The neighbourhood has changed significantly since September 1997, when R&B Brewing poured its first beer. At the time, co-founders Barry Benson and Rick Dellow were the only people making craft beer in the East Van ’hood now known as Brewery Creek. Today, the area now counts eight breweries and brewpubs, with even more in the works.
Likewise, the province’s craft beer industry is unrecognizable from 20 years ago. From 2011 to 2015, the number of licensed breweries in the province doubled to more than 120, according to BeerCanada. The sudden competition between breweries and the dizzying array of new beer styles has understandably left some of BC’s trailblazing old-guard brewers wondering where they fit in.
Benson first began to notice the effects of the craft beer revolution’s most recent wave when the popularity of growler fills rose and R&B’s off-sales dropped. It was also tougher to get consistent lines for their kegs at restaurants and pubs, as rotating taps between emerging breweries became more frequent. “So it wasn’t that much to have the respectability of a decade of good brews behind you,” Benson explains.
But the biggest change came just in the last few years, with Brassneck, 33 Acres and Main Street all opening up within walking distance, and R&B couldn’t logistically or financially create space for a tasting room in its building. Benson admits, delicately, that the brewery fell into “a bit of trouble.”
“Our business plan was 20 years old,” he says. “Our business model was not where the industry is now.”
So, in 2015, Squamish’s Howe Sound Brewing purchased the East Van brewery, providing the capital for a massive renovation. In addition to shiny new brewing equipment, Howe Sound’s investment allowed R&B to acquire the space next door, where they knocked down walls to finally build a tasting lounge: the R&B Ale + Pizza House. The impressively comfortable 60-person space feels somewhere in between your best buddy’s rec room and a neighbourhood pub, with 11 taps, including a few that are tasting-room-exclusive experiments.
“The vibrancy in the neighbourhood in the last 20 years has exponentially increased,” says Benson, noting that the new space has finally let the brewery become a bigger part of the neighbourhood, as well as the craft community.
The purchase also allows R&B to exist as a brewery that still brews its own beer onsite (plus Howe Sound’s lager, occasionally).
The brewery will see more changes soon, too, as their core line-up of six-pack bottles – including Raven Cream Ale – will be swapped out for two new, very modern Vancouver-themed four-packs of cans: Dude Chilling Pale Ale and Stolen Bike Lager.
And while six-packs of Ravens migrating will likely startle some longtime craft consumers, there are even bigger brewery changes on the horizon for one of the province’s biggest legacy craft breweries.
BOLD MOVES
Cue that Michael Jackson song from Free Willy, because the killer whale from Vancouver Island Brewing’s decades-old logo has finally been released. The brewery’s orca-free relaunch kicked off this month, and it’s already making a big splash.
Vancouver Island Brewing has been in the midst of a dramatic makeover that began last year when the brewery’s longtime owner, Barry Fisher, announced he had sold to Ontario businessman Bob MacDonald. The moves that followed the purchase have marked the most drastic example of an older brewery adapting to today’s craft beer revolution.
“[Vancouver Island Brewing] spent so many years looking back that the industry passed them by,” says Chris Bjerrisgaard, VI’s new Marketing Director.
Bjerrisgaard, formerly of Parallel 49, Central City and a founder of Vancouver Craft Beer Week, is up to the daunting task of turning the legacy brewery, which has been around since 1984 (originally named Island Pacific Brewing), into a major player. “Frankly, from a marketing guy’s point of view, this is the dream job,” he says. “This is the test to see if you’re as good as you think you are. Can you take a brand that’s been in decline in an up market and turn it around?”
At the helm of the new VIB is former Central City president Tim Barnes, along with former Parallel 49 brewer Danny Seeton, who is designing new recipes for the brewery.
At the DNA-level of the new VIB philosophy is figuring out “Where next?” The new core line-up will see three “legacy” bottled products with drastic updates, plus four brand-new canned brews. Design-wise, it’s purposefully bright and clean.
The beer names – from Sombrio Citrus Session to Carmanah Ale – cover the geography of the Island, while each can and bottle will feature different longitude and latitude coordinates that will cue up to different Vancouver Island locales. Piper’s Pale Ale will be the only VI legacy beer that keeps its name, but will feature changes beyond its hip new tartan packaging.
With a near-complete revamp set to kick off, Bjerrisgaard doesn’t mince words when it comes to the brewery’s loyalists. “The customer who’s going to bemoan us isn’t buying enough of the beer, and that’s really the long and the short of it,” he says. “We need to shift our demographic. We need to think long and hard about the kind of customer we want and need. And hopefully the ones that we do have will join us, but we’re willing to risk it.”
The bottom line, Bjerrisgaard emphasizes: “Unless you’re willing to do bold moves, we’re not a relevant craft brewery anymore.”
A TALE OF TWO ISLANDS
No man is an island, and that’s true for breweries competing in BC’s craft beer market. Even when they literally have “Island” in their name.
Although established in 1984 – the same year as Vancouver Island Brewing – Granville Island Brewing has also been affected by the rippling waves of the local craft beer revolution.
Longtime head brewer Vern Lambourne left Granville Island in 2015 to co-found The Parkside Brewery, the fourth brewery on Port Moody’s Brewers Row. While Granville Island found a replacement in local boy-makes-good-beer Kevin Emms, who studied brewing in Edinburgh, and had earned a reputation creating recipes at Coal Harbour Brewing and Deep Cove Brewers.
Emms says the appeal of Granville Island was “being able to join a company with a rich history that’s done a lot for Canadian craft beer.”
While the line-up of core beers has seen some additions, like Infamous IPA, as well as a Small Batch Series, it hasn’t changed dramatically over the decades. But that doesn’t mean Emms isn’t given room to experiment.
Although most of Granville Island’s beers aren’t brewed at the Granville Island brewery itself, the brewery does serve as a test kitchen for Emms, allowing him to create what could be the company’s next big beer. Or just what he feels like drinking. Case in point: Ugly Duckling; a New England IPA hybrid, Emms describes as “fascinating” and “hilarious” in appearance, quaffable – but only available at the Granville Island tap room, for now.
Emms emphasizes that the brewery – purchased by Molson Coors through Creemore Springs in 2009 – is still targeting craft consumers. “Granville Island Brewing, considering it has started to offer more flavorful, authentic beers to drinkers that didn’t have a lot of choice… is still very much engaged in doing that,” albeit on their own terms.
Emms says Granville Island’s strategy to attract craft beer drinkers is to find a balance between honouring the past and staying on trend. A perfect example of that philosophy is Granville Island’s Burly Goat Dopplebock, a Canadian Brewing Award silver-medal winner.
“The focus isn’t on trying to do anything cutting-edge and innovative,” says Emms, “it’s trying to do things really meticulously and traditionally.”
