Breweries

Edmonton's oldest craft brewery, and it got there by surviving the two decades when Alberta craft beer was not a thing anybody believed in.

A brilliantly progressive hybrid brewery and soda maker. They consistently push the envelope on modern styles in Alberta.

A testament to survival and purity. It endured raids in 955, plagues, and multiple fires, and was already centuries into the craft when the Duke of Bavaria enacted the Reinheitsgebot purity law in…

Ed McNally started Big Rock in 1985 specifically to give Albertans something other than macro pale lager. Western Canadian craft has a founding date and this is it.

The living museum. In the 1960s and 70s, as tastes shifted to artificially sweetened beers, traditional lambic nearly went extinct. Cantillon refused to compromise its tart, spontaneously fermented…

A standout in Calgary's 'Barley Belt.' They bring intense, juicy New England IPAs and heavy fruit sours to the forefront.

The Secret 'Squatch: the hidden Sasquatch wasn't there on day one. In the early '90s, as market share slipped, a marketer noticed drinkers loved hunting the 'hidden rabbits' on Molson Old Style — so…

The godfather of Australian independent brewing — and the proof that 'independent' can also mean enormous. Six generations of Coopers have kept it family-owned while it grew into the largest…

A Bavarian brewery that happens to be in the Alberta foothills — Hefe, Pils, Weizenbock, Radler, and an Alkoholfrei sitting in the core range rather than tacked on as an afterthought. Reinheitsgebot…

Fernie Brewing is what happens when a family barn is allowed to keep growing for twenty years. Started by the Pask family in 2003 on their own farm, moved into a purpose-built plant on Highway 3 in…

Arguably Japan's most famous craft export, and it came from a 200-year-old sake house, not a startup. The owl ('Hitachino Nest') now shows up on taps from Tokyo to Brooklyn, yet Kiuchi still makes…

The only commercial brewery in the Northwest Territories, and the first ever established in the territory. Everything that goes into the beer — grain, hops, cans — is hauled thousands of kilometres…

Lundbreck is a village of a few hundred people on Highway 3, minutes from Lundbreck Falls, at the point where the mountains hand over to ranch country. Oldman River Brewing has been pouring there…

The beer that conquered the world. On 5 Oct 1842 Bavarian brewer Josef Groll debuted the first batch — its brilliant golden clarity was revolutionary in a world of dark, cloudy ales, and it spawned…

The benchmark of bitterness. Vinnie Cilurzo is widely credited with inventing the modern Double IPA in 1994. Pliny the Elder (first brewed 1999) became an instant cult classic; the brewery's…

The spark of a revolution. Before Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, American beer was almost entirely light, flavorless lager. Grossman's aggressive use of the then-experimental Cascade hop — piney, citrusy —…

In 1874 the North-West Mounted Police marched west and built a fort to shut down the illegal whisky trade that was wrecking the southern Alberta plains. A hundred and fifty years later there is a…

Homebrew champions who went pro and immediately started winning national awards for wild fermentation. Calgary got a serious brewery almost overnight.

Opening a taproom in the spring of 2020 was, on paper, the worst timing in modern brewing. Indoor service was banned before they could use it, so The Pass Beer Co. Started life as a pick-up window…

Two homebrewers in a backyard shed who then went and got Alberta's minimum production law changed. They rewrote the rules to make their own brewery legal.

A Calgary institution from 1996, acquired by Sleeman — and so Sapporo — in 2019. Another Alberta independent that is not one anymore.

Winnipeg craft, a decade too early. Agassiz brewed in Winnipeg from 1998 until 2002. The brand carried on until 2010, but under contract elsewhere — so the brewery entity ends at 2002 rather than…

Opened in 2016 by Alex Horner and childhood friends, and one of the Barley Belt's fastest risers at around 3,000 hectolitres a year. Then on 30 January 2020 Labatt bought it, and Calgary's craft…

The most divisive story in modern beer. BrewDog built a global empire on punk branding and the 'Equity for Punks' crowdfunding movement that turned 200,000 drinkers into shareholders — then, after…

The ultimate holdouts against commercialization. For 75+ years every legally required detail was printed on the bottle cap — no label — until modern food-safety law forced their hand in 2022. As the…

Copper kettles and local spring water made Creemore an early argument that lager could be craft. Molson Coors bought it in 2005.

