The Strange Fellows Hat Trick

What's Bruin: The Career of Iain Hill

>> J. RANDOM

To the current generation of BC craft beer enthusiasts, owner and brewer Iain Hill might be recognized as one of the brains behind Strange Fellows Brewing Company. His influence on BC’s beer scene, however, runs more broadly and deeply than even longtime fans might know.

Iain inherited his early affinity for brewing directly from his father. Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, the senior Hill was conducting partial mashes at home in Maple Bay on Vancouver Island with malt extract, steeped specialty grains and cone hops. The recipes came from Dave Line’s classic book, Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy. Iain helped with the brewing and, of course, the quality assessment.

In Canada prior to 1985, one was supposed to seek permission from the Federal Government to brew beer at home. Ingredients were hard to find, other than malt extract “for bread making”. An exponential increase in Canadian homebrewers deciding to turn pro can be traced back to the relaxation of that legislation, along with the gradually expanded availability of homebrewing supplies.

Iain participated in collective homebrewing while studying Biochemistry at the University of Victoria. There, Dr. Nano (his real name) sparked an interest in obscure fermented foods. For a while they talked of a spin-off business in the manufacture of Viili, a ropy cultured-milk product from Finland via Sweden. It involves a mixed culture of yeast and bacteria; does that sound familiar to Strange Fellows fans?

By 1992, Iain and his then-girlfriend Christine were living above Frank’s Barber shop at 16 th and Granville. He was working at Broadway Brewing, a homebrewing and winemaking store with operations in Kitsilano and Dunbar. His bible and cramming notes for brewing jobs was Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

But learning opportunities would arise that would dwarf any how-to book. Not only was Iain lucky enough to have a brewing father, he was also fortunate enough to work with the two founding fathers of BC craft brewing, John Mitchell and Frank Appleton, at key points in his career.

Shaftebury Brewing began operation in 1986 in what we now know as ‘Yeast Van’. John Mitchell was the primary brewing consultant there. Iain started in quality control at Shaftebury in early 1993, after applying for a variety of other jobs in the general area of food biotechnology. Barry Benson, who later became the “B” in East Van’s R&B Brewing, trained Iain in plating active yeast cultures and determining the status of packaged beer. They had a pressure cooker, incubator, and microscope in a closet with no plumbing.

Iain really wanted to move into brewing. Operations were expanding, and none of the other brewers were keen to work a late Friday shift, so he volunteered. The first beers he brewed included Cream Ale, ESB, London Porter and Christmas Ale. (One of the consultants at Shaftebury was Malcolm Farvel of Rogers Sugar which perhaps accounts for the overuse of golden syrup and brown sugar in those beers.) Iain had very little experience in brewing, but that didn’t matter because neither did those around him. The beer was highly variable, often heavy on diacetyl, but it was new and different and sold well to those of us desperate for an alternative to big brewery lager.

Iain Hill drinking a Kriek from the Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, Belgium in 1996. Choice sideburns.

Photo: Christine Moulson

The dream of operating his own brewery crystallized during his time at Shaftebury, but a lot of wort had to pass through the chiller before that dream came true.

One day, in one of those strange twists of fate, a friend of Iain’s overheard a conversation in a coffee shop about Mark James starting up a brewpub. Iain reached out to Mark and arranged a meeting at his Broadway and Bayswater headquarters. He was told to keep in contact.

Then a job opened up at Okanagan Springs because Gary Lohin (later of Central City Brewing/Red Racer fame) had moved to Sailor Hagar’s. It was in production and quality control, with a proper laboratory. Iain was offered the position. However, Christine was enrolled at Emily Carr and Vernon seemed far away. Iain passed on the opportunity and kept his fingers crossed for the Yaletown job. He got lucky. Mark James decided, despite Iain’s relative lack of experience, to hire the guy that wanted this job, not just a job.

BC brewing legend Frank Appleton, hired by Mark to design the Yaletown brewhouse, trained Iain on his new brewery equipment over a three-week period. Iain relates how Frank phoned up Chris Johnson, brewer at Swan’s (which Frank had set up in 1989) and said “send me my recipes”. The first beers brewed at Yaletown were based on what Swans was putting out, but under different names: Mainland Lager, Northern Light Lager, Red Brick Bitter (yes, they had the temerity to use The B Word), Franks Nut Brown Ale (affectionately known as “Frank’s left nut”), Double Dome Stout, and Indian Arm Pale Ale (not an IPA, just a local reference).

