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BEERSEEKERS: KELOWNA’S EMERGING BEER DISTRICTS
KELOWNA'S EMERGING BEER DISTRICTS
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As has been widely reported, too many people celebrated Canada Day together in Kelowna this year. The ensuing viral outbreak and bad publicity caused tourism to drop appreciably in late July, to the detriment of the innocent businesses there. Recently, What’s Brewing headed to the Okanagan to check in on the breweries, whose traffic was affected by this.
Downtown & Cultural District
The Downtown and North End The centre of Kelowna is replete with shops, restaurants and entertainment, even in these unusual times. You’ll want to grab a hotel room downtown, and your city tour will start amid a great food & beverage scene. Your first stop is just a few minutes away.
Kelowna Beer Institute
In 2016, we visited the Tree Brewing Beer Institute along the beautiful, bustling boardwalk located along Kelowna’s Waterfront Park. No, it’s not an institute of any kind, and it’s no longer branded as Tree either. Either way, the BI is an awesome space with a light menu specializing in spent-grain pizza. You can really enjoy a beer in the relaxed atmosphere of this great two-floor room and patio near the centre of the city.
BNA Brewing
BNA Brewing & Eatery is two operations: a busy brewery, next door to a massive two-floor restaurant with its own entrance and opening hours. Thus, your tour will need to involve BNA twice: have drinks in the lounge on the way to your North End crawl, then dine in the Eatery on the way back. We recently interviewed BNA Brewing’s Marketing Director Jill Jarrett about how things went during the COVID lockdown. See our COVID Comeback feature on page 8 and check out the full story on our website.
The North End: BC’s New Brewers Row
With five breweries within essentially a one-block radius, Kelowna’s North End is the new BC brewery cluster to rival Port Moody Brewer’s Row. As with Port Moody, two of them are next door neighbours, and the rest are a one minute crawl each. And that’s if you’re actually crawling.
The first stop on your North End tour is Rustic Reel Brewing. Located just a short walk from BNA, this is a must-see for the beer enthusiast. Owner Susi Foerg has put her heart and soul (and love of beer) into this place. She wanted to create a place where women felt comfortable, and she certainly succeeded.
The décor is a combination of modern and “rustic cottage”, with potted plants and fresh flowers placed strategically throughout. There is a small, revolving menu, and the beers are clean and solid. Especially recommended were the Amber Ale and the Rosenheim Hefeweizen.
tweaking his recipes with two goals: first, to not make exactly the same beer as everyone else and, second, to “dry out” the beers a bit to get away from the sweetness (to cut down on that hangover). Owner Matt Jewell has a vision to make Kelowna a great beer town. He is interested in bringing more people into the beer scene and endeavours to have a wide range of tasty beers to entice even those who might think they do not like beer to come in and enjoy something they make. Matt says “Regular people should have access to nice things”. Vice and Virtue is the embodiment of that philosophy. Red Bird Brewing is a small brewery with big ambitions. This popular brewery is in a small building with a limited capacity brewing system. As a result, they currently need to contract brew most of their beer. They have a big patio, however, and it was full of happy beer-drinkers at the time of our visit. The patio is dog-friendly and they have a limited menu as well.
If you visit on a weekend, you will see the expanded patio where they pull their fence across the adjacent parking lot and put out a bunch more tables to accommodate more people. Owner Adam is Brad is an experimental kind of guy, and makes unfiltered, experimental kinds of beers. At the time of our visit, there were 7 beers on tap, all of them brewed with kveik yeast. The unfiltered beers are all very tasty, and a bit unusual, but without being over the top or inaccessible for the average beer drinker. A word of advice: go hungry because you need one of their incredible pizzas.
Kettle River
and tiniest brewery was in sharp contrast with its largest. Since then Tree is gone and Kettle River has grown into a community hub.
working on an expansion of the brewery and has bought the building next door for that purpose. Adam’s vision for the brewery includes having a concert series much like that at Vancouver’s Red Truck Beer Truck Stop. They are currently going through the long approval process, so best wishes to them as they move forward!
James Windsor and Matt Jewell in the Vice and Virtue taproom
Vice & Virtue Brewing might be the home of Kelowna’s first popular kettle sour. In fact, their Love Potion Raspberry Berliner Vice has become their flagship beer, an 8:1 seller over all their other amazing brews.
Vice & Virtue makes a large number of different beers on their 10-barrel system, encompassing the regular styles you would want to see in a brewery, although with a bit of a twist. Brewer James
Brad Tomlinson at Jackknife
All breweries have their own personalities, and Jackknife Brewing is like no other. Set in a small building next to Kettle River, it has an alternative/metal kind of vibe. Owner/brewer Brad Tomlinson, founding brewer at Kettle River, went out on his own by opening up shop next door.
When we first visited Kettle River Brewing in 2016, around the corner from the monolithic Tree brewery, Kelowna’s then-newest Windsor takes great pride in his beer and enjoys spending time
Kettle River now has a large, wheelchair-accessible patio with social distancing measures built in. The place was buzzing when we showed up for a couple of tasty late night brews. Great hospitality matched the great beers we sampled.
