads. A large food truck out back expands their kitchen facilities and helps feed the hundreds of hungry patrons who enter their doors each day.

Looking to the Future

After one year of beautiful chaos and smashing success, The Patch has found its place in the Maple Ridge community. It’s giving the locals something that they’ll come back for repeatedly. Open air, good beer and food, play space for kids and dogs…it’s all here. After a year of consistent pivoting and adjustments to make things work, what does the future look like?

Rebecca feels like they’re just getting started. “We’ve done a lot, but there’s so much more we’d like to do,” she says. “We’d like to expand our food menu and host more events.” An Oktoberfest celebration is currently in the works, although fairly laid-back; business as usual, but with some fun additions. “It’s not a ticketed event,” Rebecca emphasizes, although ticketed events are likely a future possibility. They will also continue to build up their staff in order to ensure quality customer service and good management.

On the brewing side, one thing that isn’t in the immediate future is wider distribution. They’ll continue to focus on selling beer to the customers who come to them for that farm brewery experience. From Michael’s perspective, this is the dream for a brewer. They don’t feel like they’re brewing for a sales team; they’re brewing for their customers, and they’re brewing styles they love. “We can brew the beer the best we can and get instant feedback from people coming in,” says Michael. “We use our passion and creativity.” 

At the same time, as both Michael and Rebecca emphasize, the brewer’s passion must align with the customer base for the brewery. “We had to learn about our audience, and I think we’ve done a great job of making very approachable beers,” says Rebecca. Combining creativity with approachability is something Michael’s done well. He anticipates introducing a barrel-aging program in future, so keep an eye out for that!

A Beer to Celebrate One Year: the Anniversary Brew

Today, The Patch is releasing its much-anticipated first anniversary beer – their “One Year Beer”, a cold-lagered IPA that’s similar to a West Coast IPA but crisper and cleaner. Using a superpowered lager yeast strain (for the brewing science nerds, the superpowers involve biotransformation caused by the release of thiols), Michael brewed the beer with BC-grown Saaz and Cascade hops, fermented it, dry-hopped it with tropical New Zealand hops, aged it in a foeder, krausened it in a stainless steel tank, then double dry-hopped it. 

If that sounds a bit confusing and complicated to make – it is. But it’s definitely worth drinking! This beer has a lager’s beautiful golden clarity, but its fruity aroma and first sip suggest a hazy IPA with melon, grapefruit, guava, and peach notes. Mid-palate, that sip takes a turn to West Coast IPA territory with citrus pith and pine. The finish is satisfying; clean and fairly quick, with just a bit of lingering piney bitterness. As Michael puts it, this beer takes you on a journey. It will sell out quickly, so make sure you get down to the taproom ASAP. 

Congratulations to the owners and staff of The Patch on a brilliantly successful first year. We’re all looking forward to seeing what you do next!

Every Pint Tells a Story

Supporting Local. Celebrating Community.

The post The Patch Brewery in Maple Ridge Celebrates Their First Year in Beer appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

Many beer lovers have heard the folklore surrounding the origins of the India Pale Ale – that English brewers added massive quantities of hops to their barrels of pale ale in order to prevent the beer from spoiling on its long journey to India, where it would slake the thirst of British soldiers. The hoppy bite of the IPA was thus born. 

The story isn’t quite as simple as that, though. In recent years, beer historians and writers such as Martyn Cornell and Joshua Bernstein have provided more nuanced explanations of IPA history. However, the core ideas remain: beginning in the 18th century, pale ales were increasingly hopped to survive the journey to southern climes, including India, and the style became ever more popular over the next couple of centuries. 

Intellectual understanding of the IPA is one thing, but what did these early versions actually taste like? While there are relatively few 18th and 19th-century brewing-related records, a few survive that sketch out the shape of these older beers. Brewer and scientist Nathan Vadeboncoeur, founder of Project Hop and Brasserie du Bon Temps, has dug into the beer archives to find out how to brew these original versions of the IPA. And now you can buy some to try at home!

The Beginnings: Hop Science and the Roots of Beer

Vadeboncoeur’s Project Hop was initially not a brewing project at all, but a company rooted in his training as an environmental scientist. Launched in 2017, the original Project Hop offered quality assurance services for BC’s hop growers. As he worked on assessing hop quality across the province, he became increasingly interested in hop terroir. Wine has terroir, so why not beer? 

He noted that terroir – the soil, the microbes, the surrounding vegetation – affects hop flavours, even among hops of the same variety. He realized that if brewers knew they could count on the quality and flavour of a particular hop, they would be more likely to purchase – and thus he could help boost the business of small hop farmers and encourage more experimentation in hop production. 

The Covid Pivot and Founding the Brasserie du Bon Temps

However, the COVID-19 pandemic ground everything to a halt. At that time, he pivoted from hop terroir to hop history. His company Project Hop became the current Project Hop, which is his line of historical IPAs, and from Project Hop grew his brewery label: Brasserie du Bon Temps. 

Vadeboncoeur was a homebrewer, but in 2020, after he was invited to brew some single-hop beers at R&B Brewing, he learned to scale up and refine his techniques. He began looking into old recipes, experimenting with test batches, and serving some historical styles to R&B’s taproom customers. Brasserie du Bon Temps and Project Hop were born. 

“I was able to talk to customers about how it was a recipe from 200 years ago and tell them the story,” says Vadeboncoeur. “The story really makes the beer, and to go back in time offers a different dimension to that experience. People seem to really like that.” And customers at R&B enjoyed Vadeboncoeur’s adventurous beers, which included an Old IPA, a grisette, an Abbey-style ale, and a Scandinavian beer called Råøl, or “Raw Ale.” This beer, according to Project Hop’s description, is made without boiling the wort: “This raw (unboiled) beer is flavoured by infusing hot water with juniper branches […] then pouring this over grain to extract sugars, then straight into fermentation with a heritage Norwegian yeast.” Not something you’d easily find on a craft brewery’s tap list! 

Bringing the Past to Life

Brasserie du Bon Temps brews out of other breweries, such as [the now closed] Flashback and Tinhouse Brewing, and has that same spirit of collaboration in its name. The brewery is named after the Order of Good Cheer, founded by Samuel de Champlain in 1606 to help boost morale for the settlers of New France. It became, essentially, the first gastronomic drinking club; after its founding, deaths dropped dramatically. The brewery honours beer’s history of bringing people together through flavour and experience. According to the website, “Brasserie du Bon Temps re-creates historical recipes to bring you the story of beer from accidental discovery to the world’s favourite tipple. Our beers are faithful recreations of old styles or research-based best guesses when the historical trail runs cold.”

The goal of Brasserie du Bon Temps is to recreate historical beers, including the line of hop-focused IPAs under Project Hop. But how did Vadeboncoeur find the historical information that allowed him to do this? He’s a scientist by trade rather than a historian, but he certainly has the research skills required to unearth such treasures. One open-access resource he used was Project Gutenberg, which provides digitized scans of thousands of old books. He was looking for needles in haystacks, but he found enough information about breweries and brewing practices to allow him to brew his historical IPA mix pack: the 1754, the 1823, the 1870, and the 1914. 

