Nearly 100 craft brewers descended on the $35-million Central City Brewers + Distillers facility in Surrey last Friday for what was likely the country’s largest collaborative brew up.
Representatives from breweries such as Hoyne, Fernie and Parallel 49 were on hand for the making of this year’s Vancouver Craft Beer Week charity beer — a Central City and Phillips-led creation that will be available for a limited time only, and raise funds for Music Heals.
Inside the impressive 65,000 sq.ft. facility — one of the reasons Central City was chosen as the brewer — new Red Racer cans can be stacked three storeys high like cicceronic art, while a portal in the ceiling can be opened to allow additional tanks to be craned in. When we found him near the all-you-can-pour tap station, Main Street Brewing co-owner Cameron Forsyth joked that the cooler was probably bigger than his brewery.
The brew day banger also did double duty as a backdrop for this year’s VCBW promo video — an old-school hip hop spectacle inspired by VCBW’s host Prevail (of Swollen Members) and theme, ‘It’s A Rap’.
Reticent brewers and visiting media donned their most gratuitous rap gear (baggy Tees, sideways baseball hats and bling) and danced down the aisles for the chuckling cameramen. The compatriots-in-hops then went back to catching up on each other’s brewscapades.
“It’s fun,” shouted Central City brewmaster Gary Lohin over the din when we caught up with him midway through the festivities. “This might be Canada’s largest-ever collaboration beer.”
“Biggest one today, for sure,” joked Phillips Brewery founder and recipe co-creator Matt Phillips.
The beer they were mashing will become a 100-hectolitre homage to Anchor “Steam” Beer.
The two brewers got together two weeks prior during Victoria Beer Week to come up with their concept, and then, through a series of discussions with VCBW, arrived at PrevAle: a double California Common made in the traditional method. But stronger.
“We kind of stumbled across this idea,” explained Phillips, a craft beer pioneer based out of Victoria. “We’re taking what is a classic North American style and applying some BC-centric twists to it — one of which, I guess, is doubling it,” he laughs. “We want to show new consumers what craft beer can be.”
The choice was a surprise to at least one VCBW organizer. “I figured something hoppy would have come out of their minds,” said Craft Beer Week co-founder Chris Bjerrisgaard. “We kind of give them tolerances, like ‘Don’t give us a 14 per cent sour beer that only the nerds will drink.’ Because, if we want to raise money for charity, it’s a little tough to sell 5,000 bottles of that. But a California Common is interesting, because it’s a take on a style that’s not commonly done. And making it a double version is more interesting again.”
It will be a lighter-coloured, 7 per cent beer with hop influence and citrus notes. And then there will be some aromatic esters from the yeast itself, which was brought over by Phillips on the ferry that morning.
“The kind thing, when you’re doing a collaboration, is to bring something,” he said with a smile.
And the brewers both emphasized the importance of brew day to the growing microbrewing industry in BC, which has doubled its market share in the last four years and reached $174 million in retail sales last year.
“As you can see,” said Lohin, gesturing around, “Most of the brewing industry is here. There are no secrets. You can see exactly how we do things.”
Twenty-one new breweries are currently in planning stages, and the province could have as many as 80 operating breweries by the end of this year.
“The really cool thing about the craft beer industry,” said Phillips, “is that we’re all friends, we all share, we’re all each other’s biggest advocates. It’s so important for everyone to understand how powerful a collaborative industry can be.”
And the power of the industry is no better demonstrated than in the impact it has on its community. Last year the VCBW charity beer raised $3,500 for Mark Brand’s A Better Life Foundation. This year the Music Heals Foundation, of which Prevail is an ambassador, will benefit from the beer blitz campaign.
Music Heals director Chris Brandt says he is amazed by the generosity of the craft brewers, many of whom have, since the organization’s inception in 2012, already donated time and money towards the creation of music therapy programs for autistic children, seniors with dementia, burn victims and more.
“Most people want to buy a thing — a guitar or a television,” says Brandt. “We fund hours — actually just letting music therapists do more of what they do.”
To put it in perspective, $15,000 funds one day of music therapy per week, for a year. Music Heals donated $100,000 to music therapy programs in Canada in 2013.
A relatively young charity (last year was its first full year in action), the support from VCBW is an important endorsement for the organization. Five thousand bottles explaining the work of Music Heals will be for sale by mid-May at liquor stores and beer stores around the Lower Mainland. PrevAle will also be on tap at select pubs.
The collaboration beer marks an important point in the growth of VCBW, which kicks off May 30, as well.
“This brew day is pretty special for me,” said a beaming Bjerrisgaard, who does double duty as Central City’s marketing manager. “Having 90 people come out to participate in this is a far cry from the two that did it the first year. It’s almost like the participation in the brew and the brew day has grown with Beer Week, and it’s a bit of a barometer for how we’re doing from an industry perspective. If everybody wants to come out and participate, it means VCBW is doing good things for the craft beer industry.”