Once he got comfortable with the system, Iain soon began to tinker with the recipes. The beers evolved, the names changed, and new beers were introduced. Standouts in my memory were Brick and Beam IPA and Hill’s Special Wheat. One of the first to brew Hefeweizen in Canada, Iain was certainly the first to perfect it. Not surprisingly, that is one of the beers Iain is most proud of. Iain tells how, in 1996, Michael Leibinger, scion of the Ravensburg brewery family, had been studying ESL in Vancouver and drinking at Yaletown. He got to talking beers with Iain and, next thing you know, a friend of his brought over a liquid yeast culture from Leibinger Heimatsbrauerie. Iain has banked that culture ever since.

In 1996, a trip to Belgium came to have a huge influence on Iain’s brewing. He was captivated by the stunning variety and tried a wide range of styles. When back home, he obtained a Brettannomyces culture from a US lab and tried a brew with it. He added cherries and took it to the Brewmasters Festival at the Plaza of Nations, where only one person recognized the Brett character. However, it was not until the mid-2000s that Iain brewed his first batch of Oud Bruin, a beer he was to become famous for.

That same year, Iain was visiting his friend James Walton, owner/ brewer at East Vancouver’s Storm Brewing. He was invited to taste some beer that had gone strange. Not an invitation you or I would have made, or accepted, but we are talking about James and Iain here. Iain said, “I think you have created something remarkably like (a Belgian) Lambic.” That was all you had to say to Vancouver’s mad scientist of brewing; it became his new beer.

Meanwhile, Iain and Christine were saving to start a brewery while also putting effort into a tea company that Christine helped found. However, life was about to throw them a couple of curve balls. Many of us have been through life-threatening experiences that caused us to re-think our lives. Sometimes these come out of the blue, some are self-inflicted. Iain and Christine had one of each. In 1997, Iain was diagnosed with melanoma. Fortunately, it was caught before it metastasized, but it spurred the pair to finally tie the knot. James Walton was Best Man and they toasted with James’ new Sour Kreik.

Then, in the early 2000s, Iain and Christine were backcountry skiing at Diamond Head and got caught out very late, in bad weather. On the way back, Christine had a bad wipe-out on the side of Paul Ridge. They were not sure they were going to get off that ridge alive. Like many animals, plants and fungi under stress, Iain and Christine’s response was to reproduce. Kids meant a house and a house meant no brewery ownership, for the time being.

Iain today, with his barrel aging program.

Photo: Olga Swart

During this same period, Iain was busy helping grow the Mark James Group (MJG) into a chain of brewpubs, eventually in Whistler (High Mountain/The Brewhouse), North Vancouver (Avalon/Taylor’s Crossing), Surrey (Big Ridge) and even just down the road on Vancouver’s Beatty Street (DIX). Although Iain still looked like the young upstart (he has the Paul McCartney gene), he was gaining experience and confidence. By the time Big Ridge and DIX were in the works, Iain was stepping forward to take charge as the Mark James Group’s lead brewer. Iain designed and supervised construction of Big Ridge and DIX in 1998.

This expansion begat the famed series of BC’s MJG-seasoned craft brewmasters. The ones Iain hired included Stefan Arneson (The Creek/Dockside, Mission Springs and now winemaker at Poplar Grove, Tony Dewald (DIX, Dead Frog, Old Abbey, Trading Post), Tariq Khan (Big Ridge and now Yaletown distillery), Peter Kistoth (later of Nanaimo’s Longwood), Mike Kelly (Nelson and Backroads), Dave Woodward (Tofino, Axe & Barrel and Mount Arrowsmith), Derrick Franche (DIX, High Mountain) and Dave Varga (now of 33 Acres). Varga would play a key role in Iain’s career, as will be explained in our story about Strange Fellows.

DIX opened in late 1998 with Iain as the brewer for the first six months. It was a barbeque house, focusing on lagers to differentiate from the other brewpubs. The first brews were Light Lager (Helles), Cascade Lager (a Pilsner – no Cascades anywhere near it) and Dark Lager (Dunkel), all Iain’s recipes. Then in 2003-04 Iain set up the Avalon in North Vancouver, helping select Dominic Giraldes (later Central City, Postmark) and Hamish MacRae (Red Truck, Bridge) as assistants for new head brewer Varga.