1754: This beer imitates the earliest beers that were brewed at Hodgson’s Bow Brewery in London and shipped to India in the mid-18th century. The original beer used basic floor-malted pale malt and plenty of East Kent Goldings hops. It would have aged into a “stock ale” – a stronger beer, something closer to a barleywine – on its journey to India. The movement of the ship would have agitated the brewers yeast left in the beer, but would also have enlivened the Brettanomyces yeast living in the wood of the barrel. The Brett would eat all the long-chain sugars that regular yeast couldn’t, and would impart that aged ale flavour as well. 

To replicate this process, Vadeboncoeur adjusted his water to match London’s water chemistry at the time and estimated the alpha acid levels of older varieties of East Kent Goldings in order to calculate an equivalent amount in the hop’s modern version. He then added a specific strain of Brett to the wort and left it in oak barrels over the hot summer months to reproduce the conditions of the voyage to India.

1823: This beer replicates the Burton Brewery’s imitation of the Bow Brewery’s IPA (Project Hop’s 1754). When Hodgson decided he didn’t want to use the East India Company to ship the Bow’s beer anymore, the EIC looked for another brewer who could make the same product. They found Samuel Allsopp and his brewery at Burton-on-Trent. According to legend, Allsopp brought this beer to his brewer and asked if he could make it. The brewer spat it out in disgust: “Yes, I can make this. But who would want to drink it?” Many people, it turns out. The Burton version of Hodgson’s IPA uses the same recipe, with the exception of the water chemistry, which is unique to Burton-on-Trent. The Burton water is much harder, and there’s 4 times the mineral content in this beer, which helps the yeast eat more sugar and thus makes the beer a bit drier. Meanwhile, the sulfates enhance the hop flavour. 

1870: This beer is the same as the 1823, but with no barrel-aging and no Brettanomyces added. It uses East Kent Goldings hops but adds another hop variety to the mix: Strisselspault, a French hop. 

1914: This final historical IPA owes its lower ABV and lighter flavour to the popularity of lager combined with anti-German sentiment at the onset of World War I. English drinkers didn’t want a German product, so they adjusted their English beer to align with the current lager trend. This beer includes corn in the mash because there wasn’t enough barley available, and uses only East Kent Goldings hops, nothing from the continent. There’s no barrel-aging or wild yeast. It’s light and very drinkable – the patriotic option for those who didn’t want to drink German lagers.  

In addition to the historical IPA mix-pack, Vadeboncoeur also brews and sells other historical styles, such as the King Gambrinus Adambier, a velvety 10% ABV dark beer which replicates a 500-year-old German beer known for its lightly smoky taste and dark fruit character, and Biere St. Bertin, a medieval gruit ale (an unhopped beer flavoured with herbs). He currently brews out of Tinhouse Brewing Co. in Port Coquitlam, where he recently had a beer release. Customers who stopped by Tinhouse that day could taste a flight of historical IPAs while listening to Vadeboncoeur’s explanation of their origins. Phil Smith, brewer and co-owner of Tinhouse, says his brewery has welcomed small contract brewers for several years. “We were alerted to the fact that Nathan was looking for a home to brew some fun and experimental beers. It’s been a long work in progress, but we are so happy to have helped, and excited to have these beers hitting the market now,” says Smith. “It’s been an interesting process working with Nathan and watching him craft these IPAs that are true to the era in which they originated.”

You can sign up for the Brasserie du Bon Temps Beer Club to receive all the information about beer releases from both the Brasserie and Project Hop. The five-dollar monthly membership fee includes perks like member-only articles and videos, a live monthly presentation and Q&A on beer history and brewing, 10% discount on all Brasserie and Project Hop products, and the option to purchase quarterly micro-batch, member-only beers. Vadeboncoeur hopes to have regular production of his core historic beers, with seasonal releases that reflect when they would have been available in their original forms. Customers can also buy these beers directly – no membership required – from the Project Hop website.

If you’re looking for more opportunities to sample Brasserie du Bon Temps and Project Hop’s historical IPAS, you might be in luck if you also picked up tickets to the upcoming (sold out) North Island Craft Beer Festival on March 15,  2025. Vadeboncoeur will be there to pour these unique brews for Island beer lovers!

The post Raising a Glass to the Past appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

Bomber’s back, baby!

Well…it never really left. But let me tell the whole story.

Beginnings

When Don Farion agreed to jump in as a spare for his friend Blair Calibaba’s local hockey team one night in the early 2010s, he didn’t realize that that decision would take his life in a new direction. The guys were cracking bottles of homebrew in the parking lot after the game, and Blair’s pilsner blew Don away. Inspired by his love of Pilsner Urquell, Blair had created a homebrew version that had the perfect balance of hoppy bite and malty backbone. Within a year and a half, Blair was the head brewer for Don’s new craft brewery and that pilsner was one of their flagship beers. Oh, and the men’s rec team they played for? The Bombers. 

This was the beginning of Bomber Brewing. However, it wasn’t the beginning of Don’s love of beer. While a young man in Montreal, Don came to love that city’s Belgian-style craft breweries. Upon moving to Vancouver in 1992, food and drink were on his mind. He opened Incendio Pizzeria in Gastown in 1996, but eventually turned back to beer. He and his longtime business partner, Dean Mallel, founded BierCraft, an iconic Vancouver restaurant. Like many, I had my first true Belgian beer experiences during excursions to BierCraft, where the staff were able to explain to me – a beer newbie back then – the difference between a tripel and a dubbel, and what the “lees” was. BierCraft converted people not only to Belgian beer but eventually to craft beer.

But the success of BierCraft wasn’t enough. As a homebrewer and a Certified Cicerone (it’s like a beer sommelier), the possibility of his own brewery kept tugging at Don’s mind. He didn’t want to be the brewer – “I don’t have delusions of grandeur!” he laughs – but he wanted a brewery whose story and space he could create.

“Breweries are all about stories,” he tells me. “That’s what draws people in.”

The story of Bomber was seeded in that first evening of hockey and homebrew: friends (new and old), sports, community, sharing a drink in a parking lot. Upon opening in 2014, Bomber Brewing quickly established itself as a beloved fixture in East Vancouver.

A Fork in the Road

By 2018, the craft beer industry in Vancouver was booming – to the point of saturation, some thought. Bomber was profiting and at high production levels, brewing 7800 hectolitres of their 10,000 Hl capacity. However, this was a difficult pace to maintain, so when the Donnelly Group (now the Freehouse Collective as of spring 2024), owner of multiple Vancouver restaurants and pubs, offered to buy Bomber, it was appealing. Dean had been battling cancer since 2011, and Don didn’t feel positive about the industry at the time, despite Bomber’s popularity: “We saw the changes in the market. We were one of the first to sell.” Their value was high and it seemed to make sense, given their personal circumstances. However, co-owner Cam Andrews, in a 2019 interview with Vancouver is Awesome, admitted that the sale caught him by surprise. It caught the public by surprise as well. 

Response to the sale was mostly negative. Craft beer fans liked the Bomber they knew – the Bomber owned by local folks and not a large corporation. Donnelly’s rebranding of the brewery, done without input from the founders and without clear communication, was also received badly. Gone were the old labels – skylines of different cities, the vintage-style font – and in their place was the black dive-bombing seagull and a modern, all-caps logo. Comments on Reddit (r/VancouverCraftBeer) disparaged this new version of Bomber.

