BC Business
Alberta’s biggest brewer wants a piece of the B.C. action. Big Rock Brewery Inc. this week finalized the lease on a space at the corner of West Fourth Avenue and Alberta Street in Vancouver, where it plans to open a brewery that will include a tasting lounge and restaurant, along with a sound stage for live music. This will be Big Rock’s only brewery outside of Alberta. President and CEO Robert Sartor told BCBusiness that “B.C. has the most sophisticated craft beer palate in the country,” adding that “if we’re going to be part of the craft beer family in B.C., we have to be local. We couldn’t see a situation long-term where we continue to ship beer in from Calgary. It had to be produced locally.” The brewery will start small, brewing under 10,000 hectolitres a year to begin with, adding capacity as demand grows. (A hectolitre is 100 litres; Big Rock’s Calgary brewery produces over 200,000 HL a year, while Surrey-based Central City Brewing Co., by comparison, expects to brew about 35,000 HL this year.) Big Rock’s Vancouver brewery will produce only 650 ml single bottles and draft kegs, and will brew distinct beers catering specifically to B.C. tastes. Big rock used to own a brewery in Kamloops, which it sold in 2005 to Northam Brewery LP, the company that produces Whistler and Bowen Island brand beers. “If I had been here in ’05, I never would have sold the brewery,” Sartor told BCBusiness.