In 2010, Iain helped design a new Big Ridge brewhouse with brewer Tariq Khan. Beginning in 2007, Iain also helped design and plan the large Red Truck Beer plant. Other concurrent experiences included a stint consulting on the opening of Brasserie Trois Dames in St Croix, Switzerland and invitations to judge beer competitions in the UK and Germany.

The mid 90s through the early 2000s was the heyday of the brewpub in BC, when classic examples like Sailor Hagar’s, Steamworks, Mission Springs, Howe Sound, The Creek/Dockside, Longwood and Central City opened. Different styles were being tried and tested on increasingly knowledgeable consumers. Brewpubs had certain advantages that made them the place to be for an innovative brewer.

As Iain recalls, their brewers could put out a short seasonal or one-off without the hassle of packaging, marketing and dealing with the BC Liquor Distribution Board. Consumers could also more directly influence the brewers. It is likely that BC breweries wouldn’t have had the courage to expand their range of styles back then if it weren’t for the impact of brewpubs on the craft beer scene. Iain was right in the thick of things as lead brewer for the Mark James Group.

Why did he stay with MJG for 19 years? Mark James could be a hard-nosed businessman but he paid well, and Iain was mostly left alone to develop his craft. When MJG’s executive chef Darryl Frost decided to open a startup called Central City Brewing, Iain flirted with moving. But with a mortgage and three kids, plus the dream of owning his own brewery one day, he passed on the opportunity (which went to Lohin). He was generally enjoying creating the new breweries and, starting in 2010, the Yaletown Distillery.

Iain is an animated raconteur when you get him going. but his eyes really lit up when the distillery was mentioned. “Other than the fermentation, I had to learn it all from scratch”, he said. Iain had pitched the distillery concept to Mark James years earlier, but often the best ideas must await their time. Okanagan Spirits had started operation in 2004, Pemberton Distillery in 2008, but craft distilling was still in its infancy in BC, so as Iain recalled, “Unlike with brewing, there were not a bunch of peers for me to talk to.” It was a steep learning curve.

Iain travelled to Kingman, Arizona to take a one-week distilling class. But, Iain says, “you can’t learn everything from a course. They don’t tell you that spent grain stinks up the neighbourhood if you don’t dispose of it quickly. There were also problems with Vancouver City planning department. They had major fire and safety concerns with production of a flammable liquid like ethanol next to a residential area.”

Iain’s first batches employed wort from the brewery two doors down, so he ran a hose down Hamilton Street to get it. He was particularly proud of his ideas around the vodka distilling process that reduced “sweet” aroma and made for an old-world flavor. He also created a gin recipe after a substantial amount of trial and error. However his pride and joy was Pear Eau de Vie, based on Poire Williams and using Bartlett pears. Iain loved distilling, but he handed over the reins to Tariq Khan in 2014, shortly before leaving the Mark James Group.

Iain was not one to seek the “rock star” status that other long-established BC brewers have achieved within BC’s craft beer community. Even when Oud Bruin took The Alibi Room by storm, he remained relatively unassuming. With stable, lucrative employment that was fascinating to him, and a growing family, why did Iain leave MJG after all those years? The dream. And that leads us to the story of Strange Fellows, next.

J. Random is a former VP of CAMRA Vancouver and beer fan for 4 decades. Has been penning the Ullage & Spillage column for What's Brewing since 2003.

WHAT’S BREWING BIOGRAPHY

Photos: Brian K. Smith

ODD FELLOWS COME IN PAIRS

>> DAVE SMITH

Aaron Jonckheere turns and squares his focus toward the writer across the table.

"Iain knows how I feel about him. We have a great partnership, but no one wants to hear about how I do great accounting or office work. I just want to say, that most of the time, I'd prefer for the brand that it's about Iain, and about who he is, and..."

His counterpart cuts him off with a guttural "Nooooo..." Aaron responds, "I was going to say, but you never let me finish...”

Ruefully, Iain Hill mutters, "True. Here we go. Here we go..."

There was a time when it would have been tough to convince a bystander that strangers Iain Hill and Aaron Jonckheere would be able to engage in a fruitful merger and conceive an offspring as skillfully eccentric as Strange Fellows Brewing. Upon its opening, three and a half years ago, the brewery was so instantly accepted that local beer folk now often forget how relatively new it still is. Meanwhile, its two founders carry on like an old married couple, having conjugated their relationship after a period of wooing that began three long years before their baby was born. That passionate but strenuous courtship has solidified their bond, although if you scratch at it a little and their personal contrasts will surface.