But despite the backlash, in reality, Bomber didn’t change all that much. Aside from the rebranding, Donnelly Group was almost entirely hands-off; they kept Don on as General Manager, and he ran the brewery and tasting room just as he had before. Decisions about the beer were in his hands. In fact, Don is very positive about the Donnelly Group and their management: “I want to give kudos to Donnelly – they were amazing in the time they’ve run it [Bomber]. They don’t get enough credit for what they’ve done for craft beer in the province.” And as Chair of the BC Craft Brewers Guild, Don knows what he’s talking about. Craft beer fans often dislike corporate brewery ownership, but some of those corporations have given craft beer much-needed exposure.

After the Donnelly purchase, the pressure on Bomber to be profitable rose, not simply because of the new ownership structure but because the local craft beer market itself was becoming more crowded. The pandemic added a new layer of economic stress. By 2023, Donnelly was in financial trouble. Long story short, Bomber was on the market again that year. In early 2024, Don was battling throat cancer and business matters were the last thing on his mind. However, by summer 2024 he was with his family at his cabin in the Cariboo, celebrating his recent cancer-free diagnosis. The day after he learned that good news, he got a call from Jeff Donnelly, who reminded him that Bomber was still for sale and encouraged him to put in an offer. 

Rebirth and Return

On receiving that call, Don felt the same pull as when he first tasted Blair’s homebrew pilsner out in the parking lot. Was this a possibility? He didn’t want Bomber to disappear, and he didn’t want his employees to lose their jobs. Bomber had a place in the East Van community. So he recruited several friends and together, the five of them made an offer. With the support of Jeff Donnelly and Reid Ogdon of the Donnelly Group, it all fell into place. By October 2024, Don Farion was again the owner of Bomber Brewing. 

Don is entering this new era with a different outlook. “I remember making beer when it was fun,” he says, looking back to the first days of Bomber. “Brewing has always been fun but now the business has changed.” That rat-race he remembered from the years following 2018 – chasing volume, constantly having to calculate ROI over love of the job and the beer – is no longer one he wants to run. “Our new thought is being happy at 4500 hl. That’s comfortable for us.” Their core business will be scaled down in order to rekindle their joy in making and selling beer. 

Other planned changes are more like returns. “We’re going back to the way Bomber was,” Don puts it. “We’re going to be talking about the beer again – not the branding. And we don’t focus on the technical stuff, IBUs and all that. It’s really about balance. We want to make balanced beer. Our IPA is only 6.3% because that’s where it tastes best. We did a 4.8% Pilsner when no one was making lagers.” Their upcoming branding, while not yet unveiled, will return Bomber to something similar to their original model, but with a focus on duality and balance. They will also be expanding their core beer list. Their original flagships will remain (Skyline Lager, Avant Garde Pilsner, Outspoken IPA, Georgie’s Best ESB), but a second string of cores will be added: Reverie Hazy Pale, Furio Italian Pilsner, and Miramar West Coast IPA. 

Bomber will also be renewing its grassroots marketing and community connections. They’ve continued their tradition of brewing a special beer for the East Van Panto at the York Theatre. Since this year’s panto is Robin Hood, Bomber’s beer for the event is Maid Marionberry Ale – with a very charming label! 

Ultimately, the new Bomber Brewing under Don’s leadership will be very similar to the old Bomber Brewing, but with a renewed sense of priorities. Having looked his own mortality in the face through his battle with cancer, Don isn’t interested in chasing profit or volume. He wants to make good beer for his neighbourhood, host hockey nights at the taproom, and keep his colleagues employed. He wants brewing to be fun again. Bomber’s back!

The post Ups, Downs, and Turnarounds: Bomber Brewing’s Renaissance appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

As Vancouver City Archivist Major James S. Matthews insisted in the mid twentieth century, the spirit of Brewery Creek is still alive and well today.

Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood is currently home to some of the city’s most successful craft breweries. Those in search of a pint can easily walk from Red Truck Beer Co. to Brassneck Brewery and Main St Brewing, then across to 33 Acres Brewing, Electric Bicycle Brewing, Faculty Brewing, and R&B Brewing. It’s one of the best walkable brewery crawl routes around. 

However, many craft beer fans may not be aware that under the pavement still runs Brewery Creek, whose waters initially supplied or ran alongside the earliest breweries in the city — Vancouver Brewery (and its successors), Mainland Brewery, San Francisco Brewery, Red Star, Lansdowne, Stadler, and perhaps more. As salmon-filled fresh water coursed down from Tea Swamp, eventually emptying into the original False Creek (where Red Truck is now), it was collected to brew beer and to power breweries’ grain mills. 

Charles Doering and Vancouver Brewery

The first brewery in Vancouver actually wasn’t near Brewery Creek, but it inspired one that was. City Brewery on wealthy Seaton Street (currently the area of Hastings west of Burrard) was a small steam-beer brewery opened by J. Rekab in 1887, just one year after the City of Vancouver’s incorporation. 

We know almost nothing about Rekab, but we do know that City Brewery caught the eye of Charles Doering, a German immigrant who had recently moved to Vancouver from Victoria, where he had been running a saloon and working in the Phoenix Brewery. In Victoria, Doering was proud to sell locally brewed Empire beer for 5 cents a glass at his King’s Head Beer Hall – and this was at a time when many publicans were still relying on beer imported from the US and Europe, despite Victoria’s burgeoning brewing industry. Doering knew that his newest venture in Vancouver, the Stag & Pheasant Hotel on Water Street, would need a beer supply, and he wanted to expand beyond imports. However, there was only the one local brewery in Vancouver: the City Brewery. Doering saw a gap in the market and an exciting business opportunity. 

In 1888, shortly after marrying Sarah Jane Helgesen of Victoria and celebrating with a honeymoon in San Francisco, Charles Doering purchased a property on Scotia and 7^th and transformed it into Vancouver Brewery. He dammed Brewery Creek and used it to power the brewery’s mill.

Eventually, most of the block became brewery property, including Doering’s family home, the stables, and the brewery warehouse. Doering’s horses (which were used to pull the brewery wagons to deliver kegs) and beloved dogs populated the lot, along with brewery workers and carriages. It was an exciting and busy time in Mount Pleasant.

This first Vancouver Brewery looked nothing like the current structure that sits on the same lot — the building that now houses Main Street Brewing. That facility, a beautiful yellow and white heritage building today, was built around 1920 and became the garage for Vancouver Breweries (the later version of Vancouver Brewery) in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The original Vancouver Brewery was constructed in 1888 and opened with a 1500-gallon-per-day brewing capacity. This three-storey building was made of wood, brick, and fieldstone.

Changes, Competition, and Consolidations

Doering’s efforts met with success, so much so that by 1892 he was able to hire a brewmaster from Denmark — Otto Marstrand — to join him as a partner. The brewery was renamed Doering & Marstrand Brewery (or D&M Brewery) that year, and a celebration was hosted at the brewery for its inaugural lager. Lager was the drink of choice in Vancouver — a contrast to Victoria, where English-style ales were still in fashion.

Doering’s biggest brewing competitor was there at the D&M party: John Williams, an Englishman who bought out Rekab’s City Brewery and renamed it Red Cross Brewery. One ad in the Daily News Advertiser explained the Red Cross brand identity:

“The red cross stands on the battlefield for help; in Vancouver it stands for pure beer [. . .] unadulterated with any of the foreign abominations that are injurious to health.” 

