Vancouver Island & The Gulf Islands

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

Fifteen beers in the core range, which is unfashionably many, and not one of them a hazy chasing a trend — a Dortmunder, a Czech half-dark, an Irish stout, a British ale. Sean Hoyne brewed in…

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

Fat Tug did more to define what a British Columbia IPA tastes like than any marketing ever managed, and Naughty Hildegard is named for the twelfth-century abbess who first wrote down that hops…

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

They built their own malthouse, which almost no brewery does. Controlling your own malt supply is a decade-long commitment, not a marketing line.

Land & Sea Brewing pours in Comox, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

Brass Monkey Taproom pours in Victoria, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Category 12 Brewing pours in Victoria, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

Herald Street Brew Works pours in Victoria, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Salt Spring Brewing Co. pours in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

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

Victoria's first brewery and the one that outlasted everything else: ninety-six years under three names. It opened in 1858, the year the Fraser River gold rush turned a Hudson's Bay fort into a port…

Whistle Buoy Brewing Co. pours in Victoria, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

Fern + Cedar Brewing pours in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

Brilliant specialists in wild fermentation and aggressive fruit additions, heavily pushing the boundary of modern BC sours.

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

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

Fifty-five years at 303 Esquimalt Road, and the rare Victoria brewery confirmed twice over: SFU's archive dates it 1902 to 1957, and the federal brewing-industry lists of 1930 and 1952 independently…

A massive community hub on Vancouver Island, regularly taking home BC Beer of the Year honors for heavily fruited sours.

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

A light goes out in Esquimalt. Lighthouse brewed from 1998 until January 2026, and then did the thing that almost never happens gracefully: handed its beers to a neighbour rather than letting them…

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

A true staple of West Coast surf culture, famously incorporating local oceanic terroir into distinct brews like their Kelp Stout.

BC Pass 57. Current official site confirms active brewery and extensive core/rotating beer lineup. Founding year not asserted here pending primary-history verification. Ownership as recorded:…

BC Pass 57. Opened in May 2023 at 450 Swift Street. Current first-party site confirms active 2026 brewery/tasting room. BC Ale Trail includes Swift on the current Greater Victoria Ale Trail.

BC Pass 57. Main production and packaging moved to Phillips effective Nov. 1, 2024, but VIB retained a small-batch brewing operation for test and specialty products and remains commercially active in…

Beach Fire Brewing pours in Campbell River, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

BC Pass 57. Official site states Spinnakers has brewed since 1984 and describes it as Canada's first modern-day gastro brewpub.

Second into a town that had had a brewery for exactly one year, and it lasted thirty-seven. The interesting part is the ending. A Milwaukee Brewing Co. is recorded as its successor but never operated…

Brewing from 1891 to 1917, with its line running across prohibition to July 1921. Keep it distinct from the Empire Brewery in Victoria — a different business, a different island town, and two years…

Two years, the shortest documented run among Victoria's nineteenth-century breweries in this archive. Worth keeping straight from the Empire Brewery that later operated in Nanaimo — same name,…

Four names in fourteen years: Excelsior from 1894, Anglo-Canadian from 1898, Fairall from 1900, Fairall Brothers from 1905, finished in 1908. SFU traces the whole thing as one continuity row and the…

Fourteen years, and a name that suggests a roadhouse brewing for its own bar — though the archive holds no evidence of that beyond the name, so it stays a suggestion. SFU's timeline dating it 1861 to…

Four years, in the Victoria neighbourhood it took its name from. It belongs to the first wave — breweries that opened in the gold-rush years and were gone before the decade turned. Most of what a…

Thirty-two years of brewing, then four more years of paperwork. SFU dates the Lansdowne Brewery 1885 to 1917 — the year British Columbia's prohibition came in — and carries its corporate line through…

Phillips takes the brands, the brewery closes, effective 25 January 2026. An ordinary enough ending except for the company it keeps: Victoria lost Swans' brewhouse in 2024, Moon Under Water in 2025…

The beginning of brewing in a coal town. SFU traces the Millstream Brewery of 1864–66 into the Nanaimo Brewery that ran until 1879 — one continuity under two names, fifteen years in total. Nanaimo in…

Family-run — brewmaster Clay Potter with Anne and Steve Potter — out of a predecessor operation at 350 Bay Street, then sold and rebranded as Brass Monkey across 2025 and 2026. The brewing, the…

The second act on the Nanaimo Brewery name. SFU's continuity row dates Mahrer's Nanaimo Brewery from 1879 to 1890 and the Nanaimo Brewing Co. from 1890 to 1896 — one business under two names, picking…

