Friday Beer Reco: Bridge Brewing Saves the Ocean, One IPA at a Time

What do you get when you merge one of B.C.’s most lauded outdoor gear manufacturers with one of its more innovative breweries? Well, you get the Survival Session IPA, brewed by North Van’s Bridge Brewing in collab with Burnaby-based Mustang Survival.

The latter has a well-earned rep for creating water safety equipment over its 50-plus years in the industry. It’s also worked with organizations like NASA.

As the story goes, Mustang was looking for a brewery to make their long-planned co-branded beer and wanted a partner with a love of life on the water. Bridge and its owner and director of consumption (a very solid competitor for best job title of all time) Leigh Stratton, a lifelong sailor, turned out to be the ideal fit.  

Together, they created the Survival Session IPA, a 4.2 percent, very refreshing beer that merges haziness and hops with touches of mandarin and grapefruit, making it both very tasty and sessionable.

The beer is available at the brewery now and is also hitting stores, with $2 from every four-pack sold ($13.49 at BC Liquor Stores) will go to Ocean Ambassadors, a local advocacy group dedicated to stopping marine plastic pollution. The money will go toward helping support programs like Ocean Camp, which inspires Grade 6 and 7 students by teaching them about humans’ relationship with the ocean.