Like D&M, Red Cross began advertising their authentic German lager (made by their German brewmaster, Henry Traeger) in the early 1890s. However, it soon became clear that D&M and Red Cross were more friends than enemies. They attempted price-fixing in 1893, and by the mid-1890s they had a monopoly in the Vancouver beer market. By 1902, they announced their amalgamation. Red Cross shut down its facility on Seaton Street and Henry Traeger joined the brewing team at the newly-named Vancouver Breweries on Scotia and 7^th. John Williams was the secretary and Charles Doering was president. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” was the name of the brewing competition game in early Vancouver. 

A popular city-wide contest to name Vancouver Breweries’ flagship beer soon got the word out about the amalgamation. For a chance at a $50 prize, thousands of citizens sent in their name suggestions, from “Kitsalano” to “Acme.” The winner, however, was Cascade. Cascade beer would end up being one of the best-selling beers for decades. It was advertised in local papers as “beer that is as pure and healthful as the rippling waters of a mountain brook … contain[ing] only the purest and most healthful of ingredients … [It] is a drink fit for the most delicate lady.”

Charles Doering’s life became more busy and more complicated while his brewing career boomed. In 1893, he and his wife Sarah, who already had a four-year-old daughter, lost their ten-day-old baby. In 1906, Sarah died due to complications resulting from a tuberculosis treatment in Germany. Their daughter Beatrice, who was travelling with them at the time, wrote home to let family know the sad news, expressing both sorrow and relief that her mother’s long suffering was over. 

Business boomed in the years after Sarah’s death, but Doering began to spend increasingly more time at his ranch properties, especially Hat Creek Ranch near Ashcroft. He had plans to transform the Vancouver brewing scene by creating a holding company that would unite BC’s breweries. With the help of beer baron Henry Reifel of Nanaimo, whose San Francisco Brewery on the shores of Brewery Creek was short-lived, Doering did just that. Vancouver Breweries joined Reifel’s new Vancouver brewery, Canadian Brewing and Malting, along with his Union Brewery of Nanaimo and Pilsener Brewing of Cumberland under the umbrella of B.C. Breweries Ltd. Doering’s old brewing facilities at Scotia and 7^th were turned into office space and all brewing was moved to Reifel’s impressive new facility near Yew and 11^th (which would become the Carling brewery decades later). Classic Vancouver beers like Heidelberg, BC Export, and Cascade were made there for years. 

Doering and Reifel had a falling out shortly after the founding of B.C. Breweries and the company fell into financial trouble. After some legal wrestling, an agreement was reached and Reifel was left with a resurrected version of B.C. Breweries while Doering turned to other business interests and exited the brewing scene. Over the decades, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, BC Breweries would eventually be acquired by Carling O’Keefe, which in turn was acquired by Molson-Coors. Doering, once he left brewing, found health and happiness with a new marriage and grandchildren. He spent much of his time hunting and fishing at Hat Creek Ranch, accompanied by friends — this included Red Cross and Vancouver Breweries brewmaster Henry Traeger and his family, with whom Doering had become very close. The horses who had pulled the brewery’s wagons for years received restful retirements on the ranchlands. According to Doering’s great-great-grandson Dennis Mutter, he had a soft spot in his heart for animals. 

Mainland Brewing

Vancouver Brewery (a.k.a D&M Brewery, a.k.a. Vancouver Breweries) wasn’t the only start-up near Brewery Creek. There was also Mainland Brewing, which opened just a couple of blocks south of where 33 Acres is now. In 1888, German immigrant Robert Reisterer moved from New Westminster, where his City Brewery had burned down, and opened a new brewery “quite in the bush,” according to papers. That side of Main Street was, in the 1880s and 1890s, mostly a cluster of trees, bushes, and creeks. Reisterer made a special funding application to City Council to build a road off Quebec Street so people could actually get to his brewery. However, despite all that effort he didn’t seem to have much interest in staying in Vancouver. The brewery had only a third of the brewing capacity of Doering’s Vancouver Brewery and there are almost no advertisements for it in contemporary newspapers. Reisterer wanted out of Vancouver: he repeatedly spoke of his dream to open a brewery in the Kootenays. The brewery was up for sale in the early 1890s and Reisterer and his wife Clara moved to Kaslo shortly thereafter, following a raucous goodbye party that included plenty of Red Cross beer and a performance of the local German men’s choir. An attempt to open a brewery in Kaslo wasn’t successful, but he had more luck in Nelson, where he established the first Nelson Brewing Company.  (For more on that story check out this blog.)

The Little Guys

There were a few more breweries in early Vancouver that started up and sank without much of a trace. I already mentioned San Francisco Brewing, which was opened by Henry Reifel and his brother the same year Doering started his Vancouver Brewery. They closed within a year and auctioned off their equipment. Red Star Brewery opened in the same location immediately afterwards but closed a year or two later. In a similar pattern, Lion Brewing and Stadler Brewing both occupied the same property on 2^nd (where Red Truck is now) in quick succession, neither lasting longer than two years. One possible reason could be location: the San Francisco site was close to the tannery and the Lion Brewery at the mouth of Brewery Creek was near the slaughterhouses (see the map below). Brewing near these industries was probably not ideal!

The thriving of Vancouver’s Brewery Creek neighbourhood so quickly after the city’s incorporation showed not only the ingenuity of these early brewers and business people, but the eagerness of Vancouver citizens for locally-produced beer. These early breweries also helped to rehabilitate the alcohol industry, which had been tainted by the increasingly debauched nature of saloons at the time. Breweries were making a product marketed as family-friendly (“families supplied!” often appeared in ads) and suitable for not just working men, but for women, “invalids”, and children. Non- or low-alcohol beers, like Vancouver Brewery’s Vancouver Ale, were widely advertised, and women increasingly featured in marketing materials. While the pattern of brewery consolidations, beginning with D&M and Red Cross, and then BC Breweries, at first appeared to be a mark of economic health for the industry, we can see in hindsight that it actually spelled the death of Vancouver’s independent brewing — at least for a while. Fortunately, independent brewing has now been revived in the city and Brewery Creek is quenching the thirst of Vancouver’s beer fans once again.

Learn more about Vancouver brewing history by reading this blog by the same author.

Plan your visit with the Brewery Creek Vancouver Ale Trail.

And be sure to pick up a copy of Noëlle Phillips’ new book about Vancouver’s beer history coming out this fall!

The post Brewery Creek: The Birthplace of Brewing in Vancouver appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

Between March 28 and April 30, 2024, visit at least three breweries from both Vancouver Ale Trails (Brewery Creek and Yeast Vancouver), get your passport stamped, and drop it off at a participating location to be entered to win the Grand Prize Giveaway. If you don’t manage to fill out the whole thing, you’ll still be eligible for other prizes so make sure you hand it in! 

The Vancouver Tasting Passport’s 31 breweries, distilleries, tap houses, and liquor store are divided into two Ale Trails: Brewery Creek, where Vancouver’s very first breweries took root in the 1880s, and Yeast Vancouver, the birthplace of modern Vancouver craft beer back in the 1990s. On my journey through Vancouver this past week, I visited both Ale Trails to fill out my passport. 

Brewery Creek

My first brewery was R&B Brewing, whose taproom features a large stuffed raven standing guard and shelves crowded with books and games. It’s just a brief walk from Main St. Brewing, Brassneck Brewing, 33 Acres, and Electric Bicycle, but R&B is the oldest of the bunch, having opened its doors in 1997. It didn’t get its own tasting room and food service until after its neighbours, but it’s now known for having the best pizza around – as well as award-winning beer (Dill Pickle Gose, anyone? It might sound a bit crazy for a beer, but you should try it). 

