My 65-year-old doctor knows all about craft beer. He told me so after lecturing me about drinking too much. This is the same man who said he’d never heard of Radiohead. This is a clear indication to me that in Vancouver, craft beer has hit the big time.
But go outside of Vancouver? Like, to Kelowna? Even my heavy metal lovin’ aunt has no real idea about what it is. I went to Kelowna for the inaugural Great Okanagan Beer Festival (GOBF), and to get a sense of how the beer culture was shaping up out there. In a few words: It has a ways to go.
But it’s going to come, and for a few reasons. First, there’s a growing tech industry in the area, and, if San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver are any indication, that particular industry has a high demand for more sophisticated lifestyle experiences – and beer is certainly one of them.
Two, as tastes evolve in Big Cities, visitors from those places are going to want that same level of quality when they go on vacation. Kelowna, (along with the rest of the Okanagan) is popular with tourists, and since Kelowna has offered quality wine and food for a good decade now, why not beer?
Third, the tastes of local millennials are maturing, and a few players in town are spreading the good word of craft beer to the masses. Yes, there’s the GOBF and Tree Brewing, successful ventures both. But there are two more specific cases in point we should all feel good about: The Curious Artistry and Alchemy and BNA Brewing Co. Both are bringing levels of Brooklyn- and Portland-inspired sophistication and simplicity that Kelowna hasn’t really seen.
Luigi Coccaro, whose family owns the long-running La Bussola Italian fine-dining restaurant down the street, opened The Curious earlier this year. It’s the first beer-focused bar of its kind in Kelowna and is essentially an Alibi Room with wood fired pizza. And considerably less taps. But they’re similar in spirit. There are constantly rotating taps from microbreweries across BC and Oregon, dominated on the day of my visit by Four Winds and Fuggles & Warlock, leftover from a Beer Fest tap takeover the night previous.
BNA Brewing Co. is opening next month in the BNA Building in old Kelowna. It’s owned and operated by Kyle Nixon and his wife. Nixon’s family owned the Eldorado Hotel, and, like Luigi, he has been raised in the local hospitality industry.
Right now it’s still a construction zone, but when it opens next month, the 240-seat restaurant and brewery will have a lounge, an indoor bocce field, four beers of their own along with a rotating list of other BC breweries. No beer was ready when I visited, so no beer was tasted, but Nixon said the recipes are more experimental in natures and will be available at the brewery only, at least for the foreseeable future.
Both places, I must say, have smashed the illusion that Kelowna was a playground for oil-field-working lunkheads with veiny biceps, speedboats and fake-breasted girlfriends. It’s admittedly an unfair stereotype, but it was a fun one to propagate (Penticton’s Bad Tattoo Brewing does a great job mocking both in name and with its aesthetics).
I’m happy to help obliterate it, though. It has some years to go, but Kelowna’s beer culture’s gonna get there. You’ll see.