Jonckheere is a Belgian name. Turns out that the co-founder of a brewery respected for its take on ales from the Low Countries comes by his interest in them genetically. "Being a Belgian guy, raised in a Belgian family, beer was always part of my life," Aaron shares. “I just always thought it would be a cool business to be part of.”

“I had been laid off, and I was trotting around with a brewery business plan. I met with a few beer industry people, but nothing was working out.” Aaron was a homebrewer, a hobby he had inherited from his father and grandfather before him. But he needed a ‘real’ brewer to make his dream work. Then he visited Taylor’s Crossing. There, three blocks from his home in the North Vancouver location that now houses Hearthstone Brewery, Aaron met with a gentle man named Dave Varga.

“David’s such a great guy,” Aaron relates. “Every time I see him, I’m like, ‘you are amazing’. He took my business plan and spent hours on it. He wrote all these notes. Then he gave it back to me and said ‘By the way, I’m not your guy. But I know a guy, and he might be your guy’. So that is when I got introduced to Iain.” Matchmaker Varga set up the blind date at Iain’s workplace, Mark James Group sister property Yaletown Brewing.

Hill, as it happens, is not a Belgian name. The brewer who occasionally gives educational presentations on topics such as sour beers comes by his passion for Low Countries styles by way of exposure to the beers, including travel to Belgium in 1996. No doubt that he would have taken note of his young suitor’s ethnic background. But as a longtime high-profile eligible brewer, Iain had had a number of beaus come calling over the years. He had just recently come out of a serious brewery-planning relationship that had fallen apart. Now it was January 2012, and the jilted Hill was on the rebound.

But, as was just noted in our biography of Iain, he still had aspirations. Back in the 1990s, around the time of his early years at Yaletown, Unibroue had come out with its bottle-conditioned products and Iain was big on the idea of a Belgian beer lineup. He had begun planning his own project called Salamander Brewing Company that would have been along those lines. “Aaron wanted very much to have a Belgian brewery,” Iain confirms. “I knew he had his head screwed on right. If he had come to me ten years earlier, I would have been like, ‘Oh my God, we’re perfectly aligned’.”

However, Hill's idea of a dream brewery evolved while with Mark James, and his experience in a brewpub chain no doubt eventually tempered his original vision. “Belgian beer is great, and [at the time in BC] nobody else was 100% doing it. But the reality is it’s really putting all your eggs in one basket. There’s a broad world of beer out there. Talisman [Pale Ale] is [now] 50% of our sales.”

Once the rendezvous was over, Iain went back to work and thought little of it. However, it wasn’t over for Aaron. Asked for his most significant takeaway from the meeting, he concludes, “Iain didn’t say no”.

The opportunity to work with Hill wouldn’t have been lost on Jonckheere. Thinking back to his “craft beer epiphany” moments, Yaletown's seminal, Belgian-inspired Oud Bruin comes immediately to mind, many years before Aaron met its creator.

Ultimately Aaron shared his business plan, and Iain had a look. He even came over to Aaron’s house. But he wasn’t committed at first. “I had 3 kids, a mortgage, a job that paid me pretty well and gave me a lot of creative license,” Iain recalls. But Jonckheere hung in there. Then, three months into their relationship, there was a moment when Hill finally said, “I’m ready to go forward with this”.

“Iain’s business card has the best title ever,” Aaron asserts. “He is the ‘Particularist’. He’s a details guy. We kept kicking the business plan back and forth, he kept inserting his ideas, and they kept sticking. We started on the long, winding road towards picking a name.”

The exercise of choosing a viable brand almost ended their relationship. The first name they pegged was the logical but underwhelming Low Countries Brewing, which stuck around long enough that it was formally registered. Next came Allegory, which might have worked well had it not conflicted with the the name of a South American winery. Looking for inspiration, they gathered together a group of beer geeks and ran a market research focus group, but the two potential partners just couldn’t agree on a name from the fairly long shortlist it provided.

They had trouble dealing with this. Iain recalls that by New Year’s 2013, “I was staying with a bunch of friends on Saltspring Island. I was supposed to be having a good time, but I was f*** depressed.”

“I can’t overstate it: that was hell,” Aaron relates. So he and his wife went over to the Hills’ for dinner and brought five names to compare with the five favoured by Iain and his wife Christine. “We present names. There’s no agreement. We don’t overlap on anything,” he remembers wistfully.