I visited with some fellow beer history fans: Melanie Hardbattle and Richard Dancy of the Simon Fraser University craft beer archive project, and Mitch Taylor, founder of Granville Island Brewing. The tasting room was buzzing with happy energy when we arrived; couples with young children enjoyed flights, groups of friends gathered around game boards, and everyone was having fun. After ordering a couple of their fresh, homemade pizzas to accompany our beer, we sat back to catch up on one another’s news and chat about BC beer history. My flight included two fantastic IPAs (the Vancouver Special and R&B’s new Double IPA, Absolute Unit), the Stolen Bike German Pilsner, and the classic Raven Cream Ale – a much-loved Vancouver beer modelled after Shaftebury’s Cream Ale from back in the 1980s. And I couldn’t resist a taster of their cask ales, which were both served from a cask engine: a cask version of the Raven, and their East Side Bitter (R&B’s version of the classic English ESB – Extra Special Bitter). If a brewery has cask beers on the menu, I always recommend trying them. R&B did not disappoint.

A couple days later, my husband Rich and I stepped out into the Vancouver sunshine to visit one of the city’s newest breweries: Brewing August, which opened in the summer of 2022. Located near the Granville Island bridge, Brewing August is in a perfect location to capture the heavy foot traffic of, well, Vancouver in August. Or any other time of year. But August was their inspiration, according to co-founder Tate Lillies. Through casual backyard conversations at family gatherings, Lillies and his brother-in-law Travis Rea discovered they both had the same idea: to start their own craft brewery. Rea was a chef and a homebrewer, and Lillies had a wide range of business experience. With a third co-founder, Adam Jones, they turned their dream into a reality, creating a brewery and tasting room inspired by the long, warm nights of a Vancouver summer. 

Brewing August has a street-level tasting area and an upstairs space as well. Both are light-filled, and you can enjoy looking out at the Kitsilano neighbourhood while sipping your beer. They don’t offer flights, but you can purchase 6-ounce pours rather than full pints, which gives you a chance to try more of their offerings. Their hazy IPAs are popular, but their flagship beer is really their Blonde IPA, a delicious beer that somehow balances on the edge of several styles but keeps you guessing (also, sip slowly – it’s a higher ABV than its taste suggests!). It has features of an IPA, a Belgian blonde, and maybe something in between. I loved it. I was also a fan of their Golden IPA and Rich loved their Tart Cherry Sour – another hit for a hot day. Our beers were accompanied by some of the best tacos I’ve had, delivered by neighbouring Las Autenticas Tacos & Tortas (you just text them your order, and it’ll come to the tasting room). I highly recommend checking them out if you enjoy Mexican food! The cherry blossoms on the leaves outside, combined with Brewing August’s beachy taproom, summery beers, and tasty snacks, made me anticipate the warmth and sunshine of Vancouver’s spring and summer.  

From Brewing August it was only a ten-minute walk through Granville Island – crowded with visitors on this sunny Sunday – to reach the Aquabus terminal. Our plan was to commute through False Creek to reach our final Brewery Creek destination. We only had a few minutes to wait before Vancouver’s famed rainbow-coloured Aquabus came to pick us up and take us across the water to the Olympic Village terminal. Another ten minutes of walking and people-watching and we arrived at Red Truck Beer Company. 

Red Truck was immediately recognizable – a large white tower with the brewery’s name in red letters rose above the industrial surroundings, and many of the vehicles surrounding its Truck Stop diner were classic 1950s-style red trucks. These are modelled after owner Mark James’ original red truck, which he used to deliver his beer two decades ago. The tasting room is spacious, casual, and comfortable (and I was a fan of the bathrooms, too – I haven’t seen sinks made out of tires before!)

Red Truck is the place to go if you want some tasty diner food with your beer – and enough to take home in a doggie bag! We tried some of their appetizers – wings, fries, garlic fries, and deep-fried pickles – and the food was both filling and plentiful. While sharing our appies, we each sipped on a flight. The Red Truck lager is a solid example of the style (clean, crisp, and clear), but I was partial to their North West and North East IPAs, which have a good malty backbone to balance out the hops. These are approachable IPAs that are neither overly bitter nor super sweet. And this approachability is what I expect from Red Truck, which has remained a steady presence in the Vancouver craft beer scene since the company was founded in 2005. To my mind, this is due to its consistency – consistency in its branding and atmosphere, as well as in the beer styles and how it produces them. 

Yeast Vancouver

Our first stop on the Yeast Vancouver Ale Trail was Container Brewing, tucked in on the north side of Hastings and not far from Superflux, Bomber, Off the Rail, and Strange Fellows. It may be hidden from the main drag, but once you turn the corner you see that Container is much larger than expected. With its two-floor tasting room and large patio area (with room for food trucks), it has lots of room for patrons and – in this case – musicians. We arrived just in time for an open-mic session, so we enjoyed local musicians while sipping our flights.  

Container always has an interesting variety of beers on tap, and today was no exception. My flight included their Noch Mal German Pils, the Forgotten Trail West Coast IPA, a decoction Hefeweizen, and their Fresh Horizons Hazy IPA. There was also a hazy on a nitro tap and some Belgian and dark beers that I (sadly) didn’t get a chance to try – I’ll save them for my next visit. The creativity in Container’s offerings is balanced by solid brewing skill. Their current head brewer, David Dayco, came to Container from Red Truck. Combining the rigorous quality control practices and reliable recipe development learned at Red Truck with the creative flexibility of a smaller brewery has helped Dayco produce Container’s diverse yet consistently high-quality beers. I’m a fan of their branding as well – make sure you check out their gorgeous labels while you’re there. 

East Vancouver Brewing was our next Yeast Van watering hole. Stepping into the brewery feels like you’re in a cozy beer cellar; the tasting room is below street level, furnished in warm wood, decorated with beer barrels and local artwork, and filled with natural light from its south-facing position. Open since 2017, it has found its niche in its East Van neighbourhood. We enjoyed flights while sharing an excellent beef panini with sauerkraut. I loved all four of the beers I tried, which included two award-winners, but my favourites were the Black IPA and their Back Porch Pilsner, which was *chef’s kiss* perfect. Rich tried the barrel-aged cherry sour, which he dubbed #1 on his flight. Kettle sours can be nice summer sippers, but there’s something about barrel-aged beer that provides an entirely different level of complexity. They were out of most of their IPAs when we visited, but I was told that a Brut IPA may soon be in the works.

Our final visit was to Powell Brewery, which was just a brief walk from East Van Brewing. Their small tasting room is warm and cozy, providing a sense of intimacy that I enjoy in a local craft brewery. Rich and I took a seat on two comfy low-set 80s-style chairs that brought up happy memories of my grandmother’s house. The familiar feeling made me want to stay there for the whole afternoon, just watching people and sipping on good beer. And there is definitely good beer there – Powell has won numerous awards over the years, including three at the BC Beer Awards this past fall. Big hits for me on this visit were their Belgian witbier and their Dive Bomb Dark Ale – this used to be their famous Dive Bomb Porter, but with a recipe tweak, the style has shifted. On our way out, we picked up a bottle of their Mystery Farmhouse Saison, a collab beer they made with Dageraad Brewing in Burnaby.

The Vancouver Ale Trail has so many craft breweries for you to explore – from the large to the tiny, the older to the brand-new. Take the opportunity to check out breweries you haven’t heard of or revisit old favourites. Wherever you visit, make sure you get your passport stamped so you can be entered to win the BC Ale Trail’s Grand Prize Giveaway!

