BrewTALES from the road - Organic Beer

Last Christmas (2015), I had the opportunity to go home to British Columbia. While I was visiting a local pub, the bartender told me I needed to go see this brewery called Crannog. I decided to go pay the brewery a visit, and this is a story I was told. Hope you enjoy it.

Crannog Ales Brewery. Photo courtesy of www.bartowel.com

Crannóg Ales is a small (10 hectoliter/8.5 barrel system) brewery located in Sorrento, a small town of 1200 nestled in the interior of British Columbia. Its remote location helped the co-founder Brian MacIsaac and become  start the first certified organic farmhouse microbrewery in Canada.  But finding organic ingredients, particularly malted barley, wasn’t an easy task when the brewery first opened in 2000. The malster company providing the organic barley told Crannóg’s brewer that the low demand for organic malted barley would not justify increasing its production. So Brian embarked on a west coast road trip, visiting dozens of breweries from Vancouver to San Diego. When he visited each brewery, he talked to brewers and not only was he able to get to them to commit to buying and using organic malted barley in some of their beers, if he could find a company willing to grow it. The road trip was a success, as Brian got enough brewers to commit, and convinced his barley supplier to increase its production of organic malted barley to meet the growing demand. In the 6 years since Brian’s road trip, sales of organic beer increased from $9 million (2003) to $41 million.