Change a Brewin'

To sample the best of B.C.'s microbrews, you
used to have to hit the road. Now many small breweries are giving you the drink without the drive.

By Christina Burridge, photograph by Dave Jackson

One of the pleasures of a B.C. road trip is small breweries in small towns, home to many of our best brews. Kamloops Brewery, Mt. Begbie in Revelstoke, Crannóg Ales in Sorrento, Nelson Brewing, Fernie Brewing, Tree Brewing in Kelowna and Cannery Brewing in Penticton make for a good Interior trip. Howe Sound Brewing Co. is a worthy stop on the way to Whistler, while Fat Cat and Longwood in Nanaimo, the Craig Street
Brew Pub in Duncan and the Gulf Islands Brewery on Salt Spring preview the ferment of activity in Victoria—the brewing capital of B.C. Increasingly, though, you don't have to go on the road to sample at least some of these beers. Small breweries can't survive on local sales alone and more and more are bottling—usually in the big bottle 650-mL format but sometimes, like the Phillips Brewing Phoenix Gold Lager, "exported from Esquimalt," in six packs of stubbies.

Bart and Tracey Larson left their Vancouver jobs as nuclear physicist and veterinary assistant for a small town life of hiking, mountain-biking and skiing in Revelstoke. To make a living, they turned to Bart's home brewing hobby, and started "making beer not war," opening Mt. Begbie Brewing Company 10 years ago. This year they were a strong contender for the Canadian Brewing Awards brewery of the year.

Innovative from the start, they make a Cologne-influenced kölsch, a pale ale, a brown ale and a stout, adding a new Attila the Honey ale to celebrate their anniversary. Now they need a bigger brewhouse. Tracey Larson reckons that they've benefited from the growing interest in small producers of all kinds of food and beverages—coffee, chocolates, wine, fruit and vegetables. "We don't have a stereotypical customer," she says."Older, younger, male, female—anyone looking for better quality likes our beers."

Closer to Vancouver, Larry Caza—another onetime home brewer—founded Old Yale Brewing Co. in Chilliwack six years ago with the ambition of making beer that's as good as California's legendary Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Twenty years ago, as a jet pilot with the Canadian Forces in Goose Bay, Labrador, he started drinking the original Budweiser brought in from Czechoslovakia by German air crews. He's been on a quest to make authentic beer ever since, deploring the travesties from mainstream beer companies, and aiming for a sharp hoppiness that's much more familiar in the rest of the Pacific Northwest than in B.C.

Mt. Begbie and Old Yale are at the micro end of micro brewing. Vancouver Island Brewery, one of the original 1980s pioneers, is much bigger, but is now one of the only major independent craft brewers left. It's a brewery that's gotten much better at what it does—a built-to-order facility with lots of high-tech quality control helps—as well as one that's successfully combined its Island roots with contemporary German experience. Brewmaster Ralf Pittroff marries the best brews of original brewmaster Hermann Hoerterer with a solid range of new ones, making for strong local appeal. Island people support Island food and drink.

Craft brewing in B.C. isn't quite the success that it is south of the border, but we're still doing a decent job of making beers that put passion and place into the glass and the bottle. Forget Corona and Coors Light. Have your own Oktoberfest and try some of our own.

Top of the Hops

Three of B.C.'s Gold Medal winners from the 2006 Canadian Brewing Awards:

MT. BEGBIE BREWING CO. TALL TIMBER ALE
Tall Timber was the first of Mt. Begbie's brews and is still their best seller. A brown ale, reddish and coppery like weak coffee, with a slim head but a delicious, Christmas-y smell, all nuts, fruit cake and oranges. Made for red meat and hearty, robust dishes—goes with just about anything except fish. Specialty listing, $4.25/650 mL.

OLD YALE BREWING CO. SERGEANT'S IPA
Consistently one of the best B.C. India Pale Ales, it's based on the beers shipped to slake the thirst of the British troops in India, boosted with hops and alcohol to survive the journey. Reddish-brown, hoppy, aromatic, almost winey; sausages, burgers, steaks, salmon—cook with it, marinate with it, or just drink it. Specialty listing, $4.61/650 mL.

VANCOUVER ISLAND BREWERY HERMANN'S DARK LAGER
Lager isn't just a golden summer brew but any beer in which the yeasts ferment at the bottom of the container rather than the top. Europeans love dunkel or dark lager. Hermann's looks like a dark espresso, sweet as treacle but with a nice sharp fruitiness that makes it great with a steak or anything on the grill. Specialty listing, $10.86/six-pack.