Get all of the Vancouver Tasting Passport contest details here. Collect six unique stamps, three from each Ale Trail, and hand in your passport at any participating location to be entered to win the Grand Prize Giveaway. Multiple entries are encouraged, and don’t forget to turn in any partially filled passports for your chance at subsidiary prizes.

Not from Metro Vancouver? It’s the perfect time to plan a road trip combining Tasting Passport ale-ventures with a Sip & Stay package! Choose from a variety of accommodation partners and enjoy the best of Vancouver this spring.

The post Explore Vancouver’s Craft Beer Scene with the Vancouver Tasting Passport appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

Shirley Warne may be a self-declared bitch, but she is warm, welcoming, and clearly loved by the staff at her brewery. I’ve just driven nine hours from Vancouver to reach the tiny village of Kaslo, tucked away on the shores of Kootenay Lake and just an hour’s drive from Nelson. On Kaslo’s main drag, populated by Gold Rush-style shops and shadowed by snow-topped mountains, sits Angry Hen Brewing, opened by Shirley in December 2017. On this quiet Saturday night, as I’m relaxing after the long drive, Shirley joins me in the brewery for a pint and a chat. She puts our beers — a Fowl Play Hazy IPA for me and Straw Man Lager for her — on her tab and tosses some coins in the tip jar for the staff. The woman running the tasting room gives her a quick hug before they close up for the night.

These small details reveal that Shirley has cultivated a positive relationship with her employees. After decades of working in the beer industry and dealing with difficult bosses, she knows the value of a safe and warm working environment. From homebrewer and bottom-of-the-ladder brewery grunt to brewery owner and brewmaster in the village she loves, Shirley has seen it all — and she’s put all that knowledge to use. As one of BC’s first female craft brewers, she fearlessly trailblazed in a male-dominated industry. Even though she’s never been interested in public attention and therefore rarely makes it into beer publications (Lundy Dale’s interview with her for What’s Brewing is a notable exception), she’s had a deep influence on craft brewing here in BC.

Climbing the Brewing Ladder in Ontario

Shirley’s career began not in BC, but at Conner’s Brewing in Mississauga, Ontario. After years of homebrewing with her twin sister Pat and beer tasting across Europe, she decided to pursue brewing full-time. A friend introduced her to Paul Hoyne — eventual co-founder of Lighthouse Brewing in Victoria — who got her in the door at Conner’s, a production brewery that opened in 1985 but closed by 1990. She didn’t stay long; there was little room for creativity, but, unfortunately, plenty of room for sexism. Paul and the other brewers were wonderful mentors, but the company’s owners were crude and misogynistic to the young female brewer-in-training. She quit within a year, but shortly afterwards met Amsterdam Brewing’s Joel Manning. She made sure she tried his beer before she took a job with him (it passed the test).

“Joel was such a great guy,” Shirley recalls. Manning ended up being a valued fellow brewing colleague for several years. While brewing at Amsterdam, and its sister brewery, Rotterdam, she trained Tony Dewald and Harley Smith, brewers who would make their mark in BC brewing. “When Harley first started, he made some kind of off-colour joke and I jumped right on him,” Shirley laughs. “But we ended up being best friends.”

Bootlegging and Brewpubs in Vancouver

By the early ‘90s, Shirley decided to leave the brewing scene in Toronto to join her sister Pat in Vancouver. Just as they had during university, Shirley and Pat took up homebrewing in their apartment again. “We would bootleg beer from that apartment! We had these big parties,” she recalls. “I don’t think I can get in trouble for it now though.” Their homebrew was so popular that tipsy neighbours would come knocking late at night, looking for whatever they were selling. “That was when I first brewed the Old Bitch,” Shirley says, referring to the Old Bitch Bitter she later brewed for Brassneck and Angry Hen. “It was one of our most popular beers back then.”

Finding brewing opportunities in Vancouver proved to be a challenge. “BC and Ontario were stagnant for a while,” Shirley says, referring to the 1990s beer scene. When Yaletown Brewpub opened in 1994, she applied for the job of head brewer but lost out to Iain Hill, now co-owner of Strange Fellows Brewing. However, she was soon contacted by Eli Gershkovich, a lawyer who was opening a new brewpub in Gastown. He’d visited Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies on Hastings — a haven for all Vancouver homebrewers — and asked for brewer recommendations. Dan gave him Shirley’s name. When she showed up for her interview, she brought some of her homebrew: a bitter, a brown, and a lager. They hired her that same day, and Shirley Warne became the first brewer at the new Steamworks Brewpub.

At Steamworks, Shirley had free rein over the brewing programme as well as the freedom to shut down unwelcome suggestions or interference (she didn’t fear losing her job — Eli wanted to keep her on). In her first week, she met Conrad Gmoser, a young man who was working as an assistant to the architect and moonlighting as a carpenter but swiftly developed an interest in brewing. Vern Lambourne, now of Parkside, and her old friend Harley Smith also both worked under her at Steamworks. When she left Vancouver in the late ‘90s for opportunities in the Maritimes, she trained up Conrad to take her place as brewmaster. And when she returned to Vancouver in the early 2000s, she took up homebrewing again — this time in Conrad’s garage.

Back in Vancouver after a few years away, Shirley was itching to open her own brewery.  After purchasing brewing equipment, she spent several years trying to find investors. Leads that were initially promising gradually dried up. By 2007 she was fully disheartened; she gave up her dream and sold the equipment. For close to a decade, she helped new breweries start up and did occasional brewing jobs. The Ridge Brewpub in Osoyoos, for example, would fly her out for brew days (they gave her no creative license in the brewhouse though). Shirley helped Conrad and his friend Nigel Springthorpe open Brassneck Brewing in 2012, and her Old Bitch Bitter was one of the first beers they put on tap (unlike Eli at Steamworks, they were fine with the “offensive” name). She was also behind the scenes at Bomber Brewing in Vancouver and Crannóg Ales in Sorrento.

Finding Her Passion: Angry Hen Brewing

But Shirley still wanted her own brewery. Gradually, after multiple visits and a lot of planning, she and a small group of friends purchased a storefront property in Kaslo for $165,000. The village was the home of her sister-in-law, and it was also a place that resonated with her: the close-knit community, the picturesque high street, the nearby mountains and lake.

In December 2017, with fellow Brassneck brewer Jeff Leake along for the ride, Conrad made the snowy drive out to Kaslo to help Shirley set up and get through her first few brews. After they left, she had to do her first solo brew before opening day. She was on her own — sleep-deprived and “going a bit crazy,” in her words. Things started going wrong. She was about to chill the beer into the fermenter then realized she hadn’t sanitized the tank. Everything needed to stop. The hops were left in the kettle far longer than planned while she got the fermenter clean, resulting in a beer that was more bitter than expected. She called it “Freak Out” as a homage to her state of mind at the time. “But there are people who still ask for it!” she says, smiling.

On December 17, 2017, opening day, Shirley and her staff were so pressed for time that brown paper was still on the taproom windows in the mid-afternoon. Jolayne and Brenda, a couple from the nearby village of Balfour, had planned a visit to the new brewery after their afternoon hike and were disappointed to find the windows papered and the doors locked.

Jolayne called the brewery from its own front steps: “Hey, are you guys open today?” “Yes….” “Well… when?” When Shirley realized the two women were standing right outside, she decided to open up a bit ahead of time — why not?