Kettle River got full COVID compliance marks for keeping those masks on at all times serving guests. So did many others around town.
As BC’s third-largest metro area, Kelowna is more than just the original inner town. The surroundings play host to a couple of other brewery clusters that are more than worth seeking out.
For this busy day with five breweries you’ll need a designated driver. Fortunately, ride-sharing just came to Kelowna this summer in the form of Lucky To Go, one of BC’s newest independent ride-hailing operations. Once you’ve got your wheels organized, your first stop is about ten minutes Eastbound on Hwy 97.
Darla Ariss and Sean White at Copper Brewing
What do you get when a home-brewing engineer and a wine-industry businesswoman happen to meet? You get Copper Brewing Co., a large, open, inviting taproom in the Landmark neighbourhood of Kelowna. Opened September 2019 by Sean White and Darla Ariss, Copper has an extensive, ever-changing list of solid, tasty beers. They’re made by Richard Fukumoto, a young, energetic brewer who came from Labatt-owned giants Mill Street and Stanley Park Brewing. Copper is an inclusive establishment, welcoming families with kids (Nintendo gaming systems in tasting room booths!) and dogs on the patio.
Freddy’s Brewpub
Freddy’s is Kelowna’s original brewpub and, since the demise of Tree Brewing, the city’s longest-running brewery, period. Debuting in 2000 as Big River Brewing, then known as Mill Creek Brewery, the location now beloved as Freddy’s Brewpub is annexed to the McCurdy Bowling Centre. Lower Mainland readers will understand that concept because the same exists in Richmond, where one of the other original Big River locations became what is Monkey 9 Brewing today.
This summer and early fall, Freddy’s is undergoing a major renovation (see our separate feature on that). If you visit Kelowna this fall, check in on Facebook for updates on that; in the meantime, you can still drink the beers on the bowling side.
Welton Brewery
Welton Brewery is the brainchild of Simon Welton, a British expat whose goal is to bring a little bit of England to Kelowna. Adam Chatburn has the details later in this issue.
Welton's first official beer to go on tap, Guilden Sutton Golden Ale, debuted during the second week of August. Plan your Kelowna trip at whatsbrewing.ca/map
Wild Ambition
Save the rideshare or cab fare! For the next stop, you can actually walk, because the unique Wild Ambition Brewing is only two industrial park blocks away from Welton as the crow flies (although there’s a fence in the way, so flying would actually help in this case).
Sadly, Wild Ambition was on very limited hours this summer, opening only on Fridays for beer pickup. Hopefully by the time you make it to Kelowna that will have changed, but either way you can still get their noteworthy beers (think: ‘wild’, ie mixed fermentation brews) with a little planning.
GM Connor MacKay-Dunn at Kelowna Brewing Co.
You’ll find KBC Public House on a hill near Kelowna’s UBC campus. This spacious brewpub boasts an impressive wall of windows overlooking the stunning landscape of the surrounding valley.
The pub opened in June of 2019, then began brewing their own beer as Kelowna Brewing Co. in December. Brewer Josh Wyatt, formerly of the currently-defunct Boundary Brewing, is busy making a few mainstays and some rotating seasonals, including some very good fruit sours! For a new brewery, it’s already turning out some nice beers.
The next day of touring is best handled using a novel travel method: bus. Be a responsible drinker and grab a daypass from Kelowna Regional Transit System for a bargain $5. Ride the No. 1 all the way south to the end of the line, and you’re right by Barn Owl Brewing.
Barn Owl is an intimate, homey little brewery inside an actual heritage barn. Surprisingly for such a small brewery, they have 15 taps of their own beers. If it’s a sunny day, you’ll love the small patios front and back of the barn. There’s a bakery next door with lunch bites if you’re peckish.
After a couple of hours there, hop onto that same bus back north to Shore Line Brewing, which just opened in June. Their large taproom and giant patio are across from Boyce Gyro Park. There’s a full kitchen and 8 beers on tap.
Next, hop back on that same bus one quick stop northbound, or walk ten minutes, and you’ll reach the Mission Tap House, a solid BC craft beer supporter. After a day of drinking in the sun, you’ve earned a good dinner featuring some great beers from around the province.
Alternatively, you can do the route in the other order, especially if you’re ready for a big lunch to get the drinking started off right. Just be aware that Barn Owl doesn’t have dinner options (although DunnEnzies Pizza Mission is close by). Either way, when your crawl is complete, just whip out your daypass and ride that same government limo back downtown.
Over in Westbank, you’ll find one more brewery: Kind Brewing. This clean, sharp tasting room showcases its brewhouse behind glass in the classic manner to good effect. Nice aesthetics complement an impressive beer menu.
As stated, the purpose of the tour, aside from meeting people and enjoying great food and craft beer, was to see how Okanagan cities are dealing with the COVID crisis. What did we find? There was no reason to stay away from the breweries here. They are fully up to speed and handling COVID measures well. So if you’re on the fence about a BC beer staycation in the Okanagan, just use common sense approaches and you can have a safe and enjoyable vacation. Visit Kelowna Ale Trail for more.
