On a nondescript sidestreet in East Vancouver’s industrial heart, a steady stream of young and old trundle by with growlers full of their favourite beer. Rain or shine, the tasting room of Parallel 49 Brewing on Triumph Street is a mecca for local hop heads who make the pilgrimage here for the some of the best beers brewed in Vancouver.
This pleasant scene is becoming increasingly common around the city as craft breweries are popping up faster than any other time in our brewing history. Chris Bjerrisgaard, co-founder of Vancouver Craft Beer Week (VCBW), credits the accessibility of an industry that’s full of passion.
“I think (Vancouverites) appreciate the quality and I think people like buying local,” he says over a pint at a packed bar at Portland Craft on Main Street, which he co-owns.
“I think it’s the accessibility of it all. You can talk to the brewmaster and you can totally walk up to talk to them. And it’s affordable.
“If wine was the elegant rich kid and macro beer was the jock, craft beer was the Dungeons and Dragons-playing nerds at the party,” he continues with a smile. “Even though we’re getting a little more popular, there’s no ego there and people like that.”
A celebration of progress
This year marks VCBW’s fifth year of showcasing the increasing number of craft beers from around the province. Bjerrisgaard can’t believe how far it has come.
“I don’t think any of us expected it to become so big,” he says. Bjerrisgaard predicts this year’s events will bring more than $3 million to the local economy. “So big in terms of not only the beer week, but of the scene as a whole. I’d like to pretend we were some visionaries who saw that the scene would get this big, but we weren’t – we just did it because we were passionate and the right things happen from that.”
He takes a long sip from his pint.
“The craft beer scene was going to explode anyway, “ he adds.
But there are some who praise VCBW for bringing an extra boost to the craft beer scene in BC.
“I’m absolutely stunned by the pace of the changes and growth here,” says Adam Chatburn, president of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) Vancouver, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and responsible consumption of natural, crafted beers.
“It really shows there was an appetite, but it just needed a few people, like VCBW, to make the first move. I think it’s great that VCBW celebrates the new players coming but also some out-of-towners and the older players of the craft beer brewing community.”
“Craft Beer Week does a good job of getting other craft beer drinkers to try our beer or converting other beer drinkers to drink our beer,” says Graham With, brewmaster at Parallel 49 Brewery. “They change the minds of people drinking the macro lager and bigger beers.”
Since VCBW launched one evening in 1999 at craft-beer insitution The Alibi Room, the number of BC’s breweries has nearly tripled with 70 currently operating and another 17 set to open this year.
The right direction
And while this boom can be attributed to an unquenchable thirst for craft beer, changing liquors laws are also helping move the industry forward – particularly new legislation that allows breweries like Brassneck Brewery in Mount Pleasant to have a tasting room.
“It’s been a godsend, really…and I’m not religious person,” says Brassneck co-founder and Alibi Room owner Nigel Springthorpe. “That tasting room is very valuable to us. It’s a great source of revenue which you need in an expensive building and being able to produce our beer.”
Before, breweries were only allowed to serve 12 ounces of beer per customer each day. Now, customers can drink as much as they want (within reason) in a licensed tasting room at the brewery.
However, for some, the new legislation has been a bit bittersweet, like for the soon-to-be-opened Main Street Brewery, who had to redesign their tasting room to the 80-square-metre limit of the new law.
“Unfortunately, we had already built our tasting room over the allotted 80 square metres,” says Main Street Brewery co-founder Nigel Pike. “We had to change it all. We literally had to go back to the drawing board.”
Pike says the all the paper work to have the brewery approved by the city have been frustrating, costing them nearly five months.
“And because of the delays, we’ve had to scale back a lot of the trades we’re using and be a lot more hands-on – I’ve been the carpenter lately,” he says with a sad laugh. “We’ve done a lot of ourselves because all of money got eaten up in rent, waiting for all of this to happen.”
Fortunately, all the patience and work has paid off with their brewery slated to open its big wooden doors on May 28.
“The end is finally in sight.” Pike pauses a bit hesitantly. “Hopefully it’s in sight. It’s been a hell-of-a-long road. There have a lot of long, long days.
“But in the end it’s all worked out,” he continues. “It’s done and we’ve got a beautiful space. And the craft beer market is booming, which has given us a lot of faith in what we’ve done even though it’s taken a while to get here.”
Chatburn says there “needs to be a complete overall” to BC’s Liquor Control and Licensing Act.
“We’re very encouraged by the changes but there are still a lot of changes that haven’t happened yet,” he says. “We need to start from scratch and come up with something that’s truly 21st century and modern and cohesive with an adult approach to responsible alcohol consumption – it’s sorely needed because there are far too many rules keeping us in the dark ages.”
The taste of success
But despite the liquor laws, Springthorpe says in their first year, Brassneck has been selling “hundreds of growlers” every day and the tasting room is busy almost every night.
“We’ve been working our balls off,” he says with a laugh. “Today we’re releasing our 50th beer. It’s not our 50th brew, it’s actually our 50th different style of beer. It’s been really exciting.”
Parallel 49’s 50-person tasting room has been such a success that they’re looking to expand the current space and are even considering at a door man to help control the steady flow of their business.
“We had no idea it would be this busy,” says With. Parallel 49 recently reached a milestone with its 1,000th brew (each brew is 2,500 litres).
“Two years ago, we just started making the best, most interesting beer we could and it just grew. I think Craft Beer Week had something to do with that.”
Opening eyes
This year’s VCBW theme is hip hop. Bjerrisgaard, who is an admitted “hip-hop head from the 90s,” says the more than 20 events during the week are about opening people’s eyes to new types of beer.
“We want to have fun and we also want to bring craft beer to a new community every year – this year, we thought why not see if we can grab the hip hop heads and get them swill,” he says. “And if we can do that with different scenes every year and make Vancouver a universally loving craft beer town, we’ve done our job.”
The wild, wild west
So what sets Vancouver apart from other craft-beer hubs like Portland or Seattle?
“I think in some senses we’re more exciting because we are immature,” Bjerrisgaard speculates. “Portland is exciting for Vancouverites because we go down there and there’s so much maturity to that scene and there’s amazing stuff happening all the time.
“Up here, it’s exciting because it’s the wild, wild west,” he continues. “You have a pretty established hierarchy and set of rules to play by in Portland. Here, that’s not so much set. There is some old guard, but you can come in and be a Parallel 49 and turn everything on its head, forcing everybody to rethink the beer scene.”
But despite his loyalty to the alternative beer scene, Bjerrisgard says he’s not above the mainstream product.
“I actually drank a PBR the other day,” he admits.
VCBW’s social media coordinator Leah Poulton nods her head.
“I’ve seen him,” she says, laughing. “I’ve seen him drink that beer.”
“I love craft beer and think it’s a superior product,” Bjerrisgard explains. “But do I get so worked up that I’ll turn down a PBR? No way, I like beer. I’m a beer fan. It’s beer…nobody’s curing cancer here.”
