Barley Mowat 

A little known bit of info is that the LCLB regularly publishes the complete list of liquor licenses in the province. They update this listing every two weeks and put it cialis 4x20mg. Included in that is everyone that can legally make or sell booze, their kind of license, and their seat count (if it’s a Liquor or Food Primary license).

As a numbers geek I’m kinda interested in this sort thing, so I took that giant file, parsed it up, and came up with some numbers depicting the current state of booze-makin’ in BC. I often wonder how many wineries there are versus breweries, and now I know: There are lots more wineries. Lots.

I even used Google to make some skookum graphs. There’s no real point being made here; I just like graphs. So have at ‘er.

Every once in a while a bit of information you already knew suddenly sinks in and becomes real, rather than an abstract thought. If you’re confused by this, imagine the different way that your mind regards the factual tidbit “Things what glow red are hot” immediately before and immediately after you lean on an electric stove element at a house party.

That difference leads you to exclaims such obviously true statements as “Holy shit! That glowing red element is HOT!” as if it was divine revelation that you must evangelize to the masses. “Of course it’s hot. It’s glowing red!” someone might mock, but you’ll still feel the need to impress upon them The Trust: “No, really! It’s really, really hot! I mean, wow! HOT!”

In much the same way I received the news yesterday of Parallel 49’s first birthday party. I mean, I KNEW this brewery was only just barely over a year old, but the party somehow made that abstract grain of knowledge come crashing down all around me. Holy shit. They’re only one.

They grow up so fast!
He’ll have his first DUI by Age 3.

This is a brewery that has produced probably 10 of my top 20 BC beers in the past year, and they’re ONLY ONE. Hopnotist, East Van With Love, Ugly Sweater, Schadenfreude, Seedspitter, Hoparazzi: all those beers didn’t exist a year ago. A SINGLE YEAR. Those are just my favourites; there are about a dozen other good beers that I didn’t feel like listing.

Or, look at it this way, since I first visited P49 and their half-finished tasting room in mid-June 2012, they have garnered, from me, 6 Seals of Approval (5 Bronze, 1 Gold), 2 Beers of the Month, and one coveted 2012 Beardie. For those counting, that’s more acclaim than that biased favourite of mine: Driftwood.

Not only have they succeeded in producing lots of different awesome beers, but they’ve also succeeded in producing huge volumes of said same. There was a time when the common consensus was that you could sell a lot of beer, or you could sell good beer, but not both. Parallel 49 has shown that age-old wisdom to be bunk, as they are now, by most learned estimates (aka me) the second largest craft brewery in BC after Phillips (and just ahead of Lighthouse). That’s a lot of good beer.

Again, all of this in a year. Well played, guys. So, happy birthday to Parallel 49, happy birthday to yoooouuuu. (And many more. No, seriously, if you go out of business I will do something violent… okay, I’ll just drink all the P49 beer tadalafil pulmonary hypertension prescribing information in one sitting… and get violently ill. That sorta counts, right?).

As I did previously with 33 Acres, I’m running a dual preview of Brassneck Brewing. Over on Scout (genuine cialis tablets) there’s a short summary and an awesome picture gallery, while below is Nigel’s unabridged response to my standard list o’ New Brewery Questions. That I have a need for a standard list o’ New Brewery Questions itself makes me giddy with glee. Yes, like a schoolgirl. Deal with that image.

Likely the last view many of us will have of daylight

Questions

1. Why did you decide to start a brewery?
Seems like so long ago now, we’ve almost forgotten why. Certainly in the past few months, through all the heartache and the escalating price tag, we’ve been asking ourselves this question, except with a couple of choice expletives thrown into the sentence with some emphasis on certain words: “Why the fuck DID we decide to start a fuckin’ brewery???”

However, as construction draws to a close we are reminded of the reasons we started down the path in the first place. For Conrad, after 17 years with the same brew pub, he decided he was ready to go it alone and turn the page on a new chapter in his brewing career. Brassneck represents a chance to combine his tried and true brewing skills with some pent up brewing angst and a healthy desire to try out some really interesting new styles.

For myself (Nigel), it’s kind of a similar story. I’ve been involved with the Alibi in one capacity or another for many years now (and still will be once Brassneck opens!). A small brewery is the next evolutionary step for the existing business that I and my family have been building for the past seven years.

