RIDE OR DIE Electric Bicycle Brewing brings some colour to Mount Pleasant’s beer scene
BEST BREWERY DESIGN
Through the Drinking Glass There are a few different reactions you might have walking into the sensory overload that is Electric Bicycle Brewing’s Mount Pleasant tasting room. But for anyone who has tried their beer, the appropriate one is: “Ah, that makes sense.” After all, it takes a certain kind of atmosphere to set up offerings like a ramen noodle-infused altbier and a Double-Stuffed Oreo stout. That place is, apparently, a nostalgiapacked operation brimming with bright pink and turquoise. It’s a whirling assault to all the senses,
from the impressive and loud paint job that adorns the exterior to the funhouse mirrors near the bathroom. And it took just under two and a half years to create. Co-founders Elliot McKerr and Matt Ryan had been looking at opening a brewery in the neighbourhood for a while. In 2015, on Christmas Day, they happened to be scrolling through real estate listings and saw that a space once occupied by an electric bicycle factory (hence the name) had become available. But it wasn’t until May 2018 that Electric Bicycle officially opened,
mostly because of permitting challenges with the City of Vancouver. So, McKerr and Ryan had some time to create their new addition to Vancouver’s brewery scene. “With so much selection in the neighbourhood, we wanted to have something different,” notes McKerr, a former marketing rep in the beverage industry, as he sits in his tasting room sipping a blonde ale the brewery has dubbed OK Boomer. “R&B [Brewing Co.] has a comfortable, at-home, grungier aesthetic, which we really liked. But being right next door, we didn’t want to be like that.
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