How one man founded Canada's craft beer industry right here in B.C. & More News Here

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In 1981, when three nationwide brewing firms had a stranglehold on beer parlour faucets and publicans have been restricted to pouring no matter fizzy lager they have been assigned by officers, Vancouver Province reporter Tony Wanless was invited out to Horseshoe Bay by a displaced Englishman who needed to indicate British Columbians what the true stuff tasted like.

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John Mitchell, proprietor of The Troller in Horseshoe Bay, had been left with none beer to promote following a strike at Carling O’Keefe. He’d had sufficient. Not solely did he need to make his personal small-batch, wood-keg beer, he needed to promote it.

“Dream nectar,” wrote Wanless, after tasting a glass. “Old-fashioned, rich and flavourful, dark, heavy.”

Mitchell, who died in 2019, stated on the time, “We want to do what some people are doing in England, make beer in wooden kegs the old way, not the brewery way.”

If all went properly, predicted Wanless, pub patrons “may find their utopia.”

It was an unlikely mission at a time when arcane guidelines that also held a whiff of Prohibition-era governance restricted beer parlours in B.C. But Mitchell had an ace up his sleeve: Expo 86 was coming. He argued with officers that culturally, the province and the nation could be ridiculed in the event that they couldn’t serve correct beer to worldwide guests.

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According to BeerMeBC: “During a meeting in 1981, B.C.’s Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs Peter Hyndman told the CEOs of Canada’s big three breweries that he was going to approve John’s plan for a ‘cottage brewery.’ The brewing executives replied that Mitchell was a fool, and he would never ‘make a go of it.’”

So Mitchell was granted the primary craft brewery licence in Canada, with the caveat that the manufacturing needed to be offsite. As it turned out, Mitchell’s plan was greater than a good suggestion.

“It was a huge event, and it started a revolution,” stated John Ohler, director of the John Mitchell Legacy scholarship at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

In 1984, after pushing officers even more durable, Mitchell coined the time period “brewpub” and satisfied officers to permit brewing and quaffing beer to occur on the identical website. He co-founded Spinnakers in Victoria, the primary brewpub in the nation.

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“He fought tirelessly for changes to regulations, he fought for legislation, and he laid the foundation for the industry we have today,” stated Ohler. “Before he died, he was shocked to learn there were over 1,000 brewpubs in Canada, largely because of the work he did.”

It wasn’t laws that was his solely legacy, stated Ohler, who grew up in Horseshoe Bay and remembers peering by way of the window of that first brewing constructing, watching Mitchell work on his craft. It was high quality, and craft.

Mitchell knew that the wooden keg course of couldn’t be executed in giant breweries — he dreamed of 100-per-cent barley mash, and he believed in utilizing entire cone hops, not hop pellets, stated Ohler.

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the July 6 launch of that first craft ale at The Troller pub, Ohler has teamed up with Russell Brewing to launch the John Mitchell Signature Cascadian Dark Ale.

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Ohler offered Mitchell’s unique brew sheets to the group at Russell Brewing. “They used them as a guide to create their own unique beer to honour John Mitchell.”

Canada Malting firm donated the malts, and Yakima Chief Hops donated the hops, Central City brewing in Surrey donated the particular yeast, the Great Little Box Company donated the labels, and collectible coasters have been created by the Coaster Factory.

All proceeds from gross sales will go to the John Mitchell Legacy scholarship for college students in the brewing program at Kwantlen — a program pricey to Mitchell’s coronary heart.

“John would say this is exactly why he started a brewery. To bring people together is the true essence of craft beer. He would be astounded,” stated Ohler.

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