Both of us are thoroughly immersed in the BC brewing scene. It has become a huge part of our lives, not just professionally, but socially too. Owning a brewery (once its open for Christ’s sake!!) is the realization of a dream for both of us.

2. How big is your brewkit?
You may want to re-phrase that question to “Just how small is your brew kit”? We have a two tiered system:

A true nano system with:

• 4 x 350 litre conical fermenters
• 2 x 350 litre specially designed open fermenters
• 8 x Stackable 350 litre conditioning tanks

Then our “big” system:

• 1 x 20 hec fermenter
• 2 x 10 hec fermenter (conical)
• 1 x 10 hec specially designed open fermenter
• 13 x 10 hec cellar tanks

Chuck: It’s also shiny. So… very… shiny… must… drink… Brassneck beer…

3. How many/what types of beers will you launch with?
While not giving too much away, we are hoping to have at least 6 beers when we open, building to 12+ once things get rolling (barrel programs take a while, certain beers take lots of ageing/conditioning). It’s going to be tough to have any lager beers when we open just because of the extra time required in the fermenter.

Conrad has been working on some great test batches, but we hope people understand that things will take a while to dial in. It’s a new system for Conrad to work on, so we’ll be chasing our tails just to get the doors open in the beginning. We think the first few beers will be nothing too risky, but they will certainly be without flaws and well thought out.

4. What sets you apart from the flotilla of other breweries opening this year?
Well, I guess you could say experience. As one of Vancouver’s brewing veterans, Conrad has a very strong repertoire of beers under his belt. You could also say we have an understanding of the product and the market on a very intimate level. Although I’m sure we all think we’ve got it all figured out!

We are in the unique position, via the Alibi Room, of having a very close relationship with the constantly evolving and complicated beer drinker. As such, we’ve gone for a “brewkit” that allows us product “breadth” rather than “depth”. What do we mean by that? Well, most breweries brew a few products in relatively large batches. This allows them to put out 2-3, maybe 4, beers and have a good supply of these products.

At Brassneck we’re looking forward to doing things the hard way, by trying to brew lots of different beers in very small batches. This, in theory, will keep our line up constantly rotating. This may be as simple as brewing a base beer, splitting it in two, and changing the dry hopping, to more complex ways of keeping things interesting.

We are right on Main Street, a highly visible artery into the city. We’ve put a great deal of thought into the physical layout of the brewery and how it relates to the public areas such as our retail store and tasting room. In the beginning, we will be focused entirely on our 3 different sizes of growlers. This will be our only packaged product.

This is an experiment! We understand it may not work out. It is, after all, asking a great deal of people but we love the idea of creating some culture around the beer. Asking people to slow down a little, take some time for themselves, have some tasters, relax. Then get some beer to go!

We’ll be one of the first breweries to open with a functioning “brewery lounge”. A huge part of our plan was to have visiting customers feel like they are part of the whole process. To have customers feel as though they are deep within the heart of our brewery when they are sitting enjoying some tasters was very important to us.

5. Where do you foresee yourself taking the brewery once you’re established? eg: barrel-ageing, sours, or just sticking to table beers, or flowing with the current?
We may end up doing some bottling, especially for beers we see as seriously benefiting from being bottle conditioned, of which there are many! A barrel program is an absolute must for us.

As far as flowing with the current, I think we’ll mostly be brewing beers we see a need for and not worrying too much about what anybody else is doing.

6. When can we expect to see your beers in public?
We would like to have a few draft accounts, but at this stage we are just not sure of our production capabilities vs. onsite demand, so we are not entirely sure how that side of things will go.

When the beer will be available is still a moving target, but we anticipate being READY to brew in the next three-four weeks (early to mid July). Whether or not a whole parade of form filler-outer-ers think we are ready is a whole other story.

7. What BC brewery do you admire the most, and why?
This is hard. We can’t name just one. We respect all of our peers for different reasons. To be honest, we are just going to be absolutely overjoyed to finally be part of a local scene FULL of excellent breweries.

We cant wait to get those doors open.

Seeing as how these awesome growlers are still empty, neither can I.