Cheers to Canadian beers
From sea to sea and mug to mug, beer is the beverage that connects us all.
Beer. It’s Canadiana in a glass, the product of crisp, clear mountain streams, long summer days and endless Prairie bounty.
We didn’t invent beer, but surely Canada perfected it — down to the cute stubby bottles and the maple leaf and moose that adorn so many of our iconic brands. As a nation, we quaff nearly four billion pints a year — 84 per cent of which was brewed north of the 49th.
“My favourite thing about beer is people. I like to think of Canadians as a very social, very engaging type of community,” says Dave Gokiert (’96 BSc), brewmaster at Kelowna’s Tree Brewing.
Craft beer in particular is surging in popularity as the number of licensed breweries reached 644 in 2015, a 108 per cent increase over five years.
Gokiert has played a role in that growth since getting his start at Tree more than 20 years ago. He’d just arrived in the Okanagan pondering his future after completing a bachelor of science in chemistry at the University of Alberta.
When he started at Tree, craft beer was in its relative infancy in Canada. The country’s first craft brewery, Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay Brewery, opened in 1982, two years before Granville Island Brewing Company. By the mid-90s, influential breweries such as Big Rock (Calgary), Brick (Waterloo) and Alley Kat (Edmonton) opened their doors.
“The breweries were introducing people to beers they hadn’t tried before, but it was a slow growth,” Gokiert remembers. “At that time, there was a limited number of beers, so you couldn’t introduce them to everything.”
Casual consumers typically became true fans of craft beer after discovering that one style or two that resonated. For Edmonton’s Greg Zeschuk (’90 BMedSc, ’92 MD), Big Rock’s Porter and Traditional Ale were early favourites as a student at the U of A. But his appreciation reached another level while living in Austin, Tex. and sampling a beer called Storm King Stout by Victory Brewing of Downington, Pa.
“I was just like, Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” Zeschuk says of his beer-piphany. “I just thought this was just the most incredible thing I’ve tasted.”
That passion for craft continued to grow to the point where the physician-turned-BioWare entrepreneur created a web series, The Beer Diaries, which allowed him to meet a lot of people who felt the same way about beer.
“Sitting down with people and talking about beer, I learned a lot about the business,” says Zeschuk, who is now in the final stages of opening Edmonton’s newest brew pub, Blind Enthusiasm Brewing.
In search of local flavour
Located inside Ritchie Market, Blind Enthusiasm will serve its own lineup of unfiltered European-influenced beers that are “reasonably balanced” as opposed to a hop bomb like the trendier double IPA.
A barrel house brewery located a few blocks away will be dedicated to producing Belgian-style sours, which rely on bacteria to create a tart, refreshing brew.
Opening up two brew operations at once isn’t for the faint of heart, but it speaks to Zeschuk’s passion for beer and reflects Canadians’ and Albertans’ thirst for exciting, bold flavours.
Much of that momentum is happening in B.C. and Alberta, where new breweries are popping up in cities and towns alike, serving pints of varying complexity and creativity.
B.C. has the third-most breweries behind Ontario and Quebec. Of the 102 craft breweries operating in the province in 2016, nearly a third were less than a year old.
Alberta has traditionally lagged behind but is making up ground as the number of breweries tripled over the past three years, due in large part to legislative changes that removed minimum production capacity requirements that made starting a brewery an extremely expensive endeavour. The province’s open liquor system means Albertans are used to trying a world of flavours. And that’s fuelled a demand for equally good homegrown options.
“It’s really easy to convince people to try local beer. It hasn’t been hard at all. They know what they want, they know what’s good,” says Zeschuk.
Brewing up jobs in rural Alberta
The landscape isn’t just shifting in big cities but in every corner of the province: Canmore, Banff, Jasper, Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat, Fort McMurray, Edson, Edgerton and Ponoka. Small-town breweries are creating jobs and serving as community gathering spaces.
“Being located in Lacombe has been an amazing opportunity for our business,” says Shane Groendahl (’09 Eng), co-founder of Blindman Brewing in central Alberta. “That idea of growing a small-town brewery, growing a community meeting place has been a big thing.”
Groendahl didn’t envision making a career out of beer while studying electrical engineering at the U of A. He enjoyed craft beer — Wildrose’s IPA was his “lightbulb” beer — and experimented making batches of homebrew in his Edmonton apartment.
In 2011, he founded Edmonton’s Beer Geeks Anonymous, which holds regular events that connect beer enthusiasts to the local craft beer scene, often with tastings and cask festivals. Last year’s Real Ale Festival featured 28 breweries from across Alberta and a few from B.C.
Those beer connections, coupled with dissatisfaction with his professional life as an engineer, led Groendahl to Blindman, where he is a partner, oversees production and is an assistant brewer. Since the company’s launch two years ago, Blindman has steadily grown in capacity and reputation. Being in central Alberta means close access to thirsty Albertans via the Calgary-Edmonton corridor as well as high-quality ingredients.
“We have farmers that grow loads and loads of barely to the point where they’re being contracted to grow barley for big companies like [craft beer pioneer] Lagunitas,” he says. “That’s a clear indication of quality product being grown here … that’s what Alberta can offer.”
The craft beer movement is creating optimism among B.C. hops growers after the industry all-but collapsed due to consolidation among major breweries and competition from Washington and Oregon.
Brewers meanwhile continue to push the boundaries of their creativity with variations on styles that didn’t exist 20 years ago, Gokiert says, adding increased competition is good for beer drinkers and brewers alike.
“If everyone starts making better beer it will just help draw more people into craft beer,” says Gokiert. “There’s still millions of people who have never tried craft beer so there’s still a lot of avenue to grow.”
For almost as long as there’s been a Canada, there’s been a University of Alberta. Over the next year, in honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary, we’re proudly celebrating the people, achievements and ideas that contributed to the making of a confederation.