Witnessing their awkward inability to deal with this fundamental challenge, Christine remarked that her husband and friend were just like the Odd Couple. Something about that comment twigged, and over the course of a week or two they solidified the name as Strange Fellows—a perfect evocation of their identity.

As for the distinctive design of their brand, it’s the work of the person who inspired their name. Iain recalls suggesting in his very first meeting with Aaron that if they had a brewery together, he’d want Christine, a longtime visual artist, to design the logo and graphics. “Turns out she does a pretty good job”, he understates, triggering chuckles of appreciation for their well-defined visual identity amongst those gathered.

Another important piece of the puzzle was their spacious facility, a former carpet warehouse. One day early in the process, Iain had picked up the phone to call Graham With of Parallel 49 Brewing. “By accident, I called this guy named Graham [Disher] who was a general contractor who used to work for Mark James. I was in this headspace where I was talking to a few people about things. I went out on a ledge and said, “Hey, this might be happening.” Next thing you know, Iain and Aaron had a major investor who helped build their brewhouse.

“You hope for the best, and you plan for the worst,” Jonckheere philosophises. Some of the inevitable trial and error is publicly documented for posterity on a Wordpress blog that Aaron had set up early on. Google ‘Starting A Craft Brewery’, and you’ll probably find it at the top of your search results. It’s been a valued resource to many, and still enjoys about 5000 views per month to this day.

Something Iain and Aaron agree on is the value of working with a partner to vet each other’s decisions. “You’re not just working in your own bubble; you’re working with someone else’s opinion,” Jonckheere reasons. “Iain is no different than the painter that has their artwork in the [tasting room’s Charles Clark] Gallery right now. We think there’s something really unique about creation, and the arts. We celebrate some really cool, obscure traditions from around the world.”

As for the two Strange Ones now, Hill says, “We’re very different individuals, and that’s just life. We’re actually doing pretty good, because relationships are hard. “

“We’re all different", Jonckheere concludes. "It’s about being open to new things in the world. What Strange Fellows has become about is sharing your differences over a beer respectfully.” Something Iain and Aaron apparently managed to do long enough to turn each other’s long-held dream into a reality better than they each might have ever imagined.

WOMEN IN BEER | profile

Christine Moulson: Brand & Story Teller

>> LUNDY DALE

When I started the Women and Beer series in 2013, I focused on female brewers because it was such a male-dominated industry, and “brewer” is the person behind that great pint of beer! But there are many other responsibilities in the beer industry that are essential.

In today’s world, a brewery needs to stand out and be noticed. We all love to follow the latest newcomer on Instagram and read updates about a beer launch, with strong brand recognition and captivating visuals. Often, branding is marketed before the beer is even made. How often do we think: who is behind that marketing? Who created the brand, the logo, and the images on T-shirts you buy and wear?

If you have visited Vancouver’s Strange Fellows Brewing or purchased a bottle of their beer, you may have noticed the unique block-print-style images that create the “look” of Strange Fellows. Let me introduce you to Christine Moulson, a partner of the brewery since its inception. She’s the wife of Iain Hill, the man behind the beers. She also happens to be the creative mastermind behind the branding.

Q&A WITH CHRISTINE

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS ROLE?

For many years Iain had wanted to open his own brewery and I was always keen to be involved in the marketing side. When Aaron came into the picture, I was part of the team from the start.

IS THIS YOUR FIRST JOB IN THE BEER INDUSTRY?

Yes. I do seem to have a thing for beverages though, as I was previously involved with a tea company and worked for many years as their Creative Director.

WHAT KIND OF SCHOOLING DO YOU HAVE?

I studied Film & Animation at Emily Carr, not Graphic Design as one might expect. Although I did not pursue a career in Animation, storytelling is central to the work I do, both in the imagery as well as the copy, and how it relates to the product and to us as the consumers.

IS THERE MORE EMPHASIS ON VISUALS & MARKETING IN THE INDUSTRY THESE DAYS?

Definitely. I guess because there is more considered marketing around beer in general these days, everyone has had to up their game, so to speak. Much beer branding and design has slowly started moving away from a traditional masculine focus and is more varied and creative.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT YOUR JOB?

It’s a very creative industry. I love the challenge of creating and telling the Strange Fellows story. My job allows me to be creative and to research folklore and history, which I really love.

