Beastly Breweries
There are 19 breweries in B.C. featuring 13 unique animals in their names:
3 Dogs, Angry Hen, Bad Dog, Barn Owl, Buffalo Rouge, CowDog, Dead Frog, Dog Mountain, Fisher Peak, Fox Mountain, Grey Fox, Noble Pig, Ravens, Red Bird, Swans, Swift, Twa Dogs, Wolf, Yellow Dog.
Close calls: Hatching Post, Ursa Minor, Red Collar, and Unleashed.
Closed: Monkey 9.
Iconic IPA
Driftwood Brewery’s Fat Tug IPA is one of the most famous and ubiquitous beers in B.C., but did you know that Driftwood actually launched with two Belgian beers and a pale ale when it opened in 2008? Fat Tug wasn’t even the first IPA they brewed! The brewery released Sartori Harvest IPA, B.C.’s first wet-hopped IPA, in 2009, and then launched Fat Tug IPA on a year-round basis in 2010.
Vancouver Cream Ale
B.C. has a unique beer style all of its own: the Vancouver Cream Ale. What makes it unique is the fact that it is not actually a Cream Ale stylistically, but rather a Dark Mild. The story goes that when Shaftebury opened in 1987, its founders Tim Wittig and Paul Beaton got John Mitchell (co-founder of Horseshoe Bay Brewing and Spinnakers Brewpub) to help design their beers, but they thought they would have trouble selling a beer with “dark” in the name, so they called it a cream ale instead. Several other early breweries followed suit and you can still drink Vancouver-style cream ales from R&B and Russell today.
True Collaboration
Collaboration brews are common among breweries in B.C., but they typically aren’t truly collaborative since the beer is brewed at one brewery with some other brewers meeting up on the brew day to drink beer and symbolically toss in some ingredients. But there has been at least one true collaborative brew in B.C.: The Rock Bay Mash Up. Back in 2014, then neighbours Driftwood Brewery and Hoyne Brewing each brewed the same Baltic Porter recipe with one difference—Driftwood used an ale yeast and Hoyne used a lager strain—and then they linked more than 60 metres of hoses together and pumped Hoyne’s batch into a bigger tank at Driftwood. The resulting blend was released by both breweries as the Rock Bay Mash Up (8% ABV) and it was delicious!