After the window paper came down and the doors were unlocked, Jolayne and Brenda eagerly entered to try Angry Hen’s first lineup of beers: a Christmas Ale, the East Meets West IPA, a Pale Ale, a Helles, a Kolsch, and (of course) the Freak Out. It was a memorable evening, and the couple remain good friends with Shirley and her wife Fran to this day.

The Ethos of Angry Hen and Reflections on a Life in Brewing

Angry Hen is a brewery borne of skill, diligence, passion, and personality. The name itself was generated years before, in the mid-2000s when Shirley was homebrewing in Conrad’s garage and wanted to make her own homebrew brand. A friend’s suggestion of “Old Hen or something” (in Shirley’s recollection) was close but not exactly what she wanted. She found herself inspired by Feathers McGraw, the goofy-looking yet villainous penguin in the Wallace & Gromit cartoons. She loved the way he was both silly and aggressive — so she turned Old Hen into Angry Hen. “After all, I get angry!” she laughs. Shirley asked a friend who lived in her building, graphic designer Terry Sunderland, to sketch a cute yet mean chicken for her logo. This devil-eyed hen is now the face of Shirley’s brewery; with its chubby body and comically stick-thin legs, it holds a cleaver and stares menacingly to the side.

As the logo — and my conversations with her — might suggest, Shirley doesn’t feel the need to placate jerks or ignore bad behaviour just because she’s a woman. Fortunately, the jerks have been limited. While some owners have been dismissive or derogatory because of her gender, her fellow brewers have always respected her.

“Those guys never treated me like I was less than or second class,” she says.

Her willingness throughout her career to help other brewers, accept help in return, and maintain confidence in her own decisions, has solidified her reputation in the industry.

When she needs to defend her choices, however, she has no problem doing so. Shirley recalls one customer entering Angry Hen feeling, well, angry. “I’m really offended by that name! It’s very sexist!” the woman said to Shirley, pointing to the Old Bitch Bitter on the tap list. Shirley’s response was frank: “Well, I’m the brewer. It’s my beer — and I’m an old bitch! I’ll call my beer what I want.” It may be a bit shocking, perhaps offensive, but I personally find the beer’s name — and her attitude — refreshing. She’s transformed a traditionally derogatory term into an empowering one. Sometimes we’re angry. Sometimes we’re bitchy. Shirley gives herself (and other women) permission to acknowledge that.

Angry Hen has brought new life to Kaslo over the past six years. It draws tourists into the village, of course, but it’s also a hub for the locals. “Kaslo’s living room” is its affectionate nickname. In having her own brewery, Shirley now has full creative freedom in what she makes and how she markets it — something that she longed for decades ago in Vancouver. It’s not just the creativity of brewing she loves, though; it’s also the physicality.

“I like moving around. I can’t sit still,” she says. “I like everything analog when it comes to brewing — I don’t want to brew with buttons.”

Moving and touching and feeling are the things she loves about making beer. Most breweries’ mash tuns have a mechanized stirring arm, but Shirley still stirs the mash herself with a large paddle. “I can feel the thickness of it, the viscosity,” she says when I ask her why she mashes by hand. “I can tell if there’s any balling. I can control the flow of the grist. I know what’s happening with it at every stage.”

This “hands-on” instinct seems to characterize much about Shirley. She is deeply involved in all aspects of her brewery, from front-of-house to brewhouse. She cares about it — and about the people. She extended her care and generosity to me, inviting me to share a meal at her home where she cooked up some amazing burgers, introduced me to her sister, her pets, and her friends, and even tried my homebrew (my skills are woefully inadequate compared to hers, but she was gracious in her feedback).

If you want some good beer, you’ll certainly find it at Angry Hen — but you’ll also find a deep sense of community and connection. Kaslo’s little brewery truly is home to a hidden legend of BC craft brewing and an inspiration to women in craft brewing everywhere. Are you ready for your next road trip?

Along with many breweries in BC, Angry Hen is faced with imminent repayment deadlines of the federal CEBA loan that kept them afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to assist this small BC business, a GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up by a friend of the brewery.

The post Angry Hen Brewing and the Legacy of Shirley Warne appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

BC’s craft beer industry has been going strong for over 40 years now, thanks in large part to the hard work and expertise of its pioneering brewers. Nowadays you can wander the BC Ale Trail and find a craft brewery in nearly every city, but this luxury wasn’t available to beer fans in the industry’s early years. To honour the beer giants who helped put BC craft beer on the map, an award has been established in the name of John Mitchell, the founder of Canada’s first craft brewery in Horseshoe Bay in 1982.  

According to the John Mitchell website, the John Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for Brewing Excellence, which was established this year, “will be presented annually to an individual whose brewing expertise, inspiration, enthusiasm, and support have contributed to the success and the growth of the craft brewing movement.” A cash award of $1000 and a commemorative plaque will accompany the honour, and a $1000 donation in the winner’s name will be donated to the John Mitchell Legacy Endowed Scholarship at the KPU Brewing School. 

The 2023 winner of this award, which will be presented on October 5 at an event at the Barley Merchant in Langley, is Tony Dewald, a man who toured across Canada and Europe in a rock band before trying his hand at brewing beer. Dewald’s kindness, generosity, and depth of brewing knowledge have made him a well-loved and deeply appreciated fixture in BC brewing.

From Drums to Draft Lines

It was a warm night in 1988 and Dewald’s band, Deja Voodoo, had just finished a performance in Brussels. As the drummer, Dewald was hot, worn out, and ready for a refreshing beverage. “As I walked off the stage, someone handed me a drink,” he recalls. “It was a frambois. I was blown away — I didn’t know beer could taste like that!” 

When the band eventually broke up, Dewald took up a friend’s offer to learn the art of brewing at Amsterdam Brewing in Toronto. Through his experience working there, he encountered brewers who would end up making a splash on the west coast – people like Shirley Warne (owner of Angry Hen Brewing and original brewmaster for Steamworks) and Harley Smith (who founded Nanaimo’s Longwood Brewpub in 1999). 

After 7 years at Amsterdam, Dewald attempted to continue his brewing career in Montreal, brewing for Brasseurs RJ. However, it turned out that there wouldn’t be room for advancement if he stayed in Quebec. It was time to go west.

Go West, Young Man

When Dewald heard that Harley Smith had started up the Longwood Brewpub in Nanaimo, he had a sense that BC was the next beer frontier for him. Around 2001, he headed to Vancouver, where he managed to get a job brewing at Dix BBQ and Brewery in 2002. It was through Dix that he began organizing monthly cask nights, gatherings where he eventually met John Mitchell.

Through these cask nights, which became increasingly popular, he discovered and helped foster a vibrant community of beer lovers. Brewers like Iain Hill — currently of Strange Fellows but then the brewmaster at Yaletown Brewpub — and James Walton of Storm Brewing would join the festivities and stay until the wee hours. Good friendships were founded and niche beer knowledge exchanged at these events, which helped solidify a strong but small brewing community in Vancouver. 

“Until about 2012 there were so few people involved. I probably knew the first name of every craft beer drinker in Vancouver,” Dewald laughs. 

Although Dewald ended up brewing for all the Mark James Group’s brewpubs, which included Yaletown as well as Dix, his commute from Aldergrove made things difficult. He put in his notice at Dix and began brewing for Big Ridge Brewing in Surrey and then at Dead Frog Brewing in Langley. 

