In a craft beer scene as increasingly crowded as Vancouver’s, if you want your fledgling brewery to stand out, it’s not going to be easy.
Firstly, your beer better be damn good. The locals have been spoiled rotten and are among the most knowledgeable and discriminating beer-drinkers in the province. If your beer doesn’t wow them, there’s another brewery one block over that will.
Secondly, you have to ask yourself, what are you doing that no one else is doing? If you don’t have a unique angle, it’s all too easy to get lost among the multitude of options.
Enter Luppolo Brewing. Vancouver’s newest brewery opened up two weeks ago right in the middle of Yeast Van, surrounded by close to a dozen other breweries, all within walking distance.
So what sets Luppolo apart?
“Well, our beer is really good,” says owner and head brewer Ryan Parfitt.
Good answer, Ryan. He’s right, though. The beers I tried were incredibly clean and polished, especially for a new brewery, brewing on new equipment. Helping Parfitt out in the brew room is Stefan Thordarson, who was previously a brewer with Four Winds, so yeah, I’m expecting good things. Really good things.
The room itself is super hip, but also warm and inviting. The standard microbrewery minimalist vibe is present and accounted for, but there are enough splashes of colour here to make it interesting. Indeed, the room is one of the more social tasting rooms in the city.
“Luppolo” is Italian for hops, and the theme is fitting, given the brewery’s location in East Van near Little Italy.
“We have an Italian influence, but it’s not Italian beer,” explains Parfitt. “We’ll be brewing some Italian-inspired styles, but it will be predominantly West Coast style.”
One of the obscure Italian styles Parfitt hopes to experiment with is called “uva” beer.
“It’s beer fermented with grape must, so that really excites me,” he says. “What I’d like to do is ferment it with the wild yeast on the skins of the grape.”
He also has plans to start a barrel-aging program next year.
Two of Luppolo’s four owners are Italian, so the brewery comes by its Italian roots honestly. That influence extends to the brewery’s food menu, as well, with Italian flatbread sandwiches, antipasti and charcuterie on offer.
“Having a tasting room with a food component as well, we think this is a room people are going to want to spend time in,” says Parfitt.
The tasting room features eight taps that will feature five to six of Luppolo’s flagship beers, with a couple taps reserved for one-offs and pilot brews. The taproom is also equipped with a growler fill station, which Parfitt, ever the creative problem solver, designed and built himself.
The current roster of beers features a wide variety of styles, including a saison, a dunkelweizen, a Belgian IPA, a West Coast farmhouse ale, an English mild, and a “New World Sour.”
“I think our variety will set us apart,” says Parfitt. “We’re going to be constantly rolling through different styles of beer.”
If you’re looking to try what Luppolo is pouring – and I highly recommend that you do – for now at least, the brewery is the only place to find their beers.
“There’ll definitely be no bottles or canning for a while,” says Parfitt. “That’s not even really part of our expansion plan. But we’d like to get some kegs to bars and restaurants, that’s for sure.”