HOW IMPORTANT IS THE VISUAL SIDE OF STRANGE FELLOWS?

I like to think it’s very important. If you have a good product, that should be reflected in your visuals and in all written copy which tells the story of who you are as a company. With Strange Fellows, I hope our branding conveys our respect of and our roots in tradition (that’s the “Old World Inspired” part), through the use of old lore and archetypal characters.

AS THE BRAND ARTIST, HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT YOUR PROCESS?

We generally discuss the concept of the beer label as a group before I begin. I am lucky in that I am left mostly to my own devices. I usually take my inspiration from the beer itself, as each beer has its own feeling, history and story, and I take creative clues from there.

Sometimes it’s what comes to mind when I first taste the beer in question. Like when I first tasted Popinjay, the image of a peacock just popped into my head. Sometimes it’s the feeling or tradition of the beer that suggests a name or a story. Occasionally I will make an image that will have to wait for the right beer to come along. Once a concept takes root, I develop the name, imagery, and the narrative. The story that follows the image is usually inspired by folklore, a collective truth, a shared superstition or archetype that somehow relates to the image.

I knew that I wanted the [Strange Fellows visual identity] to be bold yet classic, so I chose to use block prints as the imagery, for their boldness of line and the way it forces imperfections or naivety into the imagery, and their hand-carved nature reflects the craft of the product itself. The palette is black on ivory, with a sparing use of colour. The image style is inspired by medieval wood block prints and Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

DO YOU EVER HAVE ISSUES WITH CREATIVE BLOCK?

All the time! When that happens, I just have to go off and do something completely different. Inspiration usually comes unexpectedly in the middle of the night, or while doing grocery shopping or something banal like that. Sometimes I have creative block with a deadline looming and I just have to force an idea out, and surprisingly it works. The Strange Resemblance label for example, I did entirely in one day–concept, images, story and layout in about 6 hours.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE BEER OR LABEL AT STRANGE FELLOWS?

Bayard! Saison is my favorite style of beer, and ours is so good and classic–dry and spicy. The beer is named for Bayard the horse who appears on the label. Bayard is an old character, a magical horse with an uncontrollable free spirit who epitomizes the wild nature of the beer itself. I first became aware of the myth on a beer trip to Belgium. We came across a statue of Bayard in a small town and his legend stuck with me.

WHAT ABOUT FROM ANOTHER BREWERY?

Orval. Iain and I visited Orval many years ago and we had such a great experience. We were treated to a lunch of food that was made, grown or harvested entirely by the abbey – cheese, bread, honey, beer, etc.

It was just Iain and I and couple of guys that ran the brewery, and the meal was served to us by a little old monk in a long brown cassock, at long refectory tables in a room with soaring ceilings. The fish on the Orval label tells the legend of a miraculous fish that lived in the pond where the abbey was later established.

ANY LABEL YOU WOULD LIKE TO REDO?

Talisman. I have never been entirely happy with this image and would like her to have a slightly more sinister look, carved in a slightly more naïve style not unlike the style of the Jongleur.

DO YOU HAVE ANY FAVOURITE BREWERY ARTIST THAT INSPIRES YOU?

I love Mikkeller Brewery’s labels, designed by artist Keith Shore. They are so fun and convey a strong feeling.

DO YOU EVER CHOOSE BEER BY THE LABEL?

I am guilty of this all the time! I find it quite difficult to buy something with a bad label, regardless of how good the product inside may be.

PEOPLE IN THE CRAFT INDUSTRY HAVE A PASSION. IS THAT TRUE FOR YOU?

Beer specifically is not my passion (am I allowed to say that?), but I do have a passion for all things culinary and I am an avid cook and baker. I appreciate things I know are made with intention and integrity.

NEXT UP IS A CAN LABEL RELAUNCH IN THE FALL. WHAT WILL BE INVOLVED IN THIS?

In switching our cans from printed sleeves to actual printed cans the opportunity arose to redesign and I jumped on it. Our bottle label design is quite minimal, and I wanted to bring the can design in line with this. The images are bigger and many of the changes are subtle but overall effective and I am quite excited about it.

Lundy Dale

Among her other contributions to the BC beer scene, Lundy is a founder of CAMRA BC's Vancouver chapter, Barley's Angels' Pink Pints Chapter and BC Craft Beer Month, and Past President of CAMRA BC.