The brewery that lost the merger and won the building. Phoenix ran from 1868, became Phoenix Brewery Co. in 1891, and merged into Victoria Brewing and Ice in 1893 — the combined firm took the…

Five years, and the shortest-lived of Nanaimo's nineteenth-century breweries in this archive. SFU's timeline dating it 1886 to 1891 is the whole of the record — no brewer, no beers, no reason…

BC Pass 57. Opened in 2018. A 2026 BC Ale Trail road-trip report documents the Scallys pouring on Small Block's final day after the brewpub was purchased by Jason Barber, who planned to rename and…

Brewing stopped on 31 August 2024. The pub, the hotel and the liquor store did not — and that distinction is the whole reason this record reads the way it does. Swans is still very much open as a…

Tiger for two years, City for eight, one business throughout. SFU models both names on a single continuity row and the archive follows it rather than splitting a decade-long brewery into two short…

Twenty years on its own, then absorbed. SFU dates Union Brewing 1891 to 1911, after which it ran as part of BC Breweries Ltd through prohibition and on to July 1921. That month is the real one: three…

Named for the island, not the city — Vancouver was not incorporated until 1886, three years after Thomas and Robert Carter opened this on the 500 block of Herald Street. The Victoria Historical…

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

Devil's Bath Brewing pours in Port McNeill, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Current official site verifies active craft brewing at Adelaide Street. BC Craft Brewers Guild says established 2020/opened 2021 and identifies Jason Welsh as head brewer and Yvan St. Onge as an…

Current BC Ale Trail and 2026 news identify Brass Monkey as the active successor to Moon Under Water at the same brewery, with Clay Potter remaining alongside new partners Morgan Watson and Jason…

Current official site explicitly calls Craig Street a brew pub/microbrewery and says beer is brewed inside the building. Current company story identifies Liz and Lance as founders; BBB and chamber…

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

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

Deadhead Brew Co pours in Duncan, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

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

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

Current official site says Howl moved production from North Saanich to 1209 Lyall in April 2024 and opened the tasting room in 2026. Municipal development records identify Daniel van Netten and…

Longwood Brewery pours in Nanaimo, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

LoveShack Libations pours in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

The end of the Phoenix story. The City of Victoria Archives identifies the old Phoenix Brewing plant as the site later run as Lucky Lager and then Labatt's, with archival photographs placing a Lucky…

SFU timeline records New Tradition Brewing Corporation beginning in 2019. BC Ale Trail says New Tradition later closed and the co-owners of Church St Taphouse bought the brewery/site and restarted it…

Short-lived, and that is very nearly all that is known. It appears in SFU's archival timeline of Victoria breweries and nowhere else in this archive — no closing year, no brewer, no beers. Kept as a…

Rusted Rake Brewing pours in Nanoose Bay, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

Spinnakers Brewpub pours in Victoria, British Columbia. The full profile — founding, people, beer library, travel — is still to be written.

UVic historical research identifies Victoria Brewery as Victoria's first brewery, opened by William Steinberger at Swan Lake in 1858 and using grain from Craigflower Farm in its first brews. Legal…

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

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

Contemporary closure reporting says Canoe operated for 19 years and closed Oct. 18, 2021 after CRAFT acquired the operation. Truffles Group retained the land/building. Brewing facilities were…

Current official site/tasting-room hours verify active Victoria brewery production. Official About page describes a dedicated wild/sour program using Kveik, Lactobacillus, Brettanomyces, stainless…

Simon Fraser University's BC Beer History Archive timeline records Leeward Pub and Brewery in Comox from 1984 to 1991. Production evidence: HISTORICAL PRODUCTION VERIFIED. Status as recorded: CLOSED.

Current official site says the second Longwood location opened in 2012 to expand packaged/keg production. City of Nanaimo lists Longwood Brewery Ltd. as an OPEN brewery manufacturer at the Boxwood…

SFU's BC Beer History Archive records North Island Brewing Co. in Campbell River from Feb. 1986 through Jan. 1988. This is preserved separately from today's North Island Brewing Corp…

Nanaimo Museum chronology says Union Brewing Company incorporated Jan. 21, 1891, was producing more than 15,000 barrels annually within five years, collapsed under Prohibition and sold its equipment…

BC Pass 57. BC Ale Trail describes Longwood Brew Pub as Nanaimo's original craft brewery.

BC Pass 57. Separate Longwood production brewery facility; current Ale Trail lists winter reopening March 25.

BC Pass 57. SFU dates Pilsener Brewing Co. in Cumberland 1909-1916.

BC Pass 57. Opened in Chemainus after a long development period and operated for just over seven years. Closed permanently January 10, 2024. The same Chemainus Village Square brewery location later…