However, things weren’t clicking for him at Dead Frog. It wasn’t where he belonged. Dewald decided to take a break from brewing and worked for several years in the wine industry. His path into winemaking was cut short when the winery he worked for went under in 2012, but it wasn’t long before he received a call that would eventually lead him back to his old passion: brewing craft beer. The call was from Don Piccolo, who was trying to establish a craft brewery in Abbotsford with the help of John Ohler, a longtime friend of John Mitchell. Ohler knew of Dewald through Mitchell, and Dewald knew of Ohler through Howe Sound Brewing. Ohler got Dewald on board, and with his help, Old Abbey Ales was founded.

In short order, Ohler sought out Dewald’s expertise for another brewery project: Trading Post Brewing in Langley. In 2015, Dewald became their head brewer, and it was here that he found a team and a community that truly resonated with him. He brewed for Trading Post until he was compelled to step down due to health challenges, but he still feels very much a part of the Trading Post team and the brewing community more broadly. 

Reflections After a Career in Beer

In looking back at his career in brewing, Dewald emphasizes how he values his fellow brewers. He is quick to credit others for offering him the opportunities and support that empowered him to succeed in his passion. 

“It’s all about the people you have around you and the people you meet along the way. I’ve been very fortunate to have the right people appear around me when they needed to be.”  

As a longtime industry insider, Dewald can identify peaks and valleys in BC brewing over the decades. He feels that with the recent increase in high-quality brewing programs, like the one at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the bar for beer quality is high. 

“The quality of craft beer now is perhaps the best it’s ever been,” Dewald enthuses. “There are so many good, well-made, interesting beers out there right now.” 

However, for Dewald, you can’t beat the classics. In considering the industry’s future direction, he warns breweries against producing too many one-off novelty beers. “Novelty is a short-sighted strategy,” he says. “Novelty beers won’t be consumed regularly — they won’t sustain the industry. Breweries need to make beers people can drink over a whole evening. Make beers you want to drink after work!” Dewald’s personal beer preference is a classic, clean lager: “I’m a lager lover!” He also loves his IPAs though — and the more bitter, the better.

So what is the future of BC beer, according to Dewald? He anticipates more brewery closings, simply because of saturation in the market. He also believes that we’re due for a return to older, more established styles — lagers, IPAs, nut browns, pale ales, and stouts. New hop varieties, however, are where he thinks the industry will get the most creative. “We never thought hops like Citra would come out!” he recalls. 

Apart from his role at Trading Post, Dewald still keeps his finger on the pulse of the industry. He loves trying new beers, particularly with his wife (whose taste buds are better than his, he asserts). “I have an active palate that needs a challenge!” he laughs. In addition, every year he returns to his East Van brewing roots and brews a collab Christmas beer with Conrad Gmoser at Brassneck Brewing: the Spirit of Dixmas Christmas IPA. 

Dewald has won numerous brewing awards, but this has never been his focus. Throughout our conversation, I noticed that Dewald frequently praised his cohorts in the industry — Gary Lohin, Harley Smith, Bill Herdman, and many others — rather than focusing on his own achievements. It was always others who deserved praise and appreciation. And perhaps this is the clearest sign that he is precisely the right person to receive this lifetime achievement award. It’s clear that he didn’t get into brewing to win acclaim for himself, but Tony Dewald is owed such recognition after decades of sharing his generous spirit and brewing expertise. He wouldn’t ever ask for this award, but he certainly deserves it. John Mitchell would approve.

Special thanks to Brian K. Smith for providing photos from his archives. Also, thanks to What’s Brewing BC.

The post Brewmaster Tony Dewald Receives the John Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for Brewing Excellence appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.

If the international success of books such as Garrett Oliver’s The Brewmaster’s Table is anything to go by, it seems that many people appreciate beer as a drink equal to wine when it comes to complementing the food we eat. In fact, there is such a diverse range of beer styles available, with flavour notes from pine to coriander to dark fruit, that many see beer as the ideal beverage to pair with a good meal. 

Beer pairing dinners organized collaboratively between local food vendors and individual breweries or craft beer organizations can be a great opportunity to expand your beer palate. It’s also a good way to support the local economy. So far this summer, we’ve seen several breweries and restaurants step up to the plate (pun intended).  

On June 28, Victoria’s CAMRA chapter organized a family-style beer dinner in collaboration with the Heron Rock Bistro. A pre-dinner cocktail made with Driftwood Brewery spirits was followed by a hearty, three-course Bavarian-style meal, with each course accompanied by a choice of two beer pairings — and all choices were from BC craft breweries. According to CAMRA organizer Greg Garner, the event was a success and they’re hoping to host another one in fall or spring. 

Just one month after the CAMRA event, on July 28, Camp Beer Co. in Langley partnered with Townhall to host a sold-out Brewmaster’s Dinner. Five courses were served and each was paired with a different Camp beer, ranging from their Upstream Pale Ale to their Bumbleberry Forager. While another formal dinner is not in the immediate future, Camp is planning a summer send-off event on August 29 that will include a new beer release and custom food. 

Barnside Brewing in Ladner, one of BC’s farm-based breweries, has taken its first steps into food and beer pairing this summer with their “Between the Bines” outdoor dinners. Three are planned for August, and I was fortunate enough to attend the first one on August 11.

When I arrived, I was offered a choice of Barnside beers or non-alcoholic beverages (try their Roadpop Hop Water!) to enjoy while chatting on the grass alongside the hop fields. When dinner was scheduled to begin, guests were ushered to the long wooden table that had been set up between the hop bines, underneath the twinkling strands of lights criss-crossed above. It felt magical. 

The menu included five courses, each of which was paired with a Barnside beer — beginning with their Peach Brandy Barrel Aged Sour and ending with their Estate Barley Wine. The pours were large enough to give you the full flavour with your food, but small enough that they didn’t fill you up. I was able to fully enjoy the range of tastes. Credit must be given to Barnside’s very attentive and informative staff, as well as Rebel Rebel Barbecue, who had been smoking meat since 3:30 that morning in preparation for the event. They even let us take home the leftovers! All the food was produced by local farms and food vendors, and of course all beer was very local — grown and brewed on site. There’s one more Between the Bines dinner to go, on Friday, August 18. Email Barnside to get your ticket: events@barnsidebrewing.ca!

If you’re interested in taking your palate on an adventure with a beer and food pairing, check out some of these upcoming events: 

Date Night at Container Brewing

September 11, 18 or 25
Enjoy a curated beer pairing with an expertly created charcuterie board, finished off with some delicious housemade cookies!

Brewing BBQ Summer Sessions at Wildeye Brewing

August 20 & September 17
A barbecue feast featuring Chop & Chew

Summerland’s Finest: Summer’s End

August 25 at Giant’s Head Brewing
A red carpet-style event featuring a three-course meal and live music.

Sausage Party at Farm Country Brewing

September 23

An Oktoberfest Celebration featuring a German-inspired food menu, live music with The Oktoberators, limited edition branded steins, and the release of Farm Country’s award-winning Sausage Party German Festbier.

Glenrosa Farms Pizza at Mile Zero Brewing 

August 21 & September 4 (from 4:30pm until the dough runs out)
Delicious pizzas made to order in. Watch social media for the schedule after September 4.

The post Savouring and Sipping: Beer & Food Pairing Events appeared first on The BC Ale Trail.