Comradery amongst Vancouver Island craft breweries is evident, especially when one comes to another’s aid during a wildfire-caused road closure.
Highway 4, which connects Vancouver Island’s east and west coasts, has been closed since June 6 because of a wildfire in the Cameron Bluffs area. Despite a detour, it has cut off or slowed down supply to many businesses like Twin City Brewing who are normally preparing for a busy June.
However, the road closure caused things to quiet down and owner and brew master Aaron Colyn says the lack of beer supplies began to present a problem.
“We weren’t fully stocked up, but we had a week left [of malt] when this all happened,” said Colyn. “We realized that we could brew a couple more times and then we were going to be in trouble. So, we put something out on social media that said that was the case.”
Colyn adds their supplier said they would not be taking the detour, and shipments were stuck. The social media post, however, caught the attention of Cumberland Brewing Co. general manager and co-owner Darren Adam.
Adam says they were consultants for Twin City Brewing when they were starting out, and he did not hesitate to help a fellow brewery in a sticky situation.
“I texted him immediately and said, ‘how much do you need and when do you need it?’ and he said ‘how?’,” said Adam. “I said ‘I’ll throw it in the plane if you don’t need too much.’ The next day I threw eight bags of grain in, and we flew over to [Port] Alberni.”
Adam says his previous job was flying around and fixing small airplanes, and he was able to fly to Port Alberni in about 15 minutes from Courtenay Airpark. They delivered around 400 lbs of grain and swapped a keg of beer with them.
“It was the perfect economic circle,” said Adam.
Colyn adds they met them yesterday to collect the grain and had some pizza while talking about what they were going through.
The malt will be able to make a batch of beer when mixed with other grains, but it is a base malt, according to Adam. That equates to around 1,200 litres and could last between 10 days to three weeks depending on demand.
Both Adam and Colyn say that the comradery is important in their industry as they are small breweries in a large pool.
“We have a common enemy with big beer, and we all work together to try to continue to erode the percentage of sales the big guys have,” said Adam. “We also support each other because the thing is entrepreneurs and small business, which create more jobs in Canada than in any other sector, are still very vulnerable.
“We’ve just come out of COVID, we’re just winding up to have the best season we’ve ever had and here’s Tofino and Port Alberni basically having the door closed.”
Adam adds that Colyn has a full staff of 21 people that he needs to pay, and returns are not as large as it seems with breweries.
“When it comes to craft breweries, competition is not a thing. We are all looking to serve our immediate communities,” added Colyn. “We are all in it really to gain a bit of market away from the big, macro brewers.”
Because of the nature of the situation, Colyn says they are making an all-new beer with the grain from Cumberland Brewing Co. It will be a one batch beer, and they are hoping to return to brewing twice a week soon.
“It was a great example of just looking out for your neighbour,” said Colyn.