The largest brewer in Canada, and not Canadian. Labatt has been brewing in London, Ontario since 1847 — older than the country it sells to — and produced the beer that was Canada's best-selling for…

Canada's northernmost commercial brewery, and the only one in a territory covering a fifth of the country. There is no road to Iqaluit. Every sack of malt, every keg gasket and every replacement part…

The largest brewer on earth, and a portfolio that reads as a list of things it could not become. American Ale lasted three years. Golden Wheat lasted three. Oculto lasted two. Prohibition Brew, the…

Founded by a Theakston fleeing his own family brewery's takeover, and taken over in turn — into administration in 2023, then out of it under the investor-backed Keystone Brewing Group. The irony is…

An entire country's brewing stopped for thirty-six years, and then came back under its own old name. Commercial brewing reached the Principality in 1905, when the original Brasserie de Monaco went up…

A nano-brewpub that opened at 505 13th Street in February 2013, run by Derrell and Janice Winowich, sharing a name with an 1888 brewery in the same town and connected to it in no other way. The…

Famous nationwide for their Jai Alai IPA, they were also absorbed by Monster Energy during the massive CANarchy acquisition.

A world-benchmark brewery that still runs its original Montreal brewpub. Péché Mortel — an imperial coffee stout brewed with fair-trade coffee — became a global reference point for the style long…

Undisputed masters of barrel-aging and crisp West Coast IPAs, operating under the Duvel Moortgat conglomerate.

The white whale — with an ownership twist. CBS (Canadian Breakfast Stout) began as a taproom-only experiment aged in bourbon barrels that had previously held maple syrup, and became one of the most…

Read the list and you have read a map of Vancouver: Brockton, English Bay, Kitsilano, Cypress, Spanish Banks, False Creek, Pemberton, the Sunshine Coast. Every beer is a place you can stand in, which…

Known for aggressive West Coast IPAs and highly irreverent branding, fully acquired by Heineken in 2017.

A winery and nano-brewery on Main Street in Wedowee, opened in 2021 by Scott and Brooke Bayliss. It makes both, which is why it is in this archive at all — the current site advertises brewery…

The most useful correction in this archive is also the simplest: John Molson never brewed Molson Canadian. The brewery dates to 1786; the flagship launched in 1959, a hundred and seventy-three years…

One brewery, eight hundred languages. SP Lager is one of the few things the whole of Papua New Guinea shares.

The great pivot. Arthur started with traditional Dublin ales, then noticed a dark, roasted London import called 'porter.' He abandoned ale entirely in 1799 to perfect the 'black stuff,' eventually…

English styles on Pembina Highway, at a moment when almost nobody else in the province was brewing them. The Winnipeg Free Press reported the shutdown in March 2024, opening the run of Manitoba…

Once the most aggressively independent voice in craft beer, famous for Arrogant Bastard before selling to Sapporo in 2022.

Black Tuesday and a barrel programme most breweries could not staff, sold to Castanea Partners in 2017. A private equity firm buys a return, not a beer — which is a different relationship to a…

Britain drank ale for centuries and then two Germans turned up in north Wales and brewed it a lager, forty years before anyone else bothered. The whole history of British lager starts in Wrexham,…

The undisputed pioneer of Hong Kong craft. Young Master earns global acclaim for a mixed-fermentation and barrel program that's rare anywhere in Asia, and its Cha Chaan Teng-inspired sours (salted…

Minimalist, design-forward aesthetics meet flawlessly executed ales. A beautifully crisp and clean Vancouver experience.

Ace Brewing pours in Courtenay, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Independent in Oshawa since 2014 — a working city that mostly gets skipped on the way to somewhere else.

Angry Hen Brewing pours in Kaslo, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Bad Dog Brewing pours in Sooke, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

A converted farm that serves as a sanctuary for hop-heads. It’s an essential destination for hyper-fresh, soft New England IPAs.

Upstairs on Banff Avenue, pouring to an audience from everywhere. Operated by Bearhill Brewing, which also runs Jasper Brewing — one company holding both national park towns.

A Toronto brewery that files its wild ales like vintages — Intermodal is a three-year spontaneous blend, Motley Cru changes fruit each year, and the Old Primeval stouts are named for the barrel they…

A masterpiece of local heritage architecture — built with thousands of bricks reclaimed from local historic demolition. Black Wheat injects new life into Brandon's Westman craft scene.

Witch's Hair, Captain Howdy, Guilty Remnant, Hellflower — a Toronto brewery naming beers like a horror double bill, then quietly running one of the larger non-alcoholic lines in Canadian craft. Three…

The trout and the ring. Legend says Countess Matilde of Tuscany dropped her golden wedding ring into a spring, and a trout surfaced to return it; she declared the land a 'Valley of Gold.' To this day…

Luxembourg had more than a dozen breweries in the early 1950s and has three today, and this is what the consolidation produced. The lineage runs deeper than the company name suggests: Funck-Bricher…

Captain's Log, Cosmic, Cruising Through the Galaxy, First Light — an Oakville brewery that decided on space and never wavered. Nine beers, all core, no seasonal churn: a lineup